Watchmen (2009)
Directed by Zack Snyder
Written by David Hayter, Alex Tse
Starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Billy Crudup, Jackie Earl Haley, Malin Akerman, Patrick Wilson
Release Date March 6th, 2009
Published March 6th, 2009
In his review of Watchmen critic David Poland nails one of the major issues with the movie. Paraphrasing Mr. Poland: Watchmen is like someone recounting a funny anecdote that ends with 'I guess you had to be there'. For anyone who isn't a member of the Watchmen fanboy cult this movie is a meaningless morass of superhero arcana.
For those more familiar with but not in fealty to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons legendary comics series it is a dishearteningly dull and dreary filmgoing experience that takes up 2 hours and45 minutes without providing any insight beyond Dr. Manhattan's desperate need for a pair of shorts.
Set in an alternate reality 1984 where with the help of superheroes like Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) and The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) America won the war in Vietnam and Richard Nixon remains President, Watchmen is a desolate fantasy of cold war tension and gritty urban cityscape.
The death of the Comedian, killed in his apartment, thrown through a plate glass window to the street below, sets the plot in motion. One his fellow former heroes, Rorschach thinks he senses a pattern beginning. The Comedian's murder leads him to believe someone is afte masked heroes.
Whether the motive is political, the Comedian has checkered history as one of Nixon's favorite right wing commandos, or something else, Rorschach is convinced the Comedian won't be the last target. He sets about warning former members of the hero group the Watchmen.
First up is his old pal Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson) who seems dubious of his old friends' suspicions, but is soon himself passing warnings on to Ozymandias aka the world's smartest man who is more forceful in his dismissal. Next up for Rorschach is the super couple of Laurie "Silk Spectre 2" Jupiter (Malin Akerman) and Dr. Manhattan who have more important things to worry about.
Manhattan is the only one of the group with any actual super powers, he was the subject of an nuclear accident that turned him into a blue ball of energy in human form by his sheer will. He cannot be killed so why should he worry about a mask killer. For her part, Laurie is more selfishly concerned with her growing disconnect with Manhattan whose inhumanity grows more by the day.
She is drawn to Nite Owl for reasons only she knows and soon the two have taken up with each other as Manhattan faces personal exile to Mars after disturbing accusations. Comedian dead, Manhattan leaving earth and a subsequent failed attempt on the life of Ozymandias, further inflames Rorschach toward uncovering a stunning conspiracy that effects more than just the supers.
I have read Watchmen the graphic novel twice and was both times electrified by Moore's urgent storytelling and Dave Gibbons striking images. I don't buy into Watchmen as one of history's greatest bits of fiction but as a rollicking superhero yarn, it is a seminal work of the genre, a work that has shaped much of what came after it in the medium.
Director Zack Snyder seems to be of the opinion that he adapting the bible for the big screen and offers the treatment only a fellow zealot could appreciate. His love for the comic supercedes the judgements that needed to be made to turn the comic into a movie. The religious zeal blinding Snyder to the necessity for cuts and changes that could have made Watchmen something of his own.
Then again, Snyder is best known for being a conduit for the mass reproduction of other people's genius. His debut feature was a modest update but mostly homage to horror master George Romero's Dawn of the Dead. His next feature was an overly literal replication of George Miller's swords and sandals comic 300.
The success of 300 is what brought Snyder to Watchmen after so many other, more talented and unique directors failed to get it going. Terry Gilliam and Paul Greengrass head an impressive list of filmmakers once attached to this quickly aging bit of cold war superhero suspense but they could never quite get a handle on Moore's prose or compete with Gibbons' visionary squares.
Snyder for his part fails just as they did, it's just that his failure is actually on the screen. The difference however is that where Gilliam and Greengrass wanted to make Watchmen with their own stamp, Snyder is only interested in using the comic as storyboard and replicate the words and images using real actors.
Snyder is like some rich dilletante playing chess with live pieces. His Watchmen amounts to little more than a whole lot of gaudy showing off. Given a budget in the hundreds of millions, Snyder is playing poker with house money to bring his favorite comic book to life before his eyes. He's like Richie Rich hiring the Denver Broncos to play football with his pals in the backyard.
That might sound like fun but it plays like one fanboy showing off for a bunch of other fanboys and that will do nothing to satisfy those not already in the Watchmen cult. Trust me, if you do not absolutely love Watchmen. If you are not slightly buzzed by the idea of Rorschach coming to bloody life on screen or the thought of Dr. Manhattan blowing up the Vietnamese with the wave of his hand, you have no reason to see this movie.
It's not that there aren't good things about Watchmen, it's just that the good things are as pointless and overbearing as the bad stuff. Jackie Earl Haley for instance is astonishingly compelling as Rorschach. He could have been good in just about any other movie, I assume, Watchmen is merely the role in front of him and he makes the most of it.
The rest of the cast is pretty hit and miss. