Up animation progression in eight steps

Patience is something I'm pretty good about when it comes to movies. I don't get antsy about upcoming releases, at least not to the point that it interferes with my life in a substantial amount. I don't line up to buy tickets, rush to early showings, incessantly talk about new releases, or touch myself provocatively when discussing release dates … basically I'm not a fanboy when it comes to new films. I have a life and that takes priority to things like new movies. But I'd abandon even those principles for Up, Pixar's new animated picture. I can't wait to see it. No, literally I can't wait for it. It has become too difficult.

The press screening for it is still about a week away, so in lieu of actually seeing Up I started checking out some of the press artwork for it on one of Disney's clunky press sites. I found several cool pieces of concept art and then this really cool animation progression, which shows you the cross-section of layers that make up each sequence. Very cool stuff. Enjoy!

Here's are the eight images for the digital progression: 1) Storyboard 2) Camera and staging 3) Final set modeling and dressing 4) Final character animation poses 5) Final shading and material textures 6) Effects department animates water in stream 7) Final clothing animation 8) Final lighting added to produce final image.

Editing magic with the Bugatti Veyron

If The Bourne Ultimatum and all its nausea-inducing hyper dicing has done anything for Hollywood, besides polarizing those who like chop socky in the cutting room and those who prefer more care and consideration from editors (can you tell where I stand?), then it has brought new attention to the art of editing, one of the film world's most underappreciated arts.

And just look at the movies: more and more of them are picking a side of the great editing divide to stand on because most movies use too many cuts or too few cuts, and they do it not by accident but as conscious editing choices. Just last week I questioned some of the editing of the new Star Trek movie, which goes a little nutso with with some action sequences. Before Bourne I doubt it would have been an issue noteworthy enough to even mention. And fans for each side have noticed, too: some loved what Bourne editor Christopher Rouse did by breaking up his film into a million little pieces, while others preferred comprehension to style.

Now, switching gears (literally), I want to comment briefly on this Top Gear video that's been circulating around on car sites. I think it's fairly old, but every time I see it it gets me amped. The video features one of Top Gear's car experts, James May, test driving the Bugatti Veyron, supposedly the world's fastest production car. The supercar, which lists (not in your Auto Trader, mind you) at $1.5 million, hits a top speed at 253 mph, faster than most Formula 1 cars — or maybe all Formula 1 cars, I forget. It has 1,001 horsepower, 10 radiators to cool off those horses, 15 minutes worth of top-speed driving on its tires, and 12 minutes of fuel during that top-speed driving. May, who's authentically jazzed to be driving the rocket for the feature, takes it out on some secret test road and floors the pedal. Cameras on the track and in the car record the test, which ends with May covering a football field every second in the car that you'd swear is a hair away from a sonic boom.

I mention this 10-minute clip because the editing on it is superb — perfect even. The piece starts out light enough: May introduces the car, the engine, the various features, and he shows us how a special key unlocks the Veyron's higher speeds. Then he gets on the track and warms up — at 150 mph. As the car hunkers down to the road and begins chugging gasoline by the gallon, the opera-like orchestration starts building, the editing speeds up with the car, the pace quickens. By the time May, decked out in a driver's suit and helmet, is closing in on 253 mph, exhilaration in its purest form — speed, unadulterated speed — begins to take over. And when he finally does hit the magic number the music quiets, the car fades into the distance and for eight beautiful seconds time simply stops. It as if we're allowed to ponder this feat in silence. Then, in an act of celebration, the music slams down, the editing goes berserk, and May seems ready to keel over right there in the seat of this sonic machine from sheer disbelief.

I'm not a big car guy (read my Fast & Furious review) but I couldn't help but feel chills as this bloke blasts a hole in the road-time continuum. But was it really the car or May that gave me the chills? Kinda, but not really. It was the editing. A good editor can take anything and make it this exhilarating. That is what editing is all about. It's about assembling a series of images together so they deliver the impact that's desired, or maybe required, for the moment. This moment — 253 moments to be precise — needed this titanic climax to build up to, and the editors hit it perfectly note-for-note all the way up. I saw a lot of movies, and I see probably more Web-based videos, and not in a long time has editing made me this excited about the composition of a work.

