Is “Watchmen” solely for geeks only? Every sci-fi fanboy site is already in the tank for the film and has been pushing the graphic novel agenda along for months. This is their Christmas so they’re thoughts on the film aren’t really to be trusted. What you really need is the opinion of objective outsiders who don’t cream their jeans over the mere mention of “Watchmen” like that effusive fanboy Time blogger.
Defamer and others have accurately already been lamenting the leaden delivery and wooden dialogue of some of the clips that have circulated online and Jeffrey Wells keeps hearing reports from adults that aren’t comic book store obsessives. Their thoughts on the film are getting more and more brutal. We’ve only seen the opening 20 minutes, but they were — for the most part — pretty impressive aside from the silly and laughable, but still kind of simultaneously awesome inclusion of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A Changin’ ” to soundtrack the history and backstory of the novel. One of Wells’ people say, after that first 20 minutes, it all goes downhill.
“By far the highlight of the film is the opening credits,” he begins. “It perfectly nails the surrealist tone of the graphic novel and does an adequate job of running through some of the back story of the Watchmen. It’s so good I’m half-convinced that director Zack Snyder had little to do with this sequence. Because that’s where the surrealism ends. “The rest of Watchmen basically alternates between campy silliness and 2nd-rate comic book melodrama. At some points on the level of live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I assume Snyder was trying to hit that sweet spot of surrealism that accompanies the alternate 1985 reality of the graphic novel, but the kindest thing I can call it is a kind of tragedy/campy combo.”
Geeks will surely descend down on Wells post momentarily and rip it to shreds as they’re wont to do – dissent of any kid is always verboten in geek circles. And surely he, his “messenger” and even this report will probably be seen as some kind of anti-‘Watchmen’ agenda, but that’s fine.
Fanboy reviews and opinions just aren’t very trustworthy. And they don’t help their case one iota when — even the bloggers themselves – descend upon reports that are not 100% gung-ho and dismiss and attempt to rip their arguments apart (like some recently did to David Poland and his report was fairly benign).
Another early-bird report Wells ran earlier this week was from someone who was a fan. “And speaking as a huge admirer and devotee of the graphic novel, the film is a staggering failure. On the plus side, you’ve got a pretty literal adaptation of the source material. It is at times a meticulous and gorgeous recreation of Alan Moore‘s original work. Unfortunately it’s an empty, inert, meandering and, yes, boring 2 hours and 45 minutes.”
This worries us too, because all reports suggest Zack Snyder has xeroxed the graphic novel way too literally and in doing so, sucked the soul right out of it. Let’s state it loud and clear though: We’re fans of the graphic novel. Many of us read it when it first came out in the late ’80s. Of course this won’t change a thing: “Watchmen” will probably rake in a bundle, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good, right? We reserve judgement until we see it, but yes, it looks worrisome from the outset.