Matt Yglesias

Watchmen

In general, I agree with most everything Spencer Ackerman says here. I’ll add that I wasn’t thrilled by the decision to use so many famous and iconic songs in the soundtrack. I don’t see any real basis for that in the original material, and it’s somewhat distracting. It also poses some weird questions about the nature of the alternate reality we’re witnessing. One of the pleasures of Watchmen is seeing all the little things that are different about the world—airships, the popularity of Indian fast food, etc.—but it’s strange to think that the different historical trajectory would still have left us with a completely identical “99 Luftballons.”

Beyond that, the main thing to say is that I think it’s pretty clear that the Watchmen people have been seeing this weekend isn’t the real Watchmen. The film was clearly crafted with a great deal of respect for the original work and its fans. And that’s great. But still, certain concessions to basic reality had to be made in terms of tolerable length. But there will be a Tales From the Black Freighter animated DVD. And there will be a longer “director’s cut” version of the film. Eventually, perhaps you’ll see the longer version of the film with the Freighter animation intermingled between chapters. Obviously, normal people wouldn’t want to go see that in a theater. But I’d definitely buy it on Blu-Ray. And the ultimate test for the work will really be how good that is.

All-in-all, I’m torn between immense admiration for the film and regret that it was done as a movie at all. In retrospect, I kind of wish we’d instead gotten a 12 part HBO maxi-series that was really uncompromising and didn’t leave anything out.

The Replaceable Parts of the Newspaper

Philip Kennicott’s argument that the problem with Watchmen-the-movie is that Watchmen-the-book is actually bad—”pretentious” and “the dialogue stinks”—is interesting, albeit wrongheaded. The movie may or may not be bad, I’ll tell you when I see it, but the book is definitely good.

That said, the really interesting thing about his argument, in the context of some recent discussions, is that it appears in The Washington Post written by a “Washington Post staff writer.” As newspapers vanish, there’s some stuff that it’s not clear we can replace. But I think we can be very confident that if the internet can provide anything, it’s arguments about the merits of comic books and their movie adaptations. And I think it’s somewhat strange to see news organizations holding on to this kind of professionally-produced content at the same time as they’re offering buyouts to people who do the kind of reporting that it’s not clear blogs can replace.

What Obama Could Learn from Watchmen

Ana Marie Cox does a webchat for The Washington Post:

Singapore: Obama likes comics; can he learn anything from Watchmen?

Ana Marie Cox: We can all learn something from the Watchmen. Personally, I hope he repeals the law against costumed vigilantes soon.

More seriously (tho not totally so), I think Cheney and Bush modeled their presidency on Ozymandias.

I like the idea of the Ozymandias reference, but I’m not sure that I actually get it. By contrast, though you shouldn’t click the links unless you want an implicit Watchmen spoler, Ronald Reagan actually did attempt to base his second-term approach to US-Soviet relations in part on a hypothetical version of the Ozymandias strategy. And though the argument was kind of odd, it actually went hand-in-hand with a brave and correct policy stance that helped contribute to the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War.

10 Years of Dr. Manhattan

Watchmen is hardly the first movie to try to employ web-based spinoffs as part of its marketing campaign, but it may be the first one to have actually done it well. Here, for example, is a YouTube video of a 1970 NBS broadcast taking a look back at 10 years of Dr. Manhattan:

For many of the same reasons that Watchmen was long deemed unfilmable, it seems uniquely well-suited to this sort of thing. It’s not a literal adaptation of the interstitial material in the book, but it’s true to its spirit.

Just for Nerds

By Matthew Yglesias

Watchmen — now in Catalan:

I saw that in a FNAC, which reminded me that I wish we had FNAC in the United States. And that reminded of a semi-serious policy idea I wanted to put forward but we’ll leave that for later.

Who Watches the Movie Studios?

Entertainment Weekly reports on the behind-the-scenes struggles over whether or not a 21st century audience will be in sync with the 1980s setting and Cold War themes of Watchmen:

In 2005, [Paul[ Greengrass was deep into preproduction on a present-day, war-on-terror-themed adaptation by David Hayter (X-Men), when a regime change at Paramount Pictures led to its demise. Enter Warner Bros., which acquired the rights in late 2005. Snyder was working on 300 for the studio at the time, and he was alarmed when he heard about the deal. After some soul-searching, his fear of seeing a bad Watchmen movie trumped his fear of trying to make a great one. ”They were going to do it anyway,” he says. ”And that made me nervous.” Over many months, and many meetings, Snyder persuaded Warner Bros. to abandon the Greengrass/Hayter script and hew as faithfully as possible to the comic. The key battles: retaining the ’80s milieu, keeping Richard Nixon (Moore did consider using an era-appropriate Ronald Reagan, but worried it would alienate American readers), and preserving the villain-doesn’t-pay-for-his-crimes climax. ”It was clear that Zack felt an intense obligation to the fans and the book,” says Warner Bros. Picture Group president Jeff Robinov. ”There was definitely a conversation about the best way to make it contemporary and relevant to today. Zack felt the best way was to go back to the roots of the novel.”

Of course now with the conflict in the Caucuses, Cold War themes seem relevant again — problem solved. Could Warner Bros. be manipulating the entire situation, using Georgia and Russia as pawns to advance its own nefarious agenda? Only on blogs can this sort of irresponsible speculation be meaningfully advanced.