Back on the WATCHMEN Band-wagon

I kind of made a decision about 8 months ago, when the first slo-mo Watchmen trailer came out, that it was going to be a terrible, terrible movie. It seemed like a fan-made trailer you find on YouTube for imaginary movies like Legend of Zelda, etc. Prior to this, I'd seen a bunch of promising set photos and costume designs, heard about how they planned to handle the tone of the film, learned about what would happen to all the supplementary story material that fleshed out the original, and I was getting ready to believe the hype. I was starting to think that perhaps the greatest superhero graphic-novel in all of history, previously deemed unfilmable by the likes of Terry Gilliam and at one point explored by Paul Greengrass (which would have been super-ultra-cool), was actually a) going to happen and b) be sort of good, maybe. We're talking about a comic book with the most realistic depiction of how actual, sympathetic characters would interact with each-other and the world around them if superheros were real and taken seriously. I hated 300, but was actually super impressed with Zakc Snyder's DAWN OF THE DEAD remake, with its excellent characters and decent performances. Hearing that it would be he who chose to defy the will of Alan Moore was enough to at least pique my interest. I was ready to give this WATCHMEN movie a shot, even though Nite-Owl II didn't seem as tubby as he is in the comic.

Then that trailer came out with that terrible, not-exciting-at-all Smashing Pumpkins song, with every single shot in slo-motion, featuring my first disappointing look at Dr. Manhattan (sure, a tough character to pull off in live-action, but come on... he looks terrible, IMHO). It seemed like, even though they may have gotten the tone right (which, with any adaptation is probably 75% of the battle), they weren't showing us enough in the trailer to convince me that it wasn't just going to be a stupid Hollywood guess at what "serious, intellectual superhero literature" would be like when transferred to the big screen. It was a terrible, terrible trailer, and, effectively, a terrible first impression. That was it. WATCHMEN as a movie was dead to me.

But then, that other trailer came out, with the Phillip Glass KOYANISQAATSI score, which was bang-on. I actually recall re-reading The Watchmen one afternoon about 10 years ago while listening to the KOYANISQAATSI soundtrack and thinking even then that it was a good fit for the epic nature of the story, so hearing it in the new, much better trailer was something that spoke out to me on a personal level. Also, as with any 2nd trailers, it revealed a bit more about how the film's non-action scenes would play out. Yes, Rorschach's voice is a bit much, and yes they refer to themselves as "The Watchmen" which is new and unnecessary, but all of a sudden you got the impression that the story is a multi-layered mystery-conspiracy that takes an entirely different approach to this ridiculous world of super-heroes, which is exactly what it should be. This second trailer gave me a bit more hope that come March 6, my eyes wouldn't be totally flooded with garbage.

And then people started talking about squids, which made my heart sink. But I'll reserve my opinion on this spoiler-ish detail until opening night.

Finally, as of last week, I was still not convinced that this movie's gonna be anything other than total ass, despite any hopes I had otherwise. I found myself combing the internet for any positive signs. Were these beloved characters actually going to come to life in the way I had hoped? Well, actually, maybe so, as it turns out:

http://watchmenmovie.warnerbros.com/

This is, hands down, the best promotional website for a film I have ever come across. The design is slick, but what's really cool are the profiles given to each of the main characters. There's just enough there to convince me that the people onscreen might just be believable after all. I just might give a shit about them, which, if you know the story, is super-exciting.

And now, like a sucker, I'm back to square one. Tonally perfect, sympathetic characters is what it seems were gonna get, even if they get a bunch of other "important" crap wrong. And, for now, that's enough for me. Am I setting myself up for disappointment?