Anthony Lane and "Watchmen": Where are the lolz?

Max's Journal, March 18th, 2009


John looked at Aussie Watchmen review already, emerged unscathed. Anthony Lane's review must be tackled, could kill millions with crap writing. Lane worst reviewer so far, eyes already bleed. But even in the face of armageddon, a free blog headed up by 20 year olds must still comment on horrible writing. Hurm.

(Spoilers ahoy. I'm not even kidding)

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2009/03/09/090309crci_cinema_lane

"The world of the graphic novel is a curious one. For every masterwork, such as “Persepolis” or “Maus,” there seem to be shelves of cod mythology and rainy dystopias, patrolled by rock-jawed heroes and their melon-breasted sidekicks."

Lane wants you to know that if you like comics that aren't real world memoirs, you are a pervert.

Also, you worship fish gods, apparently.

"Fans of the stuff are masonically loyal, prickling with a defensiveness and an ardor that not even Wagnerians can match."

Lane really hates people who like comics.

"The bad news about “Watchmen” is that it grinds and squelches on for two and a half hours, like a major operation."

What do these people think they're making, a multimillion dollar adaptation of a critically acclaimed novel?!

"... must we have “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” in the background? How long did it take the producers to arrive at that imaginative choice? And was Dylan happy to lend his name to a project from which all tenderness has been excised, and which prefers to paint mankind as a bevy of brutes?"

Because, as we all know, "The Times They Are A-Changin'" was about a Victorian era picnic and not massive social upheaval.

"As far as superheroes go, two’s company but three or more is a drag, with no single character likely to secure our attention: just ask the X-Men, or the Fantastic Four, or the half-dozen Watchmen we get here."

I don't get this. Does he not like any ensemble cast superhero movies or does he just not like ensemble casts? "12 Angry Men a snore!, should've just followed that one really racist guy".

"There is Dan (Patrick Wilson), better known as Nite Owl, who keeps his old superhero outfit, rubbery and sharp-eared, locked away in his basement, presumably for fear of being sued for plagiarism by Bruce Wayne."


He's of course referencing the scene in The Dark Knight where Batman can't have sex without his mask on.

"There is the Comedian, real name Eddie Blake (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), whose tragic end, early in the film, we are invited to mourn, but who gets his revenge by popping up in innumerable flashbacks."

Lane makes a good point here. The movie would've been alot better if we had no idea who The Comedian was and why his death was important.

"There is Laurie, who goes by the sobriquet of Silk Spectre, as if hoping to become a top-class shampoo"

Zing!

"Then there is Adrian Veidt (Matthew Goode), who likes to be called Ozymandias. Goode played Charles Ryder in last year’s “Brideshead Revisited,” and I fear that, even as Ozymandias murders millions from his Antarctic lair, which he does at the climax of “Watchmen,” Goode’s floppy blond locks and swallowed consonants remain those of a young gadabout who might, at worst, twist the leg off his Teddy bear."

Anthony Lane expected more menace from the character who murdered millions of people. Maybe they should've given him a knife or something. A really big knife. Also, fuck you for putting a massive spoiler nonchalantly in the middle of your review, you gadabout.

"Last and hugest is Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), who is buff, buck naked, and blue, like a porn star left overnight in a meat locker."

Anthony Lane, you have a dark side to you that, frankly, terrifies me.

"I felt sorry for Crudup, a thoughtful actor forced to spout gibberish about the meaning of time and, much worse, to have that lovely shy smile of his wiped by special effects."

Anthony Lane may in fact secretly run a Billy Crudup fan site (mostly fan fiction, some photoshops).

"Dr. Manhattan is central to Moore’s chronological conceit, which is that President Nixon (Robert Wisden), having used our blue friend to annihilate the Vietcong, wins the Vietnam War and, by 1985—the era in which the bulk of the tale takes place—is somehow serving a third term."

If only there had been something to tell the audience why this had happened. Like a newspaper or tv screen.

"“Watchmen,” like “V for Vendetta,” harbors ambitions of political satire, and, to be fair, it should meet the needs of any leering nineteen-year-old who believes that America is ruled by the military-industrial complex, and whose deepest fear—deeper even than that of meeting a woman who requests intelligent conversation—is that the Warren Commission may have been right all along."

I'm not sure how Lane figures Watchmen is a political satire, but ok. And man, he really hates comic book nerds, huh? I'm beginning to wonder if he was beaten with rolled up issues of Amazing Spider-Man when he was a kid.

"The problem is that Snyder, following Moore, is so insanely aroused by the look of vengeance, and by the stylized application of physical power, that the film ends up twice as fascistic as the forces it wishes to lampoon. The result is perfectly calibrated for its target group: nobody over twenty-five could take any joy from the savagery that is fleshed out onscreen, just as nobody under eighteen should be allowed to witness it. You want to see Rorschach swing a meat cleaver repeatedly into the skull of a pedophile, and two dogs wrestle over the leg bone of his young victim? Go ahead. You want to see the attempted rape of a superwoman, her bright latex costume cast aside and her head banged against the baize of a pool table? The assault is there in Moore’s book, one panel of which homes in on the blood that leaps from her punched mouth, but the pool table is Snyder’s own embroidery."

Lane loses me completely at this point. Can he honestly not understand that people aren't always supposed to "take joy" from movies? Did he think that when Spielberg decided to make "Schindler's List" , he was marketing it exclusively to anti-semites? None of the violence in this movie is really glamorized and any notion that the movie thinks violence is cool is pretty firmly dispelled by the film's end.

"You want to hear Moore’s attempt at urban jeremiad? “This awful city, it screams like an abattoir full of retarded children.” That line from the book may be meant as a punky retread of James Ellroy, but it sounds to me like a writer trying much, much too hard; either way, it makes it directly into the movie, as one of Rorschach’s voice-overs. (And still the adaptation won’t be slavish enough for some.)"

Thats funny, because entire review strikes me as someone trying much, much too hard.

"Amid these pompous grabs at horror, neither author nor director has much grasp of what genuine, unhyped suffering might be like"

Anthony Lane, who writes for The New Yorker, is going to tell you about real suffering, kids.

"they are too busy fussing over the fate of the human race—a sure sign of metaphysical vulgarity—to be bothered with lesser plights. "

Yeah, what about the DOLPHINS, Zach Snyder?!

"In the end, with a gaping pit where New York used to be, most of the surviving Watchmen agree that the loss of the Eastern Seaboard was a small price to pay for global peace."

I like how Lane just glosses over one of the most important and complex moments in the entire film with a "welp, I guess they're ok with people DYING". Oh, and I'm pretty sure a large chunk of Manhattan doesn't make up the entire Eastern Seaboard.

"Incoherent, overblown, and grimy with misogyny, “Watchmen” marks the final demolition of the comic strip, and it leaves you wondering: where did the comedy go?"

Anthony Lane is an incoherent blowhard who thinks "Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties" is the pinacle of comic film adaptations and eagerly awaits the upcoming "Marmaduke" motion picture. Also, you don't get to ask where the comedy went when you work for a magazine that routinely puts out historically unfunny comic strips every month.

-Max