I Will Watch a Watchmen

So, the new Watchmen trailer is out. I’ll see it, but it will not be as good as the comic book. Why? Because in order for it to be as good a movie as the comic book was a comic book, Watchmen the movie would have to be on a par with “Citizen Kane” or “Godfather” or “Casablanca” or whatever your candidate for greatest movie ever. (I do not mention “Gone with the Wind” because I hate “Gone with the Wind” and have never watched it all the way through.) Watchmen is, by consensus, the greatest comic book ever.

Back in the 1980’s, when Watchmen came out, there were several contenders. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Maus came out at about the same time. Sandman and Animal Man came out a bit later. Twenty years later, however, it seems safe to say that Watchmen has claimed the title. It is the Babe Ruth comics. If someone picks another comic book as “The Greatest of All-Time” they have an ax to grind. I mean Peanuts and Doonesbury? Strips. And like that. Watchmen is the standard.

Given that status, well, chances are long that the Watchmen flick will be as good as the greatest movies. It is not simply an issue of adapting material to the big screen. “It Happened One Night,” “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” and “Silence of the Lambs” are the only movies to win all five major Oscars, and were all adapted material. “The Lord of the Rings” movies and “The Godfather” movies are likewise based on pre-existing material, so that does not handicap a movie. Actually, I think Spiderman 2 was a truly brilliant movie.

I just do not get that sense from the Watchmen movie that it is aimed that way. So what could the movie do? Well, to be honest, part of the reason the comic was considered so great was its cinematic sensibility. That attitude will not help a movie since movies are already cinematic all on their own. The grittiness of the Watchmen was an interesting contrast to the brightness of DC Universe comics back in the day. Now we have had quite a few gritty superhero movies, but the successful Marvel movies of the last few years, like Spidey and the Hulk and Iron Man have actually been pretty bright. So the atmosphere in the Watchmen movie could give it a touch of the different. The trailer seems almost cartoony to me, but I have not seen it on a big screen. In fact, some actual cartoon sequences might help. The Watchmen comic was also interesting because it had long text pieces for information dumps. You cannot really do that in a movie, but you can change the type of movie to play with the medium. (“Blade Runner” had computer screen info dumps, but I can’t see that working.)

Back in the 1980’s I always assumed that when they made a movie, they’d have to simply cut out the Pirate scenes. The pirate comic book, Tales of the Black Freighter, I think it was called, provided an interesting commentary on the action in the story proper. And since we were reading a comic book ourselves, it added another level of appreciation to the everyday experience of people like us – i.e. comics readers – within the course of the story. We could identify with these characters because they read comics, and if we were in their world, these are the comics we would read. That would never, I thought, work in a movie. But it turns out you can still make some terrific and successful pirate movies. In fact, if the makers had any sense of humor, they would have hired Johnny Depp or Orlando Bloom or Geoffrey Rush to play the Black Freighter guy, but as far as I can tell he’s not even in the film. I realize adding in The Tales of the Black Freighter would make the movie longer, but “The Godfather” clocks in at three hours, and if you are one the many who disagrees with my position on “Gone with the Wind,” that movie clicks in at almost four. “The Godfather II” actually does tell a parallel story with Robert deNiro playing the young Don Vito Corleone, and that film clocks in at 200 minutes. If you are trying to make a great movie, length is no vice.

Length aside, the problem is taking a truly great source material and making a truly great movie. It’s hard enough to make a great movie, and meeting the expectations of great source material is even harder. “Silence of the lambs” and “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” actually exceeded their sources which were good but not truly great. “Gone with the Wind” paeon to slave culture, well, I’ll let someone else judge. “Lord of the Rings” worked. “The Fugitive” surpassed the tv show. “The Great Escape” surpassed the book. Just about every Disney cartoon surpassed the fairy tales.

However, how do you set out to make a movie of the greatest comic book ever and meet that challenge on its own terms as a movie? I think the answer is the answer Nabokov’s novel Lolita. How did they make a movie of “Lolita?” They didn’t. Lolita simply does not lend itself to filmmaking. I get the sense that Watchmen will be an exciting action flick, but that which makes it the greatest comic book of all time will have to remain married to the comics medium. It is the greatest comic of all time the same way the Michael Jordan is the great basketball player of all time, and could make it to the majors in baseball. It’ a comic book story, and a comic book story it shall remain. So when I watch the Watchmen I’ll be expecting to see the comic book on the big screen, but I won’t be expecting a mind-blowing cinematic experience. Which, I might add, was my expectation of “The Lord of the Ring,” and what I got was a great movie.