Tick Tock Tick Tock

Just a quick update to let you all know I'm still think 'bout'cha. Got a couple of pages of sketches I'm working on tidying up for post and hope to have those up by the end of the week.

Saw Watchmen this weekend and I have to give the powers behind it some credit--it wasn't as bad as it could have been. In fact, it really wasn't a bad translation of the book, taken point for point. Casting was pretty good, effects and set design were excellent and the story was faithful, almost to a fault.

So what, then, is it that's got my boxers in a bunch? There have been a couple of things that stuck in my craw--Malin Ackerman as the Silk Spectre II--good job physically casting her, but kind of flat and nowhere near the intensity that Laurie had in the book. A little more gratuitous sex?--sure but didn't really add anything to the movie except it was obviously thrown in for the "I still live in my mom's basement and haven't had a date since the first Bush administration" crowd; somewhat annoying, but expected, sadly. The over-the-top bloodshed?--again, not wholly unexpected, though not entirely horrible, in and of itself.

No, I think what really bothered me about this movie was more subtle. The book was dark. Grim. There's no arguing that. But the book focused more on the senseless violence of society against the individual as opposed to the film's focus on person to person violence. And I think that's where it started to unravel for me.

The next thread that let go was in the fact that in the book, the characters were complicated and developed and entirely human. There was a lot going on from frame to frame and the story was told in such a way that the reader is never allowed to get fully comfortable with any given character. No one in the book is innocent, no one is "the bad guy" or "the good guy". The labels that litter the conventional superhero comic book are turned on end and parodied by Watchmen and used to mirror the horror and beauty of modern life.

And that was my big gripe with the movie. It wasn't so bad, and really as far as translations between media go, it was pretty good. But only as a stand-alone thing. In comparison to the source material, the movie is really nothing more than a thin shadow that, at its best, will serve to pique the audience's interest in reading the book.

And that's all I've got for now...