Some thoughts on Watchmen

Well I liked it.

For those familiar with the book, it’s all in here, or all the parts that matter anyway. The director understands, and loves, the source material, but he hasn’t let it stand in the way of creating a cinematic narrative. A rather dense cinematic narrative at that.

For those unfamiliar with the book (and I maintain that one should never be familiar with a movie’s source material to enjoy the movie), as long as you keep in mind that Watchmen is, in essence, a detective story that pauses, often, for some very long digressions, I think you should be fine, but let me know. The people who really, really hate the movie I think get lost in its narrative ellipses, where the detective plot is put on hold for, say, a series of involved flashbacks or for a sub-plot involving a character’s sex life. Long digressions like this can make a story feel long, but I was never bored by Watchmen and was frequently thrilled, and even surprised, in spite of having re-read the book recently.

The problem with Watchmen, if it’s a problem, is that without the digressions, which are all thematically resonant and serve to deepen the story, if you cut all that stuff out, it’s just another superhero detective story. In a sense, the narrative digressions are the real "point" of the story, and the movie (like the book) uses the detective plot to deliver those digressions.

From a marketing standpoint, of course, the movie is a "tough sell" — it’s got multiple protagonists (four by my count), not a single character to "root for," a complicated plot that keeps looking backward to tell us about characters we barely know yet, a "meta" approach to its subject matter (it’s a superhero story that worries that having superheroes might not be such a good thing) and takes place in a weird alternate-universe 1985.  All of which makes sense when you read the book (or it did when I first read it in 1986), but again, you tell me.

As for the learned critics who have screwed in their monocles, tucked in their ascots and sniffed in disdain at this rather ambitious piece of popular culture, describing it as trash and its audience as sociopaths, in time they will look like idiots, if they don’t already.

Superheroes: Batman Begins part 2

Yesterday I laid out the basic structure of Batman Begins. And while structure, as any screenwriter knows, is the name of the game for a successful screenplay, it is not the only thing that makes Begins such a detailed, well-considered movie.

Assuming the reader is already familiar with the structure, here are some observations I have in chronological order:

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Superheroes: Batman Begins part 1

WHAT DOES THE PROTAGONIST WANT?  Bruce Wayne, orphaned at eight, wants to overcome his fears and honor his father.  This turns out to be rather more complicated than he suspects.

Batman Begins presents a radically new vision (for the movies, anyway — this stuff had been around the comics and the animated series for many years beforehand) of the Batman story, grounds it in a startling new sense of reality, presents not just a caped crusader and a wacky new villain but a whole wealth of good guys and bad guys, all following their stars in increasingly complex and interconnected ways, all of it bound together with the one fantastic conceit of a young billionaire who dresses up like a bat.  It strongly reminds me of the Casino Royale re-boot, which brought the James Bond character to a new level of immediacy while retaining enough of the series’ fantastic hallmarks to still qualify as escapism.  There is still enough silliness in Batman Begins to make it a recognizable "superhero movie" (grand, outsized villains with colorful personalities and an ambitious scheme to destroy an entire city, spectacular action sequences that teeter at the brink of believability, production design that borders upon science-fiction) but it’s presented with a sober, straightfaced earnestness that’s nothing less than shocking after the garish camp of Batman & Robin.  The Dark Knight would successfully develop all of Begins‘s good ideas into an even more complex, startling vision of modern urban justice.

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Superheroes: Batman & Robin

Contrary to its reputation as a garish, headache-inducing day-glo nightmare, Batman & Robin is, in fact, a sensitive, heartfelt examination of power, frailty, family, humanity’s custody of the earth, the ties that bind and the mysterious ways of the human heart.

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Adolescent fantasy thread

You state [fantasy's place as an exclusively adolescent genre] as if it’s a universal, but that attitude is a pretty new development in literary culture. — swan_tower

This discussion touches on a whole host of issues like middlebrow vs. high brow; entertainment vs. art; fantastic genres vs. realistic genres vs. non-genre dramas. — curt_holman

That Homer’s fucked. — iainjcoleman

Ms. Tower correctly points out that "fantasy" as a genre was not always exclusively for the young. I would have done better to add "these days" to my description of the role of fantasy in our common storytelling world.

