The Watchmen: They are who I thought they were.

Well, I saw the Watchmen yesterday morning at 10:15 AM at the AMC 16 theater in Woodland Hills. What is my first impression? Do you remember the big fit Dennis Green threw after his Phoenix Cardinals lost a 24-7 lead to the (then) undefeated Chicago Bears a couple of years back? He screamed: "They are who we thought they were!" He knew the Bears were not a Juggernaut. He knew they had weaknesses. He knew he could expose them. He did precisely that. Unfortunately, his team let them off the hook. I am not going to let these fuckers off the hook.

This movie is tanking at the Box Office

First of all, let's recognize one thing: This movie is not doing well at the box office. I have a substantial facts to back this claim up.

1. On Friday night, around 11:00pm, I went to the Magic Johnson 24 Hour Fitness in Sherman Oaks. The Archlight, one of our finest theaters in Los Angeles, is right there beside and on-top of the gym. I heard not a single peep from the upstairs balcony. That is a far cry from the din of conversation I heard for "Sex and the City" and several other big money makers. I decided to check it out. There was no one up there waiting on line for the movie. Nobody lined up for the midnight showing. There were probably some people waiting inside, but this was not a visible crowd.
2. On Saturday morning, our theater was perhaps 30% to 35% full. I didn't make too much of this at the time, as Woodland Hills is not a great place for morning showings. People party pretty hard around here on Friday nights. They don't often get up early for a 10:15 showing of a movie.
3. At around 9:00pm, my Dad called me. He saw the 6:30pm showing of Watchmen in Fresno California at the Edwards 21. This is the finest theater in Fresno, and one of the best in the world. It is an IMax. He said his theater was perhaps 20% full. Make no mistake: This is not because Fresno is bad movie town. Fresno hog-wild for movies. Just about all types of movies routinely outperform national averages in Fresno.
4. Around midnight, I called my buddy Colin. He is becoming senior leadership in one of the large theater chains down here in SoCal. I asked him how the box office for Watchmen was doing? He replied "What's that? Do I hear the sound of toilets flushing? They told us all along that this movie was tracking well and we could expect big crowds. I came out here to $&^%%&* to monitor, and we've sold only 700 tickets for the movie all day long. Worse, we opened it on three screens capable of seating 400 people per showing. The people aren't buying tickets for this turkey."
5. Let's see 3 x 400 x 5 = 6,000. 700/6000 = 11.667% full. Oh shit...! That sucks...
   

We don't yet have official boxoffice results from IMDB.com or RottentTomatoes.com. These will be made public in about 10 hours. I still think Watchmen will be #1, but the money figure will not be anything like the original $70 million I was expecting. This movie will under perform expectations by substantial measures.

The Cult of Alan Moore

There is a cult of Alan Moore out there which hyper-hypes everything he does. He is not what they say he is. He is nothing like what they say he is. He is not a visionary artist. He is not a genius. He is not a great story teller. He is not an insightful psychologist. He is not a great thinker on the subject of power. All of this talk is rubbish, poppycock and blarney. He is a hippy drug user who has experienced a great deal of brain damage due to LSD use. That is all. Only this and nothing more. His work is bizarre for this reason.

I am well aware of the fact that Time Magazine picked Watchmen as one of their Top 50 or Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. This choice is absolute bullshit, and reflects very poorly on Time Magazine, even to the point of discrediting the entire list. The critical staff discredited themselves by making this choice.

God only knows why Cults get started. I have no idea why weak minded fools follow people like Madonna or Brittaney Spears. Likewise, I have no idea why perfect idiots would lineup behind a guy like Alan Moore. Like Madonna and Spears, he has no merit, and yet he is a pop phenomenon. The bastard isn't even good looking... but then again Madonna wasn't either.

Not Snyder's Fault

The Cult of Alan Moore will certainly try to blame this financial failure upon Zach Snyder. Some will say that this is a D- class implementation of A+ material. Let me make it perfectly clear: That argument is absolute and complete bullshit. I am talking about 100% pure bullshit. Snyder did everything possible to make a great movie. This is an A- implementation of C- or D+ material. Snyder is just working with bad, inferior material here, and that is all. While this movie is not a perfect implementation of the material, even if you came up with a perfect implementation, it would still be the same overblown LSD brain-damaged rubbish Alan Moore wrote in the first place. A perfect implementation of Watchmen would still be a poor movie.

