Monday, 6 July 2009
Sunday 5th July 2009 - more thumbnails and Watchmeh review
Just watched Watchmen, and my main complaint is... not bad. Misses the point on so many levels in slavishly recreating the tropes and idioms that the original comic book deconstructed, not least by introducing newer superheroic tropes created by modern cinematic interpretations of the genre, such as the body-armor costume and 'normal humans as superhumans by way of slo-mo and wirework' fight scenes, one of which - the prison dust-up - was clearly meant to be whitey one-upping Old Boy's memorable "1 man, 1 hammer, fifty thugs" hallway fight, but Snyder is just so addicted to multi-angle slo-mo and technology doing all the work for him that the scene merely serves to make the original look better in all it's lo-fi glory. You could argue it's a microcosm for the Watchmen movie's problems as regards being an adaptation of an original work, I suppose.
It's pretty soul-less and shallow, and that's the problem - it's neither good nor bad enough to be entertaining, and any fun to be had comes from having the recognition-buttons pushed rather than any new insight or a better interpretation of the material or themes - the ending especially is too much the makers trying to have their cake and eat it, because this is inherently silly stuff that's only ever as serious as it's treated by those making it - a giant blue man with no pants who's going to kill us all is just as silly as a space-squid from Dimension X.
A solid 'meh'.
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