Dreary, not super, heroes

I watched Watchmen last week hoping for an engagement with the ideas of a graphic novel that gave art status to the comic strip, but the biggest thing the film gave me was a splitting headache. In addition it was very unimpressive as an action flick. Several people walked out of the cinema, not ostensibly because of the obscene violence but because it was so boring, like a monotone professor going through the motions at a tedious lecture. Most of the critics had been less than impressed though I have always had guarded caution about their sometimes sniffy opinions, but on this they were correct. It's two and half hours that you'll never get back (though, in some way, be relieved too because it felt like four). And so another Alan Moore classic laid waste to. If you feel you need to atone for your sins and you have a masochistic streak, you can't get self-flagellation much better than this.
Ever since the Lord of the Rings cycle proved that three hour long films could be commercial, superheroic cinematic outings tend to be narratively flatulent, leaving you gasping for air, not for more. Peter Jackson has a lot to answer for (not learning his lesson with King Kong). So Spiderman 3 dragged on by incorporating too many villains, the Dark Knight disturbed the body clock by being at least half an hour longer than necessary and Watchmen could have been wrapped in two hours, easily. For once the suits in Hollywood were spot-on, trying to pare down the running time. they also questioned the level of sex and violence. They were right.
The director, Zack Snyder, doesn't seem to be at home unless dozens, if not hundreds, of bodies are sliced, diced and hideously broken. I can imagine him being an enthusiastic autopsy student. He's got some issues. Altaa, who was with me, said the picture was the product of a sick mind. It was hard to disagree. Even splatter junkies like Alex Cox and John Carpenter would be trying hard to not muster a yawn, such was the repitive carnage on all parts of human anatomy.
In an interview, Snyder had talked about theme that would be raised - even if the concept of self-doubting superheroes, novel in 1986, is rather old hat in 2009 - but being academically successful does not guarantee an ability to be engagingly creative. Indeed, the decision to set the scene in the 1980s (broadly), as the book does, looks less bold and more slavishly unoriginal in its devotion, given the paucity of any reason to do so (certainly not to help most of the pubescent pimples that will flock to it). As for the myriad assaults on anything that walks, Snyder, feeling pressed for time, must have plumped for gore over ideas, sensing that horrific displays of pain would distil the essence of the graphic novel.
True, towards the end, the whole concept of a superhero is examined from an indirect angle and in the grandiose setting of an Egyptian temple in Antartica, the movie starts to become enjoyable ( abrief interlude). The question being asked is: if a superhero is to save the world, why do they so often end up preserving the status quo? The villain's utilitarian solution, however, isn't questioned nearly enough - kill millions to save billions? Hmm. The First World War was the War to end all Wars, but merely proved an entrée to the Second World War. And WWII gave birth to the cold War, which in turn almost prompted WWIII. Moreover, in the plot, the Soviets are threatening to invade Afghanistan (the real-time event in 1979 did not occur) with, of course, no explanation as why this was thought in public by western policy makers to be so serious. With what we know now, the USA actively provoked the invasion by communist Russia (though kept it quiet, preferring to cite the danger to Pakistan and thence to oil shipping routes in the Persian Gulf), but by following unquestioningly the line of a 1980s book that such activity places world security in peril (instead of creating a Vietnam for the USSR), the director is proved to be a dullard at history.
I have seen Snyder's 300 and heard unfavourable things about his remake of Dawn of the Dead, which didn't exactly fill me with confidence for his handling of this film. He may insist that there was more blood in 300, but even if we don't dispute that contention, the action there was done in a cartoonish fashion, fairly distant from what we know. The pain inflicted in Watchmen (not just for the hapless character, but in the mind of the viewer too) is bone-crunchingly realistic. In one scene, a hero and a heroine literally dismantle a gang of hoodlums, gratuitously, because they can. Wow! Thought-provoking! Repeated shock just desensitises, but it will probably titillate enough gorehound adults (primarily men) to become a runaway success like 300.
Other items that served to irritate was Snyder's scattergun approach to playing slivers of the acnon of legendary 'popular' music. I liked all the songs, but it doesn't mean they are appropriate to what was enacted and in some cases they were sullied. Just because something has a great chord or two doesn't automatically justify it over original music. Not everyone has the touch of Martin Scorsese. Further on this list were the holes in the plot, an example of which was that the so-called smartest man in the world has a ridiculously obvious password encrption code. Lastly, I recognised who the villian would turn out to be in the first reel as it were because his silhouette was similar to a character in one of the group pictures that have received so much advertsing.
Not everything was bad. I liked Verne Troyer's cameo (Danny DeVito-style roles await) and the persona of Rorscach was enjoyably misnathropic (though when his mask was revealed he looked the actor's 47 years, rather than the charcter's 35). The Dr strangelove war room was a lovely homage too, no matter how familiar it is in fiction these days. So Watchmen gets a kind 2/5. The most intelligent film I've seen about superheores was The Incredibles and that managed to be family fare without any hurdles. Says it all really.