Let me close on a strange admission: I don't know what side of the Bourne fence this video stands on. It definitely uses a lot of cuts and if any other subject used this many cuts I would have called it out as being overly sliced and diced by its editors. Yet here I loved the effect, and can't imagine even a single frame being taken out without harming the careful excitement that's been crafted between the Veyron and its driver. So maybe what I'm admitting is that I've found a case where Bourne-style editing works for me. And it's with Top Gear's impressive editors.

Star Trek = Geek Love Fest

The phrase “not your father’s Star Trek” has been used in the pre-release advertising for the rebooted Star Trek. We know there’s some truth to the line because it’s not written in Klingon below the English.

Some of the more easily offended Trekkies — the fan fiction writers, the Enterprise fabricators, the costume wearers, those with Romulan alter-egos — will be frustrated with the hyper-stylized Star Wars-like zip that’s been added to the Star Trek franchise. For everyone else, though, the film is a new, or maybe a first, reason to pay attention to Star Trek and all its über-geekiness.

So yeah, the new Star Trek is good. Real good. Like Wrath of Khan good. Better than the franchise probably deserves. And it couldn’t have come at a better time: Battlestar Galactica has left a sad void in the cosmos, George Lucas is hibernating until his next inevitably bad Star Wars project, and science fiction in general is suffering on the edge of a lull. Sci-fi, like westerns, will always be a welcome genre in movie theaters, as will Star Trek if this is the tone of the series from now on.

The film recasts USS Enterprise Captain James T. Kirk: gone is the syntax-deficient William Shatner, and in his place is Chris Pine, an actor who reportedly, and wisely, never watched a Shatner performance in fear he would unconsciously emulate it. Pine’s version of Captain Kirk is all cockiness and swagger, a guy’s guy — Matthew McConaughey in space. His story begins in Iowa, which is still farms and open fields even in the future. Blasting classic rock from the stereo (Beastie Boys, the Bach of the future), Kirk steals his uncle’s car and the seeds of rebellion are sown.

Years later he joins Starfleet to prove he has what it takes to be a hero like his father, who was a captain of a starship for 12 minutes but saved 800 lives including his infant son’s. In the space federation he meets sexy radio operator Uhura, medical officer “Bones” McCoy, novice helmsman Sulu, Russian navigator Chekov, engineer Scotty and a logical-thinking Vulcan named Spock (Zachary Quinto). Even moderate Trek fans will recognize some of these names, and here Kirk meets them all for the first time as he embarks on his journeys through space, the final frontier. We find out how Spock and Kirk first became friends (via the enemy route), how Bones got his nickname (a divorce left him with nothing but) and what Uhura's first name is (Nyota), which is as sought after in the Nerdiverse as Queen Amidala nip slips or maybe that Hello Kitty waffle iron. We also meet strange new alien races, including a giant snow spider and one of Kirk's sexual conquest whose skin glows a Ninja Turtle green.

The new actors all look and sound like the original characters — the exception, of course, is Pine, who redefines Kirk — without being outright parodies of the Star Trek legacy. McCoy, Kirk’s closest friend, is played zealously by Karl Urban, who nails all of DeForest Kelley’s little one liners, especially, “Damn it, man!” which he uses as a response to almost anything. Most of the characters’ dialogue include big nods to all the lines Trek has delivered to pop culture: Scotty says, “I’m givin’ it all she’s got, captain”; Spock uses the farewell, “Live long and prosper”; and crewmen are ordered to “set phasers to stun.” And overall, the film looks and sounds like a Star Trek movie.

But it’s still light years away from the original films, which were dull and fairly wooden in their delivery of action and intensity. In this reboot, the ships seem to have real speed, the photon torpedoes explode with cataclysmic effects and many of the developments require real human interaction, not just button mashing on holographic panels. When a sub-orbital drilling rig needs to be disabled Kirk, Sulu and a red-shirted guy skydive down to the platform. Our fathers’ Star Trek would have never left Enterprise’s bridge. Later we see planets implode, impressive new warp speed and teleportation effects, a futuristic San Francisco and an updated Enterprise — there is definitely no shortage of nifty stuff to look at.

It’s all shown in a break-neck, Bourne-like editing style that nearly renders a bar fight and an opening space battle unwatchable without sea legs. When the editing pace does slow down, the vistas are beautiful and the action sparkles. In one battle sequence the sound effects fade out to lonely, yet heroic, music that is particularly moving considering the ramifications of the scene’s star, who races his ship into a barrage of enemy fire so dense that survival is impossible.

