WATCHMEN: Zack Snyder's Filmmaking-By-Numbers

A brief prologue to this post, and to this blog in general:

Soon after watching Watchmen, I wrote a pithy review on Facebook, which read: "Watchmen is shit and Zack Snyder is a hack."  I considered adding "infantile" or "sadistic" to the list of Snyder's descriptors, but decided the terseness of the existing message was effective enough.  I soon received a response from a friend expressing his disagreement with my sentiments.

A while ago, I had a conversation with this friend in which I contended that I do not have opinions about movies, but rather objectively know their inherent value.  Other people spout conjecture; I report fact.  This resulted in a lively argument, ending with me thinking him an idiot about movies (which is true) and him thinking me an asshole about movies (which is also true).  A similar discussion with another friend ended with him comparing me to Hitler.

I can understand where these people are coming from.  However, despite the sacrifices that must be made, someone must stand up for justice.  Someone must stand up for righteousness.  Someone must stand up for truth.  Some movies are brilliant, and some movies suck, and someone has to tell it like it is.  That someone is me.

I have watched many a bad movie in my time, but somehow my exposure to the colossal pile of shit that is Watchmen, and the ensuing flood of comments on my first public review, was a moment of clarity for me--the world needed to know the truth.  And thus, this blog was born.

Now, on to the meat of it:

Watchmen is based on the graphic novel of the same name by Alan Moore, to which all reviews of the film inevitably must reference.  Alan Moore is a British graphic novelist, anarchist, and occultist who wisely severed all connections with this film.  I came across the novel for the first time about six months ago when my zealous friend heard about the upcoming film and lent the book to everyone he knew.  I read the entire thing (and it's a hefty volume) in about six hours on one Sunday afternoon, and for days afterwards walked around in a stunned and wary stupor.  The story concerns costumed pseudo-superheroes contending with the threat of imminent nuclear holocaust, set in an alternate 1985 in which Nixon is running for a third term on the strength of his victory in Vietnam, and the arms race with the Soviets is nearing a breaking point.  

The immediate plot points about averting nuclear war were secondary to the larger issues about man's inability to know what is good and what is evil in the modern world--a collective uncertainty about the unstoppable pace of technological advancement, about the fragility of our way of life, about our vulnerability to our own primal nature, and all the while the horrifying silence of God deafening our tired ears.  It was these unanswerable questions that rendered my surroundings in a disconcerting pallor for days after I finished the book--that juicy philosophical marrow that stains the hands and sharpens one's vision to grainy definition.  The New York Times complained of the book's nihilism.  However, I contend that Moore's intent was not to encapsulate humanity absolutely, but merely to explore the fears lurking in the dark corners of our psyche that exist whether we like it or not.  I believe that such explorations are a healthy part of self-analysis.  I retain a generally positive and optimistic view of humanity, but nonetheless found Moore's novel salient and insightful.

Zack Snyder, as far as I can tell, read the book and was impressed by all the explosions and fighting and cool shit going down.  

As such, much in the same vein as his utterly vapid 300, Snyder set out to use as many cool camera tricks as possible to film as many cool fight scenes and dismemberments as possible, throw in some sweet CG landscapes on Mars, toss in a little soft-core sex, and hopefully, somewhere along the line, make a rigidly faithful adaptation of a work that he, by his own admission, deeply respects.  Well, guess what, Zack--you failed.  

In fact, he did worse than fail.  Snyder does, technically, make a literal adaptation--in terms of plot and dialogue, it's basically a transcription of the book.  However,  Snyder takes the heart of the story and keelhauls it across every last frame of the novel, stringing up its flayed and eviscerated corpse and re-animating it into a grotesque and blasphemous dance.  The philosophical inquiries that were the hot lifeblood of the novel are trampled to death by an unceasing display of gore and violence, interspersed with some remarkably shitty acting.  In the name of "faithful adaptation," Snyder has his actors read mostly the exact lines from the novel. In the stylized world of a graphic novel, the words had impact.  In the more literal world of a movie (or at least the world Snyder ineptly creates), they just sound hackneyed and melodramatic. 

As a point of comparison, I would reference Charlie Kaufman's adaptation of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief.  The film--titled Adaptation--follows a different plot entirely than the book--and yet I would argue that, tonally and thematically, it is one of the most faithful adaptations I've ever seen.  Kaufman takes Orlean's story and finds his own story within it, thereby breathing life into it that is unquestionably personal and genuine.  Watchmen is a lesson in the polar opposite approach to adaptation.  

Snyder tops it off by adding a number of culturally revered American classics to the soundtrack--"The Times They Are A-Changing," "The Sounds of Silence," "All Along the Watchtower."  Even overlooking the manipulativeness and audacity of using such potently American anthems, the purpose of their inclusion is unclear.  Is it supposed to bring us back in time?  No, because all these songs predate the story's timeframe.  Is it supposed to set the mood?  Perhaps--but the only effect it had on me was fragmenting the flow of the narrative, awkwardly interspersed as the songs were with dramatic score for Dr. Manhattan's palace on Mars or Ozymandias's Antarctic fortress.  Are we heading towards the climax?  Am I supposed to feel afraid?  I only wish I could.

Critics derided the film for its excessive violence and nihilistic milieu--and while I will forever defend Moore's novel of this claim, it is all too apt for the film.  Snyder ignores all the best parts of the novel--the tension, the pervasive unease, the spiritual malaise--and amps up the dismemberments and bone-breaking.  Perhaps the book was sufficiently stylized as to make these aspects of the story, which were undeniably present in the novel, poetic and allegorical--the violence sublimated into the telling of a larger story.  In Snyder's clumsy hands, however, it comes off as merely grotesque.  There is no allegory or nuance in his portrayal of Rorschach burying a meat cleaver into a murderer's skull while blood sprays over his face.  Larger implications are lost--we're watching savagery for its own sake.

I only hope that the reputation of Moore's novel is not irreparably damaged by its filmic adaptation.  For a viewer to wish that of a film that was purportedly a faithful adaptation is, quite frankly, unforgivable.