![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Watching the Watchmen
Mar. 8th, 2009 06:40 pmTwo weeks from the official start of Spring and, for the second year in succession, I appear to have survived the Winter largely emotionally unscathed. This is more than can be said for my poor little laptop which, about half an hour after my last post, went up in an all but literal puff of smoke. A visit to the Apple people led me to the conclusion that I could get a new machine for not much more than the eye-watering cost they were quoting for the repair of the old one, and I'd been planning to upgrade the memory and operating system for a while (oh the justifications we use to trick ourselves that all those shiny new toys are necessary, logical purchases ... ) . So, the swipe of a credit card later and I'm back on-line. Last month was supposed to be both quiet and cheap. Well, one out of two ain't bad, I suppose.
It's just lucky I finally got round to backing up my data last month, after a year or so of putting it off. A close thing ...
Last night's entertainment was 'Watchmen', a group outing with my Monday night gaming group (at least two of whom were avoiding taking their significant others so as not to have to pay the price in a return visit of a "Sex and the City" style rom-com nature).
Alan Moore's work has largely passed me by. It's not that I've been unaware of him - that would be a major feat - but everything I've picked up of his has entirely failed to grab me. Watchmen - which any number of people have recommended to me over the years - was no exception to this rule, and the tail end of the interview with the man himself that I caught on Friday night really did nothing to endear him to me. The trailer did its job, however, and Mark Kermode's travesty of a review on the Culture Show (a sneering little piece - part Daily Mail, part Alan Moore fanboy) had me determined to like it just to spite him.
I didn't entirely get my wish.
Not far short of three hours long, it seemed shorter. It was slow certainly, but it looked amazing (that should go without saying, of course); the writing was, in places, lyrical and far more politically sophisticated than your average super hero film; and the characters were interesting - even occasionally appealing - despite being for the most part largely unlikeable (I found Rorschach especially, though clearly a sociopathic, murderous vigilante, extremely sympathetic). Of actual plot there wasn't a huge amount, but it was morally ambiguous enough to be satisfying and it kept me watching.
So, three hours of perfectly decent entertainment. However, I'm afraid it left me almost entirely unmoved. And that's the crux of the problem. It engaged my brain without once troubling my emotions. Or, to put it another way, I enjoyed it without liking it. I can't comment on whether it does the source material justice, although I'm told that it is at least reasonably true to it, but I can't help feeling that it is in the source material that, for me at least, the failings lie. I started the film having had no desire to read Watchmen, and I'm afraid that's how I finished it.
It's just lucky I finally got round to backing up my data last month, after a year or so of putting it off. A close thing ...
Last night's entertainment was 'Watchmen', a group outing with my Monday night gaming group (at least two of whom were avoiding taking their significant others so as not to have to pay the price in a return visit of a "Sex and the City" style rom-com nature).
Alan Moore's work has largely passed me by. It's not that I've been unaware of him - that would be a major feat - but everything I've picked up of his has entirely failed to grab me. Watchmen - which any number of people have recommended to me over the years - was no exception to this rule, and the tail end of the interview with the man himself that I caught on Friday night really did nothing to endear him to me. The trailer did its job, however, and Mark Kermode's travesty of a review on the Culture Show (a sneering little piece - part Daily Mail, part Alan Moore fanboy) had me determined to like it just to spite him.
I didn't entirely get my wish.
Not far short of three hours long, it seemed shorter. It was slow certainly, but it looked amazing (that should go without saying, of course); the writing was, in places, lyrical and far more politically sophisticated than your average super hero film; and the characters were interesting - even occasionally appealing - despite being for the most part largely unlikeable (I found Rorschach especially, though clearly a sociopathic, murderous vigilante, extremely sympathetic). Of actual plot there wasn't a huge amount, but it was morally ambiguous enough to be satisfying and it kept me watching.
So, three hours of perfectly decent entertainment. However, I'm afraid it left me almost entirely unmoved. And that's the crux of the problem. It engaged my brain without once troubling my emotions. Or, to put it another way, I enjoyed it without liking it. I can't comment on whether it does the source material justice, although I'm told that it is at least reasonably true to it, but I can't help feeling that it is in the source material that, for me at least, the failings lie. I started the film having had no desire to read Watchmen, and I'm afraid that's how I finished it.