The plot, which I’m hesitant to share because it’s an afterthought to the characters and their original meetings, involves a Romulan tyrant named Nero (Eric Bana), a future Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and the creation of black holes using a ship that looks like a cholla cactus. Lost creator and Star Trek director J.J. Abrams, a rising talent worth keeping your eyes on, ports over some of his Lost mythology (time travel, literal and metaphysical determinism, quantum mechanics) and keeps it all in the Trek spirit.

I had a blast with this film. It was fresh, thrilling and surprisingly invigorating, words that had all but abandoned the franchise until this reboot. If you were never a Star Trek fan now’s the time to attempt a new introduction.

Spoilers ahead

If you recall, the first movie was called The Fast and the Furious. The second one was 2 Fast 2 Furious. This new entry to the franchise, now called Fast & Furious, has an even shorter attention span — no time for “the,” one or two of ‘em. Even the ampersand seems kind of tedious.

Let me first admit that I’m ill equipped to review this movie. For starters I drive a Sentra. The paint’s faded and the windows don’t all roll down. The CD player stopped working eons ago. No spoiler can be found on its trunk. Second, I use my turn signal, a sad little character that is underused in the entire series. I railed against the previous Furious movies, including that festering neon distraction called Tokyo Drift. Despite my protests — ha! — sequels were made and here we are today.

The term car porn, which was first thrown at the ludicrous and fascinating Speed Racer, doesn’t seem to do this fourth Furious film justice. I think of it more as vehicular fantasy, like Star Wars of the streets: The dog-fighting hot rods might as well be space ships zipping through asteroid fields. A race through a border tunnel would require very few special effects to become the Death Star trenches. Then there’s Dominic Toretto, the film’s Jedi, who stands at a vacant intersection and perceives, through osmosis apparently, an accident that happened days before.

We’re talking Star Wars here, which I’ll admit is a tangent, but it’s a useful jumping-off point to the keystone of Fast & Furious’ foolishness. Regard it as less of a modern-day action flick and more like a science fiction yarn, the nuts and bolts variety, and it becomes instantly more tolerable … likeable even. Notice, for instance, the first scene with hot rodders hijacking fuel from a big rig hauling a train of tankers. Some standard accessories: people hanging from hoods, fenders are dented, tires are blown out with shotguns. The explosions come at the end as a burning tanker bounces down the highway leaving fiery windows of opportunity for an elite driver to escape. And here’s a film with no shortage of elite drivers. Of course this is all implausible on a level so absurd that describing it would sterilize a generation. But ignore all the noise and what do you get? It’s a vehicular melodrama, a rock-infused opera to the pavement, a cross-section of America’s brazen infatuation with the automobile. I didn’t like the movie, but I respect its dedication to its subject.

The actors are persuasive forces in films this overtly lame. There’s Paul Walker as the dogged FBI agent, Brian O’Conner, called into duty on any assignment involving hot rods or beefed-up imports. He spends much of this fourth entry resolving a conflicted relationship with the Vin Diesel character, Dominic Toretto, who gurgles out pseudo-sexual one-liners to a leggy car enthusiast — “I admire all bodies, no matter the make.” And don’t try to tell me there’s no sexual undertones when a villain finds out Toretto was peeping on his engine: “You looked under my hood?!” the baddie yells, as if someone sharked him in public.

O’Connor and Toretto — which sounds like a Carter-era muscle car: 1977 Dodge Torette with racing tires and candy-apple red paint — are working opposite ends of an investigation into a Mexican drug dealer who uses high-end cars and experienced street racers to bring heroine into the United States. The drug dealer uses an underground tunnel through a mountain along the U.S.-Mexico border. Nevermind that low-key minivans and non-descript sedans — as opposed to pimped-out Chevelles and M3s with new paint jobs — traffic drugs into this country every day. And nevermind that the drug dealer auditions his drivers on crowded Los Angeles streets while the actual trafficking route is basically a straight shot through the mountain. It’s like trying out for basketball to get on the football team, but whatever.

O’Connor is torn between his FBI responsibilities, and Toretto is blinded by rage. So tick their characters through this action vehicle that wouldn’t know human emotion if it T-boned it at 88 mph. But who cares, right? If you buy a ticket to this movie it’s to see the cars and the chases they’re subjected to on its highway to nowhere.

