Friday, March 13, 2009
so I finally saw Watchmen yesterday
I didn't much care for it. There's a lot of good in there - Jackie Earle Haley, the opening credits, the Dr. Manhattan and Comedian backstory portions, the overall visual aesthetic - but it's regularly undercut by poor acting and the director's obnoxious stylistic tricks. Malin Akerman is an emotionless chunk of cardboard, Carla Gugino hammed it up like it was Guiding Light, and Matthew Goode put me to sleep whenever Ozymandias was on screen. The most ridiculous sex scene ever and the unnecessarily extreme violence didn't help much, either. Still, the worst thing is the horrible slow-motion, which pops up in basically every important scene, no matter what's happening. It makes the fight scenes feel like the damned Matrix (sorry, Ice, that movie blows), and the non-fight scenes feel like sledgehammers of meaning slamming against our skulls. My biggest fear about this movie was that there'd be absolutely no subtlety whatsoever, and little humanity, and that's exactly what happened. It's basically a three-hour long music video / commercial.
I didn't much care for it. There's a lot of good in there - Jackie Earle Haley, the opening credits, the Dr. Manhattan and Comedian backstory portions, the overall visual aesthetic - but it's regularly undercut by poor acting and the director's obnoxious stylistic tricks. Malin Akerman is an emotionless chunk of cardboard, Carla Gugino hammed it up like it was Guiding Light, and Matthew Goode put me to sleep whenever Ozymandias was on screen. The most ridiculous sex scene ever and the unnecessarily extreme violence didn't help much, either. Still, the worst thing is the horrible slow-motion, which pops up in basically every important scene, no matter what's happening. It makes the fight scenes feel like the damned Matrix (sorry, Ice, that movie blows), and the non-fight scenes feel like sledgehammers of meaning slamming against our skulls. My biggest fear about this movie was that there'd be absolutely no subtlety whatsoever, and little humanity, and that's exactly what happened. It's basically a three-hour long music video / commercial.
