I Watches The Watchmen

So, as I previously mentioned I did some film shopping recently. Mostly I decided to buy some old stuff that I hadn't watched in years, but I did get a couple of more recent items whilst I was at it. Which I suppose is a rather roundabout way of saying I finally got around to buying Watchmen on DVD.

Normal people would of course watch a DVD with their friends and then discuss it with them afterwards. But Damaramu is not normal!!! So I'm going to write about here instead.

The first thing I'm going to do is moan about the various editions. I went for the 2 disc collectors edition. Sounds about right, right? Lots of extras, directors cut, that sort of thing, right?

WRONG.

See, it wasn't until things wrapped up at a mere 2 and a half hours or so that I suddenly realized "hey, that was the theatrical cut!". This soured what up to that point been a thoroughly enjoyable evenings entertainment. Silently berating myself for my foolishness I returned to amazon to check which edition I should have bought instead. And then I discovered that, being British, i apparently don't DESERVE to see the directors cut. There is no region 2 release of the directors cut. This naturally would be the cause of my initial confusion in buying the special edition and assuming it to be in some way special. So if I want to see the extended version not only do I have to buy the damn film again, but I have to import it?

Memo to whoever is in charge of this sort of thing: WHAT THE FUCK?

I've long held that the whole DVD regioning thing was simply a ploy to prevent anyone outside america getting any good extras, but this has got to be the most blatantly egregious example I've seen yet. And don't even get me started on the whole thing about having umpteen different bloody versions. To say I'm not impressed by any of this is a fair and accurate description. It's not that it's unreasonable, it's just dumb.

So, moving on, what do I actually get for my hard earned GP? Well, the extras are actually pretty good for as far as they go, but I honestly can't help but feel that an opportunity has been missed. What we get are essentially some admittedly interesting tidbits about various aspects of the production, but there is a real sense that they could have gone into a lot more depth. The documentary pieces on the original comic, science and vigilantism are all quite interesting, and I certainly don't feel any are a waste of space, but I really wanted something a little more meaty about the production of the film itself. Maybe I'm just a big nerd, but I feel theres' a lot of depth to the technical details of the production that would fill out a full length documentary with ample ease.

So whilst the extras offer a tasty but all to brief appetizer, what of the film itself? As I've already said this is only the theatrical cut, but that's not entirely bad. Indeed, had the theatrical cut been crap I'd hardly interested in getting the extended version, would I? There's no real way around it, the movie is actually pretty good. There's clearly a lot of love, effort and attention to detail in the production. I'm not sure I would have ever classed the original comic as unfilmable, but reading it it does seem like it might be rather difficult. That has been achieved in such a competent fashion is a high credit to the director and crew. With hindsight however it does seem fairly straightforward: you take the story, and you film it. Whilst obviously there's a lot more work that just that, that is essentially what they've done. Simply translated the story as faithfully as possible into the cinematic medium without compromising the essential details.

And no, I don't think the squid was an essential detail.

The thing about adapting a story from one medium to another is there WILL be changes by necessity. That's why we HAVE different mediums for telling stories. They do it in different ways, use different tools, and things that work in one may not necessarily translate into another. This is particularly true of comic book movies, as capes simply will never be as cool in real life as they are on the page. In Watchmen the only major change is the removal of the squid in favor of framing Doctor Manhattan. And this device works far better on screen than the squid ever could. narratively as well it allows for the removal of certain plot lines, characters and details that really wouldn't fit into the movie, both in terms of maintaining a narrative flow and time. Time being a rather important factor, as the 2 and half hours or so does only just fit the narrative as it is. I would suspect part of the problem in adapting it before now was perhaps an assumption that it would have to run for an hour and half at most. Good luck with that.

The other issue which the suits would have found so confusing of course would have been the fact that this was a comic for grown ups. Sadly the concept of the graphic medium as a forum for mature themes and ideas is still filtering through, but Watchmen is a big part of proving the case. And whilst I'm loath to use such overworked and vacuous cliches as describing the film as gritty I will say it's incredibly visceral. There's a real sense of impact and violence to the action, and they certainly don't skimp on the gorey details where appropriate. Despite the fantastic elements the whole thing is firmly grounded, as was the original source material. The more, shall we say, theatrical flourishes of the fights come of more as a stylistic choice than an imersion breaking example of powers the characters simply don't posses.

I think one of my favorite parts of the film is, oddly enough, the front titles. Simply because they manage to pack in so much story, background and detail into a handful of brief vignettes. It's at that point that you really start to believe that the film is in the right hands and actually going to work. Which is nice to have right at the beginning.

So in summation the film itself gets points for being firstly a good film and also it's unfaltering commitment to it's source material. The DVD presentation however loses points partly for the lack of production detail, but mostly for it's institutional racism.