I’m not entirely sure that the makers of Fast & Furious have ever seen a car chase on film before. I think they’ve just read the lists that include top chase films, and they vaguely recollect that they usually include Bullitt, although they’re not sure why. They fail to recognize that most car chases involve ugly cars, beaters that are a fan belt away from the scrap heap. That’s part of the appeal: a character pushing himself, and his vehicle, to the very breaking point. The Blues Brothers sustained an entire film in a 1974 Dodge Monaco. Gene Hackman stole a 1971 Pontiac LeMans to chase down (or is it up?) an elevated train in The French Connection. Even the visceral Ronin, a personal favorite, used smallish European autos of no discernible strength or beauty to chase through those tiny foreign streets.

So Furious uses beautiful, tricked-out cars, which I can forgive. I can’t forgive what it puts the cars through in the name of the almighty car chase. The chases here require nothing more than road and the grimacing faces of drivers as they manipulate their rides through traffic-jammed streets. The characters seem to be racing to no end, just to a point somewhere before the audience members get bored and begin texting. It’s a testament to the actors’ abilities that much of the action is shot in close-up on odometers, tachometers, clutch pedals and gear shifts — Sergio Leone never filmed this many close-ups of faces, yet here we are watching mashing gears and needles spike on round gauges.

The chases just don’t have that sparkle to them. They just kinda exist, like that lamp in your living room that you couldn’t describe in any sort of detail even if you’ve had it for a decade. I’m reminded of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where Indy went from zeppelin to biplane to car in a chase that’s ridiculous, yes, but also inventive and spontaneous. Most chase films understand the dynamic between the characters and the road, and then employ a metaphor (the chase is inevitable redemption, or escape) to drive the plot forward. Furious uses the chase because the plot, and the series’ genealogy, requires it. And it overuses the nitrous gimmick, where the press of a button blasts the cars forward like rocket ships.

And as proof that the Fast & Furious movies, this one included, don’t know a thing about car chases, answer this: When was the last time you saw one on a “best movie car chase” list?

Monsters vs. Aliens vs. Snot vs. Poop

Monsters vs. Aliens cuts a wide swath through comedy. One character is called General W.R. Monger, like warmonger, while a brainy scientist says the exclamatory phrase “by Hawkins’ chair,” an offbeat reference to physicist Stephen Hawking, who’s mapped the galaxy from a wheelchair nearly all his life. Brainy stuff for sure. And then a giant insect shoots snot rockets from its nose.

At times, the animated film can’t decide who the material is geared for: the kiddies being brought to see it or the adults doing the bringing. In one scene military experts are looking for science experts when someone says, “call India.” Many adults won’t get the joke — that India produces some of the world’s most gifted science and engineering minds — let alone children, who spent the car ride to the theater checking their nostrils for space invaders. To counterbalance that gag, the president of the United States goes from DEFCON 1 to “Code Brown” because he’s soiled his slacks, and a blob of ooze has to be reminded that “boys don’t have boobies.”

How frustrating this is! Last week I had a conversation with several people who wouldn’t have taken their grandchildren to see the magical Coraline, a far superior movie, had they known two buxom characters strip down to their undies to do an innocuous trapeze act. Yet here, the president poops himself to comic effect and I betcha no one complains. Better animated films (especially those by Pixar) balance the humor more precisely: The jokes are just smart enough for adults and just silly enough for children without going overboard in either direction.

Here I am, though, halfway through a review and I’ve yet to talk plot: An alien super villain tries to colonize the planet so the government sends in monsters it has collected to suppress the threat. The monsters are the fishy Missing Link (Will Arnett), the human roach Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie), a gelatinous blob named B.O.B. (Seth Rogen), a giant furball called Insectasaurus and the 50-foot-tall woman, whose “official government-sanctioned monster name” is Ginormica, but call her Susan (Reese Witherspoon). They live in an underground government facility so vast and labyrinthine that it epitomizes Eisenhower’s definition of the Military Industrial Complex.

