Hey, folks; your old pal Troy Brownfield here. I just wanted to
introduce you to Isabelle Burtan. Isabelle is a new writer at
ShotgunReviews.com, having recently been introduced to us by other old
pals of yours, Lucas and Janelle Siegel. Isabelle recently wrote a
piece for us that you might like, entitled “Here’s to the Ladies: A Convention Analysis”,
which covered her first comic convention visit. At any rate, we thought
it might be interesting to see what Isabelle, a Harvard grad but
near-virgin when it comes to comics, made of the trailer for Watchmen. Her reaction follows . . .
Oh, and yes, we guarantee that Isabelle is a real person, not a comics
pro, media person or other pretending to be someone they’re not in
order to make some point or other. Isabelle Burtan is her real name.
I sat there poking my wise and learned friend—“Why is Billy Crudup blue?” I whispered—she just gave a knowing, but annoyed smile, and we went back to anticipating The Dark Knight.
After the movie (=WOW. ‘nuff said.), I repeated the question. She
smiled and looked down and said, “I dunno how the movie’s going to be,
but the book Watchmen is literature. It was up for the Pulitzer Prize. Read it.”
I knew the trailer left me wondering and squirming a little under its
dark eye, but before I actually find out what this whole new devilry is
about, I wanted to see what I could gather from watching the trailer.
As someone completely new to the world of comic books, I watch it with
the eyes of a child. A whiny child who really wants someone to help
explain to her how a giant floating clear glass astrolabe-type thingee
relates to how people won’t be saved? (Sigh.) Must read it. But first:
The trailer opens simply enough—grey Warner Bros. and DC Comics credits
imply “ooh, dark and twisted,” as does the rhythmic music and building
violins. Billy Crudup is trapped in some kind of pressure chamber,
looking very concerned, wearing typical business-man type clothes.
Flash to the inside, and the chamber is a possessed tanning booth,
shooting electric sparks. The audience is told “In 2009” and a coolly
panicking Crudup starts to be attacked by mutant static electricity,
assumingly from the tanning booth, not a crowd of demi-god 4th graders
with balloons. As we are informed that “Everything We Know Will
Change,” with the shots behind the words echoing the mechanized nature
of the music, all gears and urban grit, Crudup is in distress. The
tanning booth builds in energy (okay, it’s likely not a tanning booth
at this point, but some kind of scary technology, which with my basic
knowledge of superheroes, Crudup himself likely invented) and all of
his atoms disperse as he silently screams. Besides the pain, there is
rage in his face, more than would accompany an “oops, I left the
magical tanning booth thingee on high again!” and the sheer force of
the supernova and the music make me think “oh jeez, this guy’s screwed.”
As the sly sexiness of Billy Corgan’s vocals creep up with “The Beginning is the End is the Beginning” (originally from “Batman Forever,
but better suited to this creepily un-campy darkness), slow black fades
bring up a futuristic UFO/submarine emerging from an urban sea. Another
slow black fade and it's a collapsing building fire brought by what is
revealed to be a beautiful woman with a solid straightening iron,
looking “fierce.” Another fade and it’s some kind of Batman-like
costumed figure, complete with latex headgear and giant cape, flying
through some sort of prison? Then a woman flies through glass, and a
man who may have played an elf in LOTR wearing another latex costume
stands in front of tvs, his face a cross between “why, hello….” And
“WHAT?! What are you looking at?”
Back to the blue electricity knocking a janitor away, then the ship
again, then weird sock-puppet face with inkblots on it and a
hairspray-can fire (intriguingly lame-seeming weapon?), then hot girl,
then Crudup (still the only face I recognize), glowing
blue-and-naked-and-with-no-pupils-and-THREE-of-him, a funeral, the
American flag, war scenes, a Rambo-type Robert Downey Jr.-on-‘roids guy
with a cigar and a gun, and crowd protests as Corgan sings “we can
watch the world devoured in its pain,” and then a huge storefront
explosion.
