The Only Movie I Care to See in 2009

2007 was a hopeful year on many fronts. I moved out of an oppressive house where my roommates smoked pot incessantly and hogged the television and still expected me to chip in for the cable. I moved into a community house where I had lived the previous year with a really fun and caring group of people who shared my values.

I got to see Grindhouse with all my favorite people, three times, the first time on my birthday. I was pleased by both movies and the fake trailers.

I spent the entire summer working at a Christian camp teaching kids about Jesus and how to shoot guns and bows. I also met 6 of my favorite people in the entire world: Jon Ault, Ben Prothe, Ben Guiles, Eric Anderson, Beezer and Tyler Crumrine.

I then began my fifth and final year of college the following fall and found a really great deal on rent in Kent with 3 cool guys. Then the Oscar movies came out. No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Into the Wild, Michael Clayton, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, all good movies.

In 2008, however, the Oscar fodder was not as impressive or deserving of the recognition. Slumdog Millionaire does not appeal to me in the slightest way. The only nominee that I am remotely interested in is The Wrestler starring Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei. Rourke is an amazing actor, an icon in my eyes, and Marisa Tomei is gorgeous. I'm not particularly interested in the story, but I have a feeling I'll like it if I give it a chance.

As far as 2009 movies go, there is only one that I am looking forward to: The Watchmen.

I intend on seeing it on opening day and hopefully a few times so that I see it with all of my best friends, even if it takes more than one trip to do so, like with Grindhouse. I worry, though, much as I did with Grindhouse, that it might not be as good as it looks. As a matter of fact, it will either be epically perfect (a five star movie) or a huge disappointment (3-stars or lower). Even if it is half-way decent, that will not be good enough. The greatest graphic novel in the history of graphic novels deserves to be made into a perfect movie.

I am genuinely worried that it will not be as good as it needs to be in order to justify the story being put into the film medium. My first concern is the director, Zack Snyder. He has the Dawn of the Dead bastardized remake under his belt along with 300, which was not as disappointing but disappointing nonetheless.

My second concern is the history of comics being transferred into films. To date, nearly every comic book movie has been complete garbage or at the very best a failure of justice to its source, even if it was well acted and directed. The only exceptions I can think of off hand are Batman, The Dark Knight, Iron-Man, V for Vendetta, Mystery Men (don't hate), Sin City and the first Ninja Turtles movie (which is underrated). I guess I should say superhero movies, instead of comic book movies, as many non-superhero graphic novels have been made into decent movies, such as Ghost World. But there is something about superheroes and the mythopoeia behind them that makes them hard to put onto the silver screen in a way that respects both the film medium and the subject matter.

If The Watchmen is not a perfect movie, it will be, in both my mind and I imagine in the minds of many others, a bad movie. Period. The film rights to the story were bought by 20th Century Fox almost as soon as the graphic novels were released in 1986, which means they had 22 years to conceive the perfect adaptation of the series. That's a very long time for refinement, but it's also a lot of time for it to get totally fucked up too.

It took Hollywood 13 years to get One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest produced and frankly, as a fan of the book, I can't say the movie is a good representation of the story. As a matter of fact, I believe that the fact it took so long for the movie to be made and that the story was '70s-ized by the film kept it from being as powerful as the book. I just hope that what makes The Watchmen what it is as a graphic novel were not lost over the years and in translation to film as they were with Cuckoo's Nest.

My hopefulness for the movie is a tempered one. I can only hope that my enthusiasm can be let wild after seeing it. Especially since it's the only movie I have any anticipation for until next year.