Susan is the central character and the way the movie plots her arc from bride-to-be to Ginormica is effective, if also kinda sad. I felt bad for Susan, the way she’s treated by her moronic TV weatherman fiancé, the way she’s hidden in a secret government facility, the way she loses everything except the friendship of the other monsters. She comes into her own, though, and eventually tussles with a giant robot in San Francisco — a fantastic scene — and then the alien geekus Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson). The sequel must give her a new groom, and maybe he’ll be as tall as her.

I must also comment on the voice acting, which I often fault in animated movies that include celebrity voices. These voices are perfect for these roles, especially Rogen, a convincing dunce, and Witherspoon, whose chirpy tones are just colorful enough for those animated frames.

Some of the humor is clearly of the lowest-common denominator kind — anything with snot or poop — but some of it is pretty clever: A headline about the alien invasion reads “U-F-Uh-Oh.” A man scans his iris, thumbprint, palmprint, elbow, tongue and butt to gain access to a war room that looks like the war room from Dr. Strangelove. B.O.B. the blob is capable of all kinds of contortions and bizarre visual gags, one of which involves the hilarious, context-free line, “I taste ham,” the meaning of which I will let you discover.

Really, though, Monsters vs. Aliens is a rather mellow spoof. The monsters are mutated devices from other movies: The Fly, The Blob, The Creature From the Black Lagoon, The Thing, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman and Cloverfield. Notice the clever Vertigo parody as Susan runs across rooftops in San Francisco and dangles from a rain gutter only to realize she’s nearly as tall as the building itself. Or how the alien’s computer is accessed using one of those step pads from that dancing arcade game. Or how the president communicates with a giant robot using the musical notes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and when that doesn’t work he busts out with the Beverly Hills Cop theme on his Casio keyboard. Try to listen for the really obscure line about Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

These are amusing jokes, but it all relates back to my original point: Will children get them? I think not, which is why Monsters vs. Aliens is peppered with potty humor as well, maybe as a backup. The animation looks good, the action flows well, the monsters are likeable (especially B.O.B., who falls in love with a Jell-O mold), but the film’s sense of humor needs a narrower focus. Or just less snot.

This review originally ran in the West Valley View March 27, 2009.

Stare at this photo and you WILL be whacked

Photographer, forgive me. I don't know where I found this, but I'm going to risk copyright violations to post it just because it makes me laugh. And after laughing I have this unsettling urge to enter into the Witness Protection Program where I can enjoy my egg noodles and ketchup and not fear men like these two. This picture of Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci is almost unreal, like it was invented in some designer's head. It's just too perfect: Pesci looks like he's ready to stab you in the throat with a fountain pen, and De Niro is apparently doing an impression of De Niro. Shortly after this photo was taken they beat a man to an oozy pulp in a cornfield and then buried him while he was still breathing. And where has Pesci been all these years; he needs a new movie. In any case, this photo is a classic.

Rashida Jones, your day has come

The Office is one of the most inventive shows on TV right now, but it's not perfect. Look at the blunders: they booted (maybe temporarily) HR goofball Holly Flax, turned Jan Levinson into a breastfeeding Godzilla, booted Toby only to bring him back and then turned Angela into the office whore, and Angela is bizarre but not a whore. Unforgivable, though, is what they did to Rashida Jones who played Karen Filippelli, who was Jim's girlfriend throughout Season 3.

After a more than 20 episodes of Karen's delightful presence, Jim goes to New York City for a job interview, realizes he loves Pam and then leaves poor Karen "standing by some fountain." The writers had set up a cute little storyline with Jim and Karen, and Karen wasn't just the "other girl" to receptionist Pam Beesly but an important force in the Scranton branch, where she pulled her weight and added some much-needed sexiness to the stuffiness of Dunder Mifflin. They brought her back for several episodes, including a recent one in which she's pregnant, but it's not the same as having her on the series as a regular.

Maybe Rashida will get the last laugh, though. With Jim selling Blackberry's and Pam being all cute and Pammy, Rashida's co-starring in the new romantic comedy — or maybe, bromantic comedy — I Love You, Man, where she's set to marry Paul Rudd, who doesn't have any friends eligible for the best man duties. The movie, which also stars terminal penis flapper Jason Segel, opens next week, and next month her new show, Parks and Recreation from the makers of The Office, debuts on NBC. Before all this, the only she'd been seen in after Jim dumped her was the Web shorts "Puppies" and then "Kittens," where her and the contagiously cute Natalie Portman solved the economic crisis with furry little animals.