I get an overwhelming sense that the music lyrics mean what they say,
that this is Kingdom Come, that the “world is blown” if you will, and
that yes, oh yes, this is the darkest hour of perhaps not only one
city, but the Earth. Besides the completely overpowering “Wow.
Wait—What?!” unruly flow of these scenes that makes me want to poke
every geek I know, I am mesmerized by the content’s presentation:
rhythmic and silent, firmly dark and dystopic. And then I want to cry
all of a sudden. Yes, the trailer was hammering it home, but the dull
force with which it keeps trodding into this dark place shows that this
Watchmen
world is pain. These aren’t the superheroes I know—they’re their
dark-side stereotypes—and I don’t quite know how Crudup multiplied
himself but I wager that the intensity of such a power is threatening
to the known universe, not just the guy who cuts him off in traffic.
And then the Vin Diesel-like rendition of: “God help us all.”
Boom and yes Crudup is ridiculously powerful, then making
out with hot girl, and as I learn that the “Most Celebrated Graphic
Novel of All Time” is what is being illustrated before me, more
typical-seeming fight scenes are shown, then an angry Batman-bird-like
guy screaming, and then Crudup destroying an Asian peasant mercilessly
with Miss Saigon-helicopters in the background.
Okay, yes, there is a war, and I maybe gather that Mr. Crudup is
messing with the order of the universe (and perhaps the order of some
foreign war) enough to make other superheroes—and street
protestors—angry. Perhaps he is the enemy entirely, and the world is
rising up defenselessly against him. Then, the scenes are all
pitch-black night and some guy, as more images of the ink-blot/sock
puppet-face and the spaceship show up, the protestors seem to be
rallying against the somewhat happy-looking spaceship, or perhaps the
spaceship (and its owner?) are leading the rebellion? No
wait—Vin-Diesel-man tells it straight: “The world will look up and
shout ‘Save us’—and I’ll whisper: ‘No.’”
Well…jeez, thanks.
And then, as the clicking and slamming of the music slows down, an epic
glass astrolabe coming out of scorched earth—did the End of Days
occur??—as hot girl and Crudup float on it all casual-like, just
another day at the destruction of all humanity, and we don’t really
care, muaha-ha. But it’s strange: there are no “muaha-has!” There
doesn’t seem to be any revelry in destruction, save for a cold, dark
acceptance and lack of impetus to stop it. In fact, no one seems very
happy, no heroines seem to be in distress, and the anger of the heroes,
even masked, seems to choke the hope out of pretty much everything.
Just as the trailer pushes painfully along into confusion and chaos and
epic endings, with the Smashing Pumpkins as the lullabye, so do the
people shown contain this resignation to doomsday. That makes the whole
thing even darker—aren’t heroes supposed to save us? Can they really
just watch and do nothing? Is this trailer just one side of the story,
or—as I suspect is more accurate—is the whole story one big long end
(that is the beginning, that is, the end)?
The only things I know for certain are that 1) blue does flatter
Crudup, 2) the one lady superhero can’t take that latex suit off
easily, and 3) “The Watchmen” are perhaps not the good guys. Dammit, if
the trailer is any indication, this is not going to be a joyous ride
I’m going on, reading the graphic novel. Of course, toss dark and
twisted and annoyingly cryptic and I’m pretty much sold, but something
about the epic and understated brutality of this world and these
heroes—who seem more human than super—is as compelling as looking at a
train wreck. I want to flinch and look away, spare myself the trauma,
but part of me feels responsible for witnessing the horror of others,
for testifying to the possibilities of human experience. And the
deepest part of me might even like watching.
The trailer may be brief, it may be a slight ball of confusion, but the
tone it sets makes me feel like when it comes to reading Watchmen,
I have the same mix of emotions. Though I do just want to poke a friend
and get the whole story, I can’t. I need to bear witness. I need to
understand the darkness, the end, the chaos. Perhaps I want to watch?
