Well, I went out to see Watchmen this last weekend. Before I say anything about CGI bright blue dongles and the hotness of the mini-Lucy Lawless wannabe, lemme tell you about an old talk I had with my good friend, the Big Kahuna, T.
Some time ago, we were talking about what fictional originals ‘universes’ were fit to do fanfic overs, and I remember him clearly saying (I could always check the chat log, but I’m not going to bother all that much) something along the lines of ‘…it has to have a good fanbase, because otherwise you won’t have an audience, it won’t do doing a fanfic over a series only your grandma and her three blind cats saw on TV in the ides of the 70’s. Plus, it has to moderately suck, in the sense that you’ll want to fix the suck in your own way. Buffy had suck holes you could pass a Mack truck fully loaded sideways, hence the enormous fanfic fanbase. That’s why it’s so hard doing a good fanfic over, say, Babylon 5.”
These are not his exact words, far from it (sorry, pal), I’m mis-quoting him badly, but the general sentiment is there, and I came to agree with him, especially over the Babylon 5 issue. So now you’re going to ask me, what the heck this have to do with Watchmen? I’m coming to that.
I read Watchmen way back in the early 90's. Back then I was a huge comics fan and this was THE graphic novel with the exception of maybe Dark Knight Returns. Anyway, I found it to be unique, an experience in comic books unlike anything I had read so far. Dark, gritty and sometimes so incredibly human that you didn’t seem to care the characters were completely out of whack. Hell, Rorschach is Hannibal Lecter’s love child, with a dash of Sam Spade thrown in for mood’s sake. Silk Spectre, both of them... and once again I must point out the hotness of dear Ms. Malin Akerman... are both SM dominatrixes with a specific fetish of pummeling bad guys. Anyway, I’m digressing, and if you don’t know them by know, then something is really wrong with you. What I wanted to say with all is that, as far as graphic novels go, Watchmen is damn near perfect, even taking into account that Alan Moore is an Artsy git (sorry, G, couldn’t resist).
Did it make it ‘unfilmable’, as I heard several times over the years? Apparently not, since Zack Snider ended up actually filming it, and doing it well. Is it good? Yes. Is it perfect? Actually, no, but that’s more because of the material being filmed than the movie itself. You can NOT translate comic books into great movies without having certain liberties, and while Zack did... especially the so-talked-about ending... he didn’t take enough to make it perfect. Will it disappoint fans? I think not, I mean, almost every damned panel of the comic is transferred digitally to the screen, with a coupla exceptions. Will it be for everyone? Once again, no, I do think you need to know the novel, or pay real attention to the movie so it will make sense in the end, plus the before mentioned glowing blue dongle (which I agree, was entirely unecessary in most scenes it appears) makes it sometimes a bit of a mood killer.
So, in the end, what is Watchmen - the movie?
Roger Erbert said it better here and here, Watchmen is, above all, an experience. Watching the nearly-perfect graphic novel turn into decent almost-summer blockbuster was a delightful experience, one that reminded me of the talk between me and T about the nature of fanfic. What Zack Snider did, comparatively, was to film a bad fanfic, one where he changed a line or two of dialogue, twisted a coupla scenes to make it more palatable to the audience, and with it he got an absolute ton of reviews, either good, bad or in-between, a load of money, and the stamp of ‘I did make Watchmen, you twits,’ while the whiny idiot know as the Artsy Git (read above), got known in the circles as a moody b@stard who only knows how to complain.
So, grab someone... or go alone, but I think Watchmen is an experience to be shared with a significant other... and go make the studio, Zack, the Git (oh, yeah, did you see him refusing the check for the rights?) and the theatre owner a tad bit richer, while you get a little bit happier about having such an experience.
And, if in the end, you end up thinking about writing Watchmen fanfic, remember these wise words: ‘I can, but SHOULD I?’
Near perfect is hard to beat, after all.
M
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