Glowy Blue Penises & Watchmen Ruminations

This gave me quite a giggle this morning. Some conservative critics are highly offended by the rather unobtrusive appearance of Dr. Manhattan’s penis. One even went so far to say that his “swinging computer-generated penis [is] frequently in your face on-screen.” Perhaps her idea of a penis in one’s face is a bit different from mine, but I thought that his nudity was tastefully handled in that it’s not commented on at all. He’s naked. So the hell what? As I mentioned in my last post, America isn’t exactly progressive in terms of full male nudity, so it was nice to see a movie that includes it so nonchalantly.

I mean, really. It’s a peen. A little less than half of the world’s population has one. So what if his is blue, glowing, and computer generated?

Speaking of Watchmen, to segue away from the penis, I saw it again last night and was just as impressed the second time around as I was the first. The strange thing is that I’m having trouble writing a coherent review. I liked many things about the movie, but when I try to put it down on paper, it turns into a jumble of random comments. So… instead of trying to hammer it into something coherent, I’ll just leave it jumbled. Otherwise, I’ll never post it, heh.

First, I’m glad I didn’t read the entire graphic novel before seeing the movie. I have a bad habit of putting too much emphasis on the original material when I see film adaptations (see my reaction to the first four Harry Potter movies), and for the most part, adaptations should be judged in their own right. For me, the important things should be whether the adaptation maintains the spirit of the original, and even if it doesn’t, is it a good story? For example, Matthew Vaughn’s adaptation of Gaiman’s Stardust deviates from the book’s storyline, but it captures the spirit AND is a damn good story. The Princess Bride, on the other hand, is incredibly different from the original novel both in story and in feel, but it’s fantastic. And then you have X-Men: The Last Stand which sort of maintained the feel of the comics, but absolutely sucked.

As I’ve only read bits and pieces of Alan Moore’s comic, I can’t say if the Watchmen film follows the storyline or maintains the spirit (though I have heard from friends who are big fans of the comic that it does both), but I think it’s a damn good story.

One thing that impressed me was the use of Rorschach as a thoroughly unreliable narrative voice. He’s not unreliable in the reporting of events, but instead we’re given a very twisted worldview and, as the audience, are expected to figure out that we shouldn’t trust the way Rorschach looks at the world. He’s had an extremely fucked up life, and it’s deeply affected the way we look at humanity. He doesn’t feel the need to improve the world with his masked crime-fighting, as does Nite Owl II; instead, he needs to punish people who are in all likelihood just as fucked up as him. The audience shouldn’t trust his sense of morality, and we’re not given a really strong alternative to that narration, either. We have Nite Owl II’s idea that the masked heroes are supposed to make the world a better place, but that ideology is crushed under the weight of humanity’s desire to destroy itself. It’s a bold move for a movie made for an audience who is accustomed to good guys being good and bad guys being bad.

I also appreciate the nihilism inherent in the film. I can’t go into it without spoiling the hell out of you all (and I do not want to do that), but I’ll just say that such nihilism isn’t exactly common in superheroes (which was why Alan Moore wrote the Watchmen comic this way), and I really appreciate it.

I thought the casting was great, for the most part, the only exception being the actress playing Laurie/Silk Spectre II. She came off as airheaded for the most part and often sounded like she was reading her lines off of a cue card instead of actually inhabiting the character. But other than that, fantastic.

I’m sure I’ll think of more things to say about the movie (and the comic, when Amazon delivers it), but right now… I really should be catching up on work. [sigh] Anyone want to pay me to geek out full time?