Watchmen & Movie Expectations

I saw Watchmen last night (Thursday night 12:01am showing), and I loved it. The person I saw it with, however, did not. This in itself doesn’t bother me – I’m OK with people having different opinions than me (well, usually). But after talking to her, it became clear that her expectations for the movie were the reason for a large part of her disappointment.

Personally, I’ve been stung by this before. I usually try my best to go into movies with little or no expectations, so even if the movie is just average it’s still a pleasant suprise and experience. Sometimes, however, this is next to impossible, given the familiarity I have with the subject or the hype surrounding the movie (or in the case of Watchmen, both). Star Wars Episode I is a perfect example of this. After repeated viewings more recently I have come to appreciate the movie more for what it is, but at the time I was so disgusted by how much it didn’t live up to the original trilogy that I left the theater in a pretty bad mood.

I admit that I haven’t read the Watchmen graphic novel. It seems like something I should have done before seeing the movie, but in scenarios such as this I can’t escape the feeling that doing so could negatively affect my enjoyment of the movie (if they cut out some really cool scenes from the movie that were in the book, for example). However, that didn’t stop me from researching the graphic novel. I read the Wikipedia entry and some of the associated links, I watched interviews with Zack Snyder and others about the source material, and I read comments and literary reviews of the novel itself. I would say by the end I understood the cultural significance of the text, and while I didn’t know every detail of the storyline, I had a pretty good idea what to expect. These accurate and semi-accurate expectations probably helped me enjoy the movie much more than I otherwise would have.

As I mentioned before, it came to light after the movie that her expectations were quite a bit different. It’s too late for me to affect her initial impression of the movie (I can only hope she comes to enjoy more like I have with repeated viewings, if she’s willing to do so), but I can offer an “expectation adjustment” to those of you who haven’t seen it yet and aren’t familiar with the graphic novel.

So, I thought I’d run through a quick list of what Watchmen is and is not:

• Watchmen is not a “superhero triumphing over evil” movie. Yes, the movie is about heroes, but this is not another story about an iconic comic book hero facing off against an arch-nemesis and saving the city. So don’t go into the movie expecting it to be anything like Spider-man, X-men, Iron Man, or even the Dark Knight, for that matter.
• And, on a related note, Watchmen is not an action movie. It does have a few fight scenes, but they are few and far between. How can a comic book movie about heroes have so little action, you ask? Well, that’s exactly what makes Watchmen so unique; you’ll have to watch it to see why.
• So if it’s not about fighting evil-doers and it’s not about action, what is it then? I would say that Watchmen is a story about characters. And what I mean by that is the point of the film isn’t so much what the characters do as who they are and what their actions say about them as people. In other words, expect the majority of the film to focus on character development (rather than plot development).
• In fact, to go a step further, Watchmen is about deconstructing the hero/superhero myth. In most hero movies, the main characters share certain admirable qualities (e.g., compassion, altruism) and they behave in certain ways (e.g., rescuing people from danger, self-sacrifice) which is in large part why people love them. But Watchmen takes apart this “myth” surrounding most heroes and looks at them from a completely different perspective. It shows how, despite their roles in society, they are still very much human (or not human, in the case of Dr. Manhattan) and they share all of the flaws associated with human nature. And, in some cases, their specialized roles in society amplify their flaws to massively damaging proportions.

I could go on, especially about the many other themes present in the film, but I think I would start crossing into spoiler territory, so I’ll stop where I am. I hope this helps people unfamiliar with the source material to more easily enjoy the movie.

And I thought I’d throw in a little Watchmen-related humor: 104 Ways to Hilariously Ruin the Watchmen Movie [via Gizmodo]