movie – Page 2 – Only Mostly Dead

I used to read comics when I was a kid. First stuff like the Beano and Dandy and later 2000AD. Being into all things SciFi I thought the later was really cool, but at some point, for some reason, like watching Dr Who, I grew out of it.

Then when I was 21 someone I was working with told me about something called “a graphic novel” which was, so I heard, a kind of grown-up version of a comic book. The particular book under discussion was Dark Knight Returns about the return to cape-dom of a middle-aged Batman. I borrowed it from my enthusiast friend and did enjoy it but I remember thinking that whilst it wasn’t for kids it was still more adolescent than adult, like action movies and heavy metal. (I suspect if I re-read it now I’d be kinder to it. At 21 I was still too young to enjoy things that others might have thought of as childish.)

I don’t think I picked up another graphic novel until after I’d become a Buffy fan. It was from other fans recommendations that I bought Watchmen. Of course when I saw that it had big stretches of actual text in it I gave up on it.

What can I say? I’m lazy.

But then a few days ago I noticed that there was a trailer online for an upcoming Watchmen movie. I didn’t watch it, instead I pulled out my copy of the book and started to read. I couldn’t put it down and I finished it a couple of days later. And this is my review. I make no attempt to summarize the plot, nor to avoid spoilers. If you’ve not done so already, I strongly encourage you to read it.

So ok, I get it now. Because I read the Dark Knight, I’ve read various Buffy-related comics (mostly the origin one and season 8), and even the two League of Extraordinary Gentlemen ones and whilst they are all to varying degrees enjoyable, I never really got the whole “comic books as an artform” thing. Until now.

Watchmen really is on a different level from those other books. I think it’s because of the depth of it, the layers of story and the sheer density of concept. That and extraordinary visuals. Take for example the iconic cover-art image and see how that’s used and developed on the very first page. This kind of thing — starting on a small detail and pulling back and back until a fuller picture (literally and thematically) is revealed — is done throughout the book. It’s no wonder people want to make this into a movie. It’s like a pre-drawn storyboard for itself.

But it’s so much more than that. It has great, intriguing characters. I guess most people like Rorshach – who’s morally ambiguous, possibly mentally unstable but badass in a way that fiction can’t quite resist. Personally I was quite drawn to Nite Owl. I liked that he was shy, fumbling, quiet man when out of costume and yet is so confident and competent with it. I love when he serves coffee and plays music for the victims of a building fire he rescues. Dr Manhattan, who is key to the entire plot, is fascinating too. He is to all intents and purposes an alien, even though his origins are human, and successfully communicating an alien point of view is something that’s done all too rarely, but it’s done beautifully here with the scenes on Mars in particular.

I think the thing I like most about Watchmen is the layering of different story elements in a way that complements or contrasts, but always adds to the overall thematic message. Take for example the sections with the excerpts from the fictional comic (“Tales from the Black Freighter“). I can think of a couple of moments where you go from an entirely different scene and we get the last line of dialogue from that scene, over a panel showing the kid reading the comic, the newsvendor talking about the events in the wider world, some background activity, perhaps the ongoing drama of the lesbian taxi-driver’s breakup, leading into a panel showing horrific scenes from “Tales” where a sailor is trying to reach his home on a raft made from the dead bodies of his comrades. When I first read this I stopped and not only thought how well done it was but wondered whether I’ve ever seen a movie or TV program intermingle so many different elements so successfully in such a short space of time. Then I wondered if it’s even possible and that’s why we need this artform.

Who knows? It’s very possible I just haven’t seen the right movies!

It’s noteworthy that this was written/drawn in the mid 1980s and whilst it didn’t feel dated it was “of its time” in the sense that one of the major themes is the ever present threat of nuclear war. I don’t have a problem with that, because I lived through that age and remember well that sense of impending doom bubbling beneath the surface. It was there in popular culture if nothing else. A younger reader might perhaps, not get those references immediately.

If it has a weakness I think it’s the ending. I’m not quite sure that I buy into the idea that a fake alien accidental one-off invasion would unite the world. At least I’m not sure for how long it would. There was also some stuff with an attempted rape that I was a little uncomfortable with at best. But that wasn’t a huge part of the story.

So overall it definitely deserves its high praise. 9/10

P.S. I have now watch the trailer and they seemed to have included all the main elelments that I’d expect. They’ve made the characters younger by at least a decade but that’s Hollywood I guess. Supposedly this is one of those unfilmable books but I’m not sure about that. I guess people have said that because a) it’s long, b) it’s got complicated effects scenes in it and c) it’s perhaps too adult to get a rating that will sell enough tickets. Well a) anything can be condensed – work out what the heart of the story is and make sure you tell that, b) CGI has come along way since 1986 and c) as has what you can get away with in a 15 (Dark Knight is a 12a!) plus some of the violence can be toned down without losing the tone.

It’s all a question of how good the movie makers are. We’ll see I guess.

So this was where it all started.

In 1992 the original movie of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was released. It was written by Joss Whedon, a TV writer who’d worked on Roseanne and would later go on to work on Toy Story.

It wasn’t very good.

But before we get to that, I’ve actually been here before. In 2001, at the height of my fandom, I bought the movie when it was released on DVD. I then wrote this review. It’s interesting how positive I was. To explain/excuse that I should say that it was written for/to the fan community, the received wisdom of whom was that the movie was rubbish and should not be considered as connected to the TV show, which we all loved of course.

Although some of my thoughts on the movie have changed, I don’t intend to write a full re-review as it were. In this blog, I’m largely interested in how things fit in with my own history as a fan.

I can remember hearing about the movie around the time it was released on what was probably Film ’93. Barry Norman thought it was an interesting concept but poorly executed I think. On the strength of that, as was my usual custom at the time, I didn’t make any effort to go see it. When I finally did see it, I was already a fan and happy to find good in it. Now having watched it again with a little of that distance I spoke of yesterday, what do I think?

The thing I think is best about it is still Kristy Swanson. If there’s a moment I liked or a joke I laughed at, she was usually responsible for it. Actually there were other funny moments from Stephen Root as the Principal, but that comedy seemed a little divorced from the film itself.

Two things really stand out on watching it again. One is how static it is, especially in the action scenes. It’s more than needing to “do flippy things and kick each other a bit.” it’s the fact that the reality of any stake (pun unavoidable) or any threat is undermined. Not seeming to either run toward or away from the fight, or expend much effort in it, leaves a feeling that that character doesn’t care much about the outcome. And if they don’t why should I?

The second is the blase way in which everyone reacts to the discovery that vampires are real. Apart from Hilary Swank, whose screaming whilst scenery chewing was way over the top, everyone seems to treat the discovery as mildly annoying or irritating. Even where they say things as if they’re scared for their lives, the acting and delivery of the lines betrays that. Again they don’t really care, so I don’t. I think this comes from a misunderstanding of how to do comedy (he says as if he’s an expert!) – no matter how broad the joke, the actor should play the character’s reactions as real, because to them, within that fictional world it’s real – even if it’s ridiculous and funny to us. As the TV show later proved, you can have great emotional reality and humour side by side.

Anyway, the big question – for me at least – is if, in 1992/3, I’d seen this movie, would I have seen enough in it to want to check out the TV show 5 years later? I think the honest answer is no. I might still have watched but it would have been despite not because. I don’t think I would have thought “here’s a good concept done poorly” I think I would have just dismissed it as a bad movie. Not a bad movie with good parts, just bad.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the movie: 3/10.