Twenty-three years ago, ‘Watchmen’ burst onto the comic scene and was instantly praised as a masterpiece by the already acclaimed genius Alan Moore. Last week, Zack Snyder, a director already famous for his adaptation of another comic, 300, attempted to adapt this dense and extremely long graphic novel to the big screen. In many ways, his ‘Watchmen’ succeeded.
It has truly been a long journey, but Alan Moore’s masterpiece has finally been brought to a larger audience. In the last 23 years, ‘Watchmen’ has been shuffled from studio to studio, with four different visionary directors committed to film it, only to declare it unfilmable. And throughout this struggle to bring his epic to screen, Moore has held to his radically anti-Hollywood attitude, refusing to be credited and expressing nothing but contempt for the film.
He should, however, be complimented. The film basically used the art of the graphic novel as a storyboard and the speech bubbles for the script. Which is a good thing, mind you, since Moore’s writing really can’t be beat.
However, for those who aren’t fans of the comic, things might get a little confusing. After all, the story is an alternate timeline that branched off in the 1940s with the advent of ‘Masked Heroes.’ The tremendous opening credits certainly help, but those who don’t know their Dr. Manhattan from their Silk Spectre should know that the film centers around a second generation of masked heroes who fight crime, or used to, since 10 years before the start of the film they were banned from taking justice into their own hands.
The only one of them to have super powers, however, is Dr. Manhattan, a glowing blue man whose omnipotence and control over space, time and matter have made him drift apart from the world. There is also Rorshach, whose disturbed past made him into an unforgiving adversary of crime, Ozymandias, the smartest man in the world who’s affinity or ancient cultures influenced his crime fighting persona, Silk Spectre, the hot girl in the group who was pressured into crime fighting by her mother, and Nite Owl, the down and out techie whose inventions helped him fight bad guys back in the day.’
The story is blown open at the start with the death of the Comedian, a brutal man whose bleak understanding of society drove him to parody it with his persona, a murder that starts Rorshach into investigating a possible mask killer. While the Comedian’s death is unravelled, the viewer gets thrown into a Web of flashbacks, side stories, deception and lies, all of which culminate into one of the most shocking endings you will ever see.
Any summary of ‘Watchmen’ is predestined to not fully demonstrate the full power of the story, so I will leave it at that, but know my condensed version left most of the story out.
The characters, however, are some of the most developed you’ll ever see. Unfortunately, the movie fails to fully explain each one. For instance, Dr. Manhattan experiences all time at once, which is nearly impossible for a film to express, but less so for a graphic novel to. And in his haste to reach the ultimate climax, Snyder has left some important character development out.
The actors chosen for the movie were not A-list stars. Malin Akerman, almost exclusively known as that hot blonde in ‘Harold and Kumar,’ played the Silk Spectre without much depth. Jeffery Dean Morgan, who was on ‘Grey’s Anatomy ‘for a time, played’ the Comedian but not very well. Billy Crudup, who was the guitar player in ‘Almost Famous,’ played Dr. Manhattan well, despite being blue the whole time. Jackie Earle Haley, who played the punk kid in the original ‘Bad News Bears,’ was probably the best as Rorshach, even though he had a mask on his face the whole movie. Finally Matthew Goode and Patrick Wilson played Ozymandias and Nite Owl respectively, but did not bring their characters to life as well as the others. Perhaps if A-list stars had been chosen, the acting would have been better.
Snyder, who thankfully scaled back on his signature slow-motion fight scenes, kept the film together for the most part, though the movie got off track a bit in the middle. He also changed the ending of the graphic novel. While most fans would normally cry blasphemy and stone Snyder in the town square, he actually pulled it off. I would have been the first to throw a stone in this case, but his ending was able to bring really cool special effects and shocking twists while staying as faithful as it could to the original.
In conclusion, ‘Watchmen’ is one of the better novels you will ever read, and the movie will bring it to a larger audience with style and reverence to the original. However, I would recommend everyone to watch the movie and read the book, because both will blow your mind.
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