I go through phases when it comes to celebrity crushes. I've gone through the Natalie Portman phase several times. I just ended a Zooey Deschanel phase when I heard she's engaged to some douchebag singer who thinks he's Bob Dylan. Rashida Jones ... your phase starts now. Her characters are hilarious, her timing is perfect, her look is classy ... oh and she's freakin' hot. Movie and television poducers: More Rashida, please.

Watchmen: Overrated comic geekery

Last year The Dark Knight opened up the comic book universe for the masses. And now Watchmen slams the door shut and retreats to the basement to geek out.

Just as I was getting fond of the comic book movies — I had forgiven Spider-Man 3, adored Hellboy 2, and was in awe of Dark Knight — here’s one that proves why comics are an acquired taste and why they fluctuate in popularity so wildly within every generation.

Nevertheless, though, comics — especially graphic novels, a term which is overused — are still big. As a testament to Alan Moore’s Watchmen, Time magazine named it one of 100 important novels — list buddies include The Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby. The graphic novel may be brilliant, but the film is a convoluted mess, a tired and ridiculous port of the source material. No wonder Alan Moore, who looks kinda like Karl Marx on Watchmen's back cover, had his name removed from the film credits.

Before going any further let's settle some business: I’m reviewing the film, not the graphic novel, which I will leave untouched for its many fans, those who’ve seen the sun the last decade and those who haven’t — or, more bluntly, those who’ve had sex with a real person and those who haven’t. For people who haven’t read the book, like myself, don’t let anyone tell you that reading it is mandatory. The film negates the need to read the book, because, let’s face it, if we wanted to read we’d go to the library, not the movie theater. Besides, a film is obligated to work on its own terms within the medium. If it requires further reading to appreciate or “get,” then it’s not a film, but an appendix to the book and that’s just hooey. That goes for all films, not just Watchmen.

The movie exists in a strange alternate universe: not only did Richard Nixon not resign but he was elected to a third term; masked superheroes emerge as social avengers and occasionally as troublemakers; the Soviets are ready to launch nukes at the United States (I guess that part is familiar); and blimps circle the skies for no apparent reason. It’s 1985, but it feels like the 2019 of Blade Runner.

Watchmen begins like most noir stories: in the rain with a grim voiceover narration. The voice is Rorschach, a gravel-throat superhero detective. His face is covered with a mask stained with mutating, but symmetrical, inkblots — I kept trying to notice a pattern or maybe recurring shapes to no avail. Rorschach is tracking down leads on a murdered superhero, a retired weapons expert and deadbeat named Comedian, who was thrown out a window from a height I wouldn’t recommend jumping from. His investigation leads him to other superheroes: hip brunette Silk Spectre, a Clark Kentish dweeb who used to be Nite Owl, the billionaire conglomerate Ozymandias, and Dr. Manhattan, a glowing-blue transcendentalist who might actually be God, or maybe just his proxy.

These characters — with exception to Dr. Manhattan; more on him later — are not super as we might think of superheroes. They have no special abilities, no mutated DNA, no comet crystals or krypton allergies. They’re more or less like Batman: inventive gadget designers, lethal in a brawl and all-around street smart. The fact that the masked crimefighters co-exist with normal everyday folks is apparently what made the graphic novel so compelling. I wasn’t so compelled with the idea here, mainly because the superhero ideals don’t really exist. They talk about truth, justice and the American way, but they don’t actually go out and live under that credo. Their whole routine feels like a fetish game of dress-up, one that they hardly take serious. When Silk Spectre and Nite Owl do return to their superhero moonlighting, all they can muster is a post-coitus jailbreak for the ever-deranged and now maskless Rorschach, who tells the inmates, “I’m not locked in here with you; you’re locked in here with me.” The scene is fun, but it accentuates that there’s no dynamic between who these people are and what they represent.

I’ve yet to mention a story arc, which is intentional since it’s so often abandoned for all the comic minutiae. The plot, though, involves the murder of Comedian and the devious implications behind it. Rorschach, the only one who senses a nefarious scheme, pushes forward even as the film skids into everyone’s origin stories, which might be effective tangents in a film with more focus or maybe a shorter running time (165 minutes). Instead the film spins out of control with each new series of flashbacks, some of which reveal how Vietnam was won (Dr. Manhattan microwaved the North Vietnamese Army into gibs) and others that provide us with the emotional anchor points of the characters’ lives (Rorschach killing a child abductor). All this is going on while the end game, which might be nuclear war with the Russkies, draws closer with no clear path through the nonsense.

This leads us into Watchmen’s most glaring error: Dr. Manhattan, probably one of the most poorly written superheroes ever written onto a screen. (I’ve since read Roger Ebert’s review, and was confounded as to why he didn’t scrutinize this blue guy more.) Here’s a character that draws comparisons to deity, yet is so consistently stupid that I think he was married to Nick Lachey for several years. He has the power to obliterate every nuclear weapon on the planet, yet he teleports himself and his ever-present wiener to Mars where he meditates on a glass spaceship because … well, because why the hell not. And when the doomsday clock is about to strike for mankind, he pukes poetry about the human condition and asks rhetorical philosophical questions that contradict everything that’s been established from the simplest metaphysical level right on up. This is a misguided character in a chronically misguided movie.

And seriously, enough of his glowing balls. It reminds me of that Film Snob entry on “film vs. movie”: A movie is where you see a woman’s bare breasts. A film is where you see Harvey Keitel’s penis. It doesn’t say anything about glowing genitalia; maybe in the next edition.

Penises aside, Watchmen is thematically confused, if not altogether morally bankrupt. Dr. Manhattan, and those he colludes with, actually make a case for killing millions to save billions. Only in a story this convoluted and preposterous would the characters be denied other choices. The fact that this movie even offers the choice proves that it’s edgy and daring, but to what cost? It sacrifices humanity for the characters’ egos, and that’s unforgivable in a superhero film.

This last development, set in an Arctic lair of all places, reminded me of two films: First, Sophie’s Choice, where a woman is told to pick one of her two children to die in the Holocaust. And another, Fail-Safe, where Americans willingly nuke New York City to pacify the Soviets and stop an impending World War III. Both films offer their characters horrific choices, but we can sympathize with their dilemmas because they’re not omnipotent beings who act on their quantum subconscious (i.e. Manhattan), but real people with real hopes and fears. We sympathize because we respect the path that led to their choices. The audience is not given that much freedom in Watchmen, a movie that mandates our sympathy, yet never earns it.

The others superheroes aren’t so bad, though: Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson) plays a retired doofus well enough, complete with giant glasses and ill-fitting suits; Silk Spectre (Malin Ackerman, whose pluckiness I admired in The Hearbreak Kid) is both leggy and curvy in just the right proportions; and Rorschach seems to have a warrior’s code and maybe even morals under that smearing mask of his. Rorschach is played by Bad News Bear Jackie Early Haley, who’s so terrific that I was left craving for his own movie away from everyone else.

I’ll just admit it: I hated this story. I hated the way it manipulated the characters into choices. And I hated the way it held itself in such high regard, as if it just assumed it were the coolest kid on the block without having to prove itself. Especially infuriating is the way it mythologized Watchmen’s flat, vacuous plot; give me Dark Knight’s three-dimensional mythology any day of the week. Director Zack Snyder (300), who honored the graphic novel by turning nearly every comic panel into a frame within his movie, is a skilled storyteller; it’s just unfortunate this story is so unfulfilling.

I also admit that I loved the rock ’n’ roll soundtrack — with Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel — and the high-octane action editing over it. Also spectacular are the visual effects: Nite Owl’s impressive bird jet, the electric field generator that creates god-like superheroes, Rorschach’s mask, and Dr. Manhattan’s array of explosion and teleportation tricks. Many of the effects are one-offs, little blink-and-you’ll-miss moments sprinkled throughout. One of them shows Manhattan’s circulatory system suspended in the air. Another has him analyzing an exploded view of a tank, as if every piece were pulled apart simultaneously. Visually, Watchmen is incredible. But just visually.

Does any of this Watchmen bashing matter, though? Probably not, simply because the hype has already been built and reversing it is something even Dr. Manhattan couldn’t accomplish (assuming he’s not on Venus when we’re looking for him). Comic books fans will love Watchmen, not because it’s worth loving, but because they’ve been programmed to love it, as if questioning its authenticity were a high crime against their beloved comics. Non-comic fans will enjoy the pop-art imagery, but they'll agree with this: Watchmen is overrated.

This review originally ran in the West Valley View March 6, 2009.