Why would I say such a thing? Well, let me just tell you...

Spoiler Alert

There are some noteworthy issues in this implementation, almost all of which trace back to the graphic novel, but I will lay a few of them out for you. I have already declared that I felt the character design, names, and powers were utterly weak and stupid, so I will not repeat that line. Instead I will focus on the main elements of the story.

1. As many have observed, this is a piece of Cold War nuclear hysteria. The notion of immanent atomic war with the Soviets now seems totally laughable, and the subject of ridicule today.
2. The notion that Nixon took over as dictator of the country also seems preposterous
3. The notion that the CIA used the Comedian to hit JFK from the Grassy Nole in Dealey Plaza is so funny it brought a big laugh in my theater.
4. What gives with all the strange ass usage of classic rock tunes? I know there were lyrical references in the book. I remember this well, but Synder decides to turn these into Donnie Darrko style mini-music videos. The effect is bizarre.
   
5. What gives with Dr. Manhattan's cock and balls hanging out all over the joint? Of course, Moore let it all hang loose in the comic book also. Synder could have made a correction here, but he allowed the LSD brain damage to flow through to the final cut of the movie.
   
6. Snyder decides to shoot "a really hot" sex scene between Silk Spectre and Night Owl aboard his nice revolutionary aircraft. I do believe Snyder thought he was pushing the envelope, inserting a red-hot smoker in a super hero movie for the first time. I regret to tell him that the audience was laughing in my showing. My brother and I nearly fell out of our seats laughing at this scene. I got an abdominal cramp I laughed so hard. Make no mistake: This was bad laughter. I am sure Synder did not intend this scene as comedy. Perhaps 14 or 15 year old boys will think it is hot, but frankly, they may not dig it either. They have the internet these days, and there is much hotter material out there.
   
7. And then we come to the ending, a concept so bad that I must deal with it in its own section.

The End

Shakespeare says alls well that ends well. Does this mean alls bad that ends bad? If so Watchmen is pretty fucking bad. So what is driving this endless epic tragedy? Well Veidt has decided to unite the world (thus saving us from atomic war) by giving everybody a common enemy to fight.

In the comic, Veidt cooks up a giant octo-squid monster straight out of Godzilla. This thing attacks New York, and destroys the place. This is supposed to signifythat an alien power is prepared to invade the Earth. The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. unite against this Godzilla-ish foe, and we live in perfect human unity & harmony thereafter.

In movie, Synder decided to change this ending. Smart idea. Moore's end was as excruciatingly stupid an idea as I have ever read anywhere at any time. Corn-cheese-whack in the extreme. So what does Snyder give us? Veidt has cloned Dr. Manhattan's power signatures. He destroys 15 major cities around the world, and makes it look like Dr. Manhattan did it. The world unites against Dr. Manhattan. We all live in perfect human unity & harmony thereafter.

So how does Dr. Manhattan feel about all this. Well... he didn't know about the plan ahead of time, but after the fact he thinks it will work. He doesn't approve or condemn, but he goes along with it. He even kills Rorschach to prevent him from telling the world. I would call that an endorsement of Veidt's plan. He decides to go off to some other galaxies and make some life there. Good idea... LSD burnout.

So what do I think?

So what do I think about it personally? The movie is not as bad as I had thought it would be. Because of Snyder's extreme efforts, it is more watchable than I thought. However, this is still a stupid story full of stupid characters and it has a very stupid ending.

The effect is a bizarre trip through 2:31 minutes (if you don't stay for the credits) which results in a big WTF? The audiance I saw the movie with felt the same way I did. Nobody was enthusiastically praising this film on the way out. Most people were shaking there heads saying "What the fuck was that?"

We should note in passing that Terry Gilliam, of Monty Python fame, was originally contracted to direct this movie years ago. He backed out of the deal, declaring that this graphic novel was unfathomable, unfilmable and a non-movie candidate. I think he was extremely wise. That is why I am a fan of Gilliam.