Some have asked me to define "adolescent" stories as opposed to "adult" stories. I would say that an adolescent story is designed to appeal to a primarily adolescent mindset — that is, the mind of an adolescent. The concerns of the adolescent are different from the concerns of the adult, and there’s not much you or I can do about that. The adolescent mind is still asking questions, taking its measure of the world and seeking its place within it. (Kurt Vonnegut was often accused of being "sophomoric," which he said was entirely intentional — he knew that if he really wanted to change the way people think, he had to do it while they were still young — the people with real power don’t read novels.) There is no qualitative difference between a story designed to appeal to children, a story designed to appeal to adolescents or a story designed to appeal to adults. Each can be well executed or poorly executed, transcendent or trashy, innovative or rote. "Children’s movies" includes both Bambi and Ernest Goes to Camp, and the realm of the adolescent movie, as I’ve said, spans almost our entire release schedule.

As for Homer, two things:

1. Yeah, Homer wrote adolescent power fantasies. Sorry. They are very good, and they have lasted a long time, and they bring great storytelling talent to bear on their narratives, but they are still, primarily and essentially, adolescent power fantasies.
2. That said, the fact that we’re still talking about Homer thousands of years later indicates that there is hope for the superhero genre. There’s no reason why, given time and development, Superman will not take his place in the mythological pantheon next to Odysseus and Achilles, to say nothing of Arthur or Heracles, or Cinderella or Peter Pan.  All are fantastic stories that plumb the depths of what it means to be human, the only thing separating them is time.  There is no reason why, a thousand years from now, people will not study superhero stories in serious college courses or create serious, adult dramas from what will then be considered classics.  Superman, Batman and the rest, it seems to me, share a lot of things with those older characters, including being constantly reinvented as the society that imagined them shifts in its needs. 

Superman belongs to no one, or rather he belongs to everyone, and always has — that’s one of the interesting thing about comics.  The creator of a superhero may have something specific to say, but it’s the audience who actually decides who the hero is, and they decide by buying one comic and leaving another on the shelf.  I was surprised to learn that when Superman first appeared, Siegel and Shuster hadn’t actually figured out his origin story or basic character outline.  They tried out this, that and the other personality trait, letting the readers respond and thus re-shape the material.  The audience would love one kind of story and shrug at another, so the material was tailored to meet the audience’s expectations.  In seeking only to keep their aborning creation in print, they — through a kind of Darwinian process — created a strong, resonant hero that became the first, the original and, even today, the most influential character in his genre.

Fun fact: when I Googled "Homer" to find an appropriate image for this thread discussing this whole adult/adolescent fantasy debate, I had to wade through three pages of Homer Simpson until I found a picture of the Greek bard.  I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’.

Can superheroes grow up?

voiceofisaac writes:

"So, if most superhero comic books are adolescent power fantasies, what about them would need to be changed in order to make them a more adult fantasy? Or are all power fantasies adolescent by definition?"

ted_slaughter ripostes:
"First, ‘adolescent’? Are you saying it’s adolescent to desire power, or that comics are inherently jejune? Because I beg to differ, on both counts.

Ted and Isaac cut to the core of the issue here. This is, in a way, the whole ball game.

First, let me make something clear: there is nothing wrong, shameful or second-rate about adolescent fantasies. Adolescent fantasies drive the entire movie business and have for more than a generation. "Grown-up" drama was once where all the money was spent in Hollywood, now it’s the opposite: all the money is spent on adolescent fantasies, while adult drama must squeeze itself in where it can. Adolescent fantasies thus call the shots in this world of professionals — movies based on superhero comics, fantasy novels, children’s books and pop-culture flotsam attract the biggest names, the highest salaries and our brightest talents. No offense to the wonderful movies nominated for Best Picture this year, but the three movies I went to see more than once in the theaters, Iron Man, Kung Fu Panda and The Dark Knight, are not on the list. The question here is not "are superhero movies any good?" but "can superhero movies ever be anything but adolescent fantasies?"

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