Who Watches The Watchmen And, More Importantly, Why?

[Warning: Spoilers ahead]

"Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again"

I went and saw the Watchmen film on opening weekend and thought it would be a worthwhile exercise to write a critique on it from the perspective of someone who had read and loved the graphic novel. While trying to compose my piece, though, something hit me that fans had been asking ever since the adaptation had been announced: Why was an adaptation necessary? Watchmen was a complete, self-contained work. It occurred to me that most of the issues I have with the film are concessions that had to be made for the material to be more accessible for film audiences.

But it's more than just that.

I actually found many of the changes made a lot of sense in the context of adapting Watchmen to a movie. For example, the change in Ozymandias' plan from a fake alien invasion to framing Dr. Manhattan worked better, particularly considering the other changes made to the film, and had a stronger connection to characters and previous events. Material that was cut made sense, like the Tales of the Black Freighter sub-story, and the visuals and dialogue were carefully reproduced for the big screen.

"And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence."

Merely reproducing the technical aspects of the graphic novel does not ensure a good adaptation, though. What do I mean by that? I'm getting at the heart of the issue, here: part of what makes Watchmen Watchmen, part of what gives it its Watchmen-ness was that it is a graphic novel, and not a movie, or an album, or a poem, or any other number of media. Watchmen's identity is tied to the fact that it is a graphic novel and not anything else.

To adapt Watchmen, or any other work for that matter, into a different medium is to lose some of what made it worth adapting in the first place. I feel that there is a common misconception that plot is all that's important when doing an adaptation. As long as the story can be told effectively in the new medium, the adaptation is a success. This is incorrect. To go back to Watchmen, part of what made it an attractive candidate for adaptation was its critical acclaim and popularity. Reasons for this included how it turned the superhero story on its head and was one of the first comics to study the psyches of people who would dress up in costumes and fight crime. It was one of the first to legitimize comics as a medium capable of producing mature and adult themes. This is part of what makes Watchmen special. Now how do you go about translating that into a movie? Why should the movie care about all that comic-related baggage?

The short answer is that movies don't really care about that. What studios and directors and screenwriters want is for the story and the tone to be preserved. Anything beyond that is immaterial to them, and maybe even unseen. One of the best examples of where the film and the comic diverged in an important and telling way is how the characters are shown to have abilities beyond that of a normal person, though it is never explicitly stated. In fact, the movie makes pains to show these as normal people, except while in combat. When fighting, they make impossible leaps, kick thugs 30 feet in the air, and punch through walls. This undermines one of the most important aspects of the graphic novel: the fact that these are just ordinary people who happen to feel compelled to dress silly and fight crime. In the comic this was a way of subverting expectations and making a very meta comment on the medium, but that importance is no longer present in the film. Even had the film and comic been the same in this regard the impact would not have been as great in the movie. There isn't the same history of superhero stories in film as in comics, and so the statement and subversion lose their meaning. Cinema at this point in history is at a very different place than comics were when Watchmen came out. Films are not struggling to be legitimized and there is not an overwhelming drought of inward-looking reflections on the medium as was the case with comics in the mid-80's.

Now what's interesting is that these changes that are due to the inherent properties of the media involved can also have an effect on the things that filmmakers try so hard to preserve, things like story. Story or plot are typically very portable aspects. They are easily translated from medium to medium. Looking at things like that is looking at them in a vacuum, though. Even the story is contextualized by the elements inherent to the medium in any work. An example of this is how my point from above, the absence of super powers in the graphic novel, can affect the audience's reaction to the story. The story in both was roughly the same, but the part where Ozymandias catches the bullet is an enormous moment in the book. In the movie, we had just seen 2 1/2 hours of these heroes doing the superhuman and so this seemed almost tame in comparison.

"With orders to identify
To clarify, and classify
Scramble in the summer sky
99 red balloons go by"

Watchmen the graphic novel is a landmark comic because it revolutionized comics. It is also very much a product of its medium. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons intentionally included things into it that could only be effectively done in the format, such as including old newspaper clippings and excerpts from books within the Watchmen universe.

Watchmen the film is important because, despite its failings, it did manage to capture much of what makes the graphic novel so enjoyable. It manages to include some of the important ideas from the comic, which is in turn helping to legitimize the superhero genre in Hollywood following Iron Man and The Dark Knight last year. So maybe the movie isn't so different from the graphic novel after all.

And you know what?

No matter how good or how bad the adaptation is, no matter how different the movie and the book are, all those things don't matter because I will always have the original graphic novel. Nothing has taken that away from me.

"There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah"

Addendum

Briefly continuing from my last post, I'd like to clarify that Braid and Flower are only two examples of games trying to explore new emotional and linguistic areas of games. In fact, two developers attempting to do this through small, indie games are Jason Rohrer and Rod Humble.

Are Braid and Flower Part of Gaming's New Wave?

In late 1950's France, there was a group of young film critics writing for the journal Cahiers du cinéma who rejected the "tradition of quality" of films at the time. That is, films made end-to-end by professionals with each frame meticulously planned, all in service of a narrative. These critics, however, recognized cinema as a primarily audiovisual medium and resented the strict rules of style and the narrow lexicon exemplified in the tradition of quality. They realized that there was a vastly under-explored language that was unique to film and not tied to narrative which would allow for more subtle and expressionistic works. The French New Wave arrived in 1959 when Alain Resnais and François Truffaut put their theories into practice by releasing Hiroshima, Mon Amour and The 400 Blows, respectively. These films, along with others in the New Wave that followed, challenged convention and pushed the medium forward in ways not seen since the rise of Italian Neorealism in the mid 1940's.

