Eyes Wide Shut (The Watchmen movie)

Oy.
How's that for a review?

Ahem.

Well, since I'm working at Q this month I wont be doing my regular movie column.

But you can tune in this Saturday on The World This Weekend on CBC for thoughts on Watchmen, superhero cinema and future of spandex on screen.

Now, the hour is late, so let me leave you with a few brief thoughts on the film.

Too literal. Full Frontal. Too slow (motion.) Action? Sure. Pathos? Not so much.

Not every book makes a great movie and not ever comic works on the big screen. Terry Gilliam had the rights to the Watchmen once. He gave them up, because he realized what made it work as a comic book wouldn't survive the translation.

It is one thing to see Rorschach mumble and mutter on the page. But hearing him rant about commies and whores on the big screen, in a growl that would give Christian Bale a run for his money...well, film is not that forgiving. Especially when it seems the director has a near-religious reverence for the source material.

The orignal Watchmen was a slow march to a cliff, a wry look at the men and women under the mask, told by comic book fans tired of writing funny books.

The movie is a love letter to the original, where director Zack Snyder drowns any depth with his own fetish for slow motion shots and shattering femurs.

The book is all there on the screen, except it's not.



Well I had predicted this. Although, the past couple weeks as the day approached, I allowed myself to hope that I was wrong. I wasn't.

Watchmen Will Suck

Sorry.

There's no other way to put it.

Having just watched the new trailer.

It's clear I've been kidding myself.

The director of 300 has taken one of the best superhero sagas ever put into book form and ruined it.

The slow motion shots, the characters calling themselves "Watchmen", the heroes posing like refugees from one of the BAD batman movies...it's all wrong.

Watchmen if you don't know was a graphic novel, actually originally a comic series. It was deranged genius Alan Moore trying to ask the question what would the world really be like with superheroes? We saw how they were compromised by the government, how they sunk into themselves, wallowing in their glory and sadism.

It was a harsh, multi-layered look at another world.

In the trailer, the heroes strut like magazine stars. Their latex outfits glisten. Rorschach the comic's relentless and somewhat psychotic detective now sounds like Dirty Harry with extra hubris.

In the comic you had an idea of what the world with superheros would feel like. Smell like. And some of it was...shabby, awkward even embarrassing. Nothing on earth can make a guy wearing underwear on the outside and Owl Ears look right. Watchmen's writer and artist knew this. Their Night Owl had a middle-aged paunch. He didn't look comfortable putting the cowl on...that was the point.

Instead director Zack Snyder seems to be reveling in it all.

I have a baaaaaaaaaad feeling this is not the masterpiece Comic fans have been waiting for.