Tess Watches the Watchmen

Watchmen is a big fucking deal. Both the book and the movie make me cream my britches (the movie slightly more so, probably because everyone's hotter). The highly graphic novel is a masterpiece; the actual story is extraordinary, but Watchmen is less about the story than how it's told. The artistry makes the most of every technique that is unique to the comic-book medium. It busts out of all the trappings of inferior comic books, such as old plot lines, trite dialogue, shallow characters, unrealistic settings, and boring graphics. There's nothing like it. Fittingly, it operates much like a clock, all the carefully constructed little pieces working together to keep the story ticking along. I don't think I can properly convey how completely awesome this is without sounding stale or drooling on my keyboard, so I'm done. Here's the thing: Watchmen is the perfect graphic novel (big whoop, wan-na fight-a bout it?), which is the biggest problem about making a movie of it. What makes it brilliant is the way the story is told, so what happens when it needs to be told in a totally different way? How is the perfect movie made into a short story, or the perfect poem made into a symphony? Shit is complicated, son.

Trades have to be made when movies are made of books. Description is exchanged for direction, usually some content has to be cut, and sometimes the movie thwarts the author's intention for the book in order to sell better. It gets right down to interpretation, and we readers have to cross our fingers that the movie is either interpreted simply to adequately put the book on screen (e.g. Harry Potter) or that the interpretation is appropriate (e.g. Fight Club). The makers of the Watchmen movie were really caught in a celluloid jam, because it's impossible to transfer the comic straight to the screen, but the movie is primarily a vehicle for the comic. Well, shit. They had the same story to work with, and they could take some visual cues from the book, but beyond that, they had squat.

Paging Zack Snyder. This guy really cinched the movie for me; he treated the story with the same type of innovation, grace and attention to detail that made the comic so hot. Watchmen is so goddamn intimidating that an attempt to get it on screen could easily have been blasphemous and sloppy (fundamentalist fanboys would probably say that the effort is definitionally blasphemous), but the movie was made with genuine doting care. Therefore, I approve. No way is the movie good like the book is good, but it couldn't have been. (The novel was punk, the movie wasn't.) Yeah, yeah, they cut stuff, they changed stuff, but with minimal offense except to purists. It's just about as good as Watchmen on screen could be.

There's a scene where the character that's been acting towards what he thinks is right in the big picture is left alone and hated by two characters that have been acting towards what they think is right in the small scheme, who are united by love and a common cause. (That sounds chunky, but I ain't spoilin'.) Watchmen is great because, like this scene, it proves that the small scheme is just as important as the big picture: the story operates on a stunning scale, but as it unfolds, each little piece of the puzzle is outstanding. It addresses the whole of humanity - life itself, even - but is equally attentive to the tiny complexities of human relationships. I'm gonna pee my pants just writing about this. Watchmen is boss.