In the past 6 months, we have seen the release of Braid on XBLA & PC from designer Jonathan Blow and artist David Hellman and Flower on PSN from indie developer thatgamecompany. There are many superficial similarities between these games and the films of the New Wave, such as the shoestring budgets and small production teams, but the resemblances run much deeper. In the same way that the French New Wave attempted to discover a language unique to film, Braid and Flower attempt to discover a language unique to games. In the case of the New Wave, this language of film allowed directors to engage audiences critically and philosophically in ways that were not possible before that point.

With Braid, Jonathan Blow examines themes of love, loss, and memory while attempting to reconcile the often-conflicting aspects of story and gameplay. Blow has been an outspoken critic of the current state of videogames, claiming that even the most polished and acclaimed examples (Half Life 2, Grand Theft Auto 4, and Bioshock are singled out) suffer from a dichotomy between the narrative structure and the gameplay. I believe the problem is caused by developers not understanding the underlying language of games that is being communicated to gamers. When a game's narrative tells a player something, it is often through the use of expository dialogue in a cut scene, or rather, using the language of cinema or literature. When it comes time for the player to actually play the game the feedback the player experiences through interacting with the game's environment is telling them something else altogether. This is the language of games talking to the player.

Braid was meticulously designed to allow for harmony between both elements. Blow made care to ensure that the game's narrative, as seen in expository elements in the form of optional books presented to the player, is shown and supported through actual gameplay as well. Blow achieves this by implementing a different time-altering mechanic in each world that acts as the crux to solving the puzzles in each level. These mechanics also double as metaphors for each specific chapter in the story of Braid.

I suspect that during the New Wave, directors were able to successfully craft films using the new found language of cinema without completely losing audiences because audiences were already subconsciously aware of the language. Although never made explicit before then, I think that the fundamental language the New Wave directors were attempting to use was not foreign to the majority of film audiences. With videogames, that is not the case. The industry has not yet reached a point where there is a common set of underlying conventions and style native to games that is familiar to all audiences. It is my suspicion that this is why Jonathan Blow chose to make Braid in the form of a puzzle-platformer: because most audiences are familiar with Mario (Braid also includes several homages to Mario, a technique also pioneered during the New Wave). Since Mario is so ubiquitous, Blow was able to both create a new and unique and experimental game while also maintaining a level of accessibility. While this is perfectly logical from a business standpoint, and while Braid turned out to be an incredible game, it also lessens the artistic ambitions of the project. Blow himself has talked about the difficulties in scaling this sort of narrative-gameplay harmony to larger, more complex games.

Flower, on the other hand, is a game that is more ambitious than Braid in that it demands more of the player, but as a result, the game also respects the player more than the vast majority of games. At first glance, Flower appears to be an experience that would be casual-friendly: it has simple controls, very few punitive elements, and an attractive aesthetic. This assumption is rendered invalid soon after you give the controls to someone not immersed in the gaming culture and industry. Many non-gamers just do not "get it." I think that this is caused by several things, the first of which being that there is very little hand-holding. There is no text to read, no tutorials to complete, no manual to refer to. The controls are shown simply and with pictures, and the player is never explicitly told what they are supposed to do, or why.

This leads to my second reason: non-gamers are uncomfortable playing a game with this little direction given to them. I said before that Flower respects players. It does this by not assuming, as most games do, that you do not know how to play games. The assumption in Flower is that you, the player, are familiar with games and are able to figure out the various pieces. This also jives with Flower's theme of exploration; players are left to not only explore the environment in the game, but explore the parameters of the game itself (I would talk about Noby Noby Boy here, but I will save that for another post).

As with Braid, Flower attempts to give players an experience that is unique to games and could not be replicated in any other medium through the use of gaming's native language. Genova Chen has stated that at thatgamecompany, they are interested in exploring parts of the emotional spectrum not normally seen in games, and that is evident in Flower. Flower's narrative is told through audiovisual cues, as games are an audiovisual medium in part, and through the use of gameplay and player interaction with the environment. In the second to last level, to create the feeling of depression and hopelessness not only is the environment made to look dark and foreboding, but punitive elements are introduced into the gameplay and the sounds caused by the player interacting with the environment, usually pleasant, are made discordant. This adds a another layer to the experience, another way in which the game is able to provoke a response in the player.

I would argue that Flower is the game that, to date, makes the most effective and ambitious use of the language of games. The final level is so effective exactly because it is a culmination of everything the player has worked towards up to that point. The feeling of empowerment is so overwhelming because of the restrictions made on the player previously. This would not be possible in another medium simply because it is using words that only games can speak.

Braid and Flower were made possible because of the advent of digital distribution just as the films of the New Wave were made possible because of the advent of the hand held 35mm camera. I hope that the Gaming New Wave proves to be as successful and influential as the French New Wave, and that when we look back in 50 years, we can recognize Braid and Flower as Important Games.

Introduction

Welcome to my blog. I'm fairly new at this, so bear with me as I try to update this space on a semi-regular basis with posts that aren't entirely inane.

I'll be using this blog to post essays, rants, random thoughts, and anything else that catches my interest. Content will most likely consist of posts about videogames, movies, music, or pop culture in general.

Enjoy your stay.