The Batman, emphasis on "The Man," also: Watchmen trailer

No thanks to you bozos, I finally got around to seeing The Dark Knight, and of course as a fan of what Christopher Nolan is doing with the character, generally, I found it to be yet another very powerful and effective superhero movie (does anybody besides me notice the ratio of good superhero movies to bad superhero movies these days? No wonder they're a sure bet at the box office these days--it seems every other summer movie can't resist being labeled a mixed bag at best). Heath Ledger was extremely good, I thought, and definitely the best Joker I've ever seen on screen (don't count me as a fan of Jack Nicholson's impression), even as his portrayal didn't exactly match the conception I had of him from the comics. It was also fun and somewhat novel to see a movie version that argued basically the inverse of what V For Vendetta was going for: that, as Thomas Hobbes suggested, life is nasty and filled with awful people, and only self-appointed guardians of order, legitimately elected or not, can keep us from tearing ourselves apart. Much has been written about how the Joker has been remade as a political terrorist a la Zarqawi or whoever, and it's sort of interesting to see the formerly anti-establishment Batman teaming up with the cops to restore capitalism and democracy, albeit not by playing by the books (then again, who ever did?). I was also happy to see the Joker providing a true-life example of "the prisoner's dilemma" for us to witness--as a screenplay device, it's kind of hoary, and the payoff is even worse, but the idea of the Joker as a amateur political scientist strikes me as gold.

Some things bugged me, but I don't know if they qualify as actual criticisms of the movie. The film brings up a lot of properly weighty themes that are discarded without a moment's notice--the Joker-Batman inverted psychoses theory first posited (as far as I know) by Alan Moore; the interesting notion that Batman is indirectly responsible for most of the supervillains who hang around Gotham City; that Two-Face follows this tragic arc and remains, unlike the rest of the characters, unredeemed. I never felt, for all the speechifying done by various characters (including countless moments where Joker says something to the effect of, "I'm just like you, Batman, I'm the yin to your yang, Batman, you are order and I am chaos, blah blah blah"), any of this was satisfactorily resolved. When Two-Face finally gets involved in the action, as fearsome as he looks, it seems that he is supposed to represent the new breed of evil in Gotham--and he doesn't seem that bad. The conversation he and Joker have doesn't make any sense. Additionally, I felt the film crossed the line with having Batman devise some sort of widespread sonar device that could determine the location of anyone with a cell phone, even if it's meant to be temporary. Has it come to the point where audiences can only trust Batman if he is the superhero embodiment of Big Brother, working with law enforcement to take down unabashed anarchists? I don't think this is an encouraging development (and what would Batman have done with V?). I was pleasantly surprised by the ending, because it seems that Nolan is trying to set up something not frequently explored in the comics, that of Batman operating completely outside of the law and, indeed, in opposition to it. It would be cool to see a movie where Batman fought police brutality or battled war profiteers by waging corporate warfare as Bruce Wayne (there was an excellent arc in Morrison's JLA where Batman "buys out" Lex Luthor in order to stop one of his schemes). Won't happen though. The way the movie ends, I like to think it would dovetail nicely into an arc involving Killer Croc or Solomon Grundy (Batman has to relocate in the sewers) or maybe Catwoman. Then, maybe in the future, we can get a Superman team-up?

But let's not get into that. Let's talk about this Watchmen trailer.



I, like many millions of Americans, am a big fan of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen. Many people like to say that it is the greatest comic book story of all time, and while I am trying to slowly wean myself from making grand pronouncements like that, I think it is absolutely essential reading for just about anyone. Certainly, if I were to ever teach a class on postmodern fiction, I would include that as required reading, no question. As a statement on industrial imperialism, compounded by the world's first US superpower employing people with literal superpowers, and the resulting fecundity of cold war resentment, it is without peer, and I honestly believe that, even with all the superheroes running around. The layers of detail and exposition warrant many repeated readings, and the ending is appropriately (given the times) morally ambiguous: I've had long arguments with people concerning whether or not we felt Rorschach's actions at the end were justified.

I feel as if Watchmen fans are now divided in two halves: those who can't wait for Zack Snyder's movie adaptation and those who are uneasy with the notion of Watchmen being made into a film, particularly by Zack"300" Snyder. You can count me among those who felt that 300 was an absolutely loathsome movie, which, if not an outright gesture of support for the continuing War on Terror was sufficiently xenophobic, homophobic, and full of enough macho self-posturing to make me want to gag. Additionally, the fact that Alan Moore explicitly stated that a movie cannot and should not be made of Watchmen was enough to give me additional pause.

Funny fact: I was delighted to find that Moore and I have similar feelings about 300, per an interview he did recently with Entertainment Weekly:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Don't you have the slightest curiosity about what Watchmen director Zack Snyder is doing with your work?
ALAN MOORE: I would rather not know.

He's supposed to be a very nice guy.
He may very well be, but the thing is that he's also the person who made 300. I've not seen any recent comic book films, but I didn't particularly like the book 300. I had a lot of problems with it, and everything I heard or saw about the film tended to increase [those problems] rather than reduce them: [that] it was racist, it was homophobic, and above all it was sublimely stupid. I know that that's not what people going in to see a film like 300 are thinking about but...I wasn't impressed with that.... I talked to [director] Terry Gilliam in the '80s, and he asked me how I would make Watchmen into a film. I said, ''Well actually, Terry, if anybody asked me, I would have said, 'I wouldn't.''' And I think that Terry [who aborted his attempted adaptation of the book] eventually came to agree with me. There are things that we did with Watchmen that could only work in a comic, and were indeed designed to show off things that other media can't.

He makes good points, and he admits he may be making generalizations.

Anyway, I saw the trailer, and I couldn't help but be taken aback by how strikingly similar to the comic it is, at least in terms of angles: in fact, I was downright moved by the proceedings. I'm not convinced yet this is a good idea, but who knows? It was a good choice to have them play the Smashing Pumpkins song "The End is the Beginning is the End," as it fits the heavily stylized industrial atmosphere, as well as give it an updated 80's flavor (although, it should be pointed out, that song was written by Billy Corgan not for any album but for the soundtrack for Batman & Robin--a bad omen if you think about it). The Owlship, I was pleased to see, looks very cool. Nite Owl now looks kind of like a doughy Batman ripoff, and it's kind of silly to see him dropkicking some prisoners, but whatever. Silk Spectre now wears less clothes, no surprise there. Dr. Manhattan looks very cool, and very similar to the comics, as does the Comedian. Ozymandius unfortunately looks pretty underwhelming, but maybe that's part of the point. My beloved Rorschach (who, incidentally, shares Mendelson's birthday), looks spiffy as well, although I'm dubious about how Snyder is going to try translating the constantly shifting patterns on his mask--having them change on screen gives it a slightly different effect than having them change from panel to panel.

Anyway, it's an addictive trailer. I will probably see it when it comes out, but consider me, like Moore, to be skeptical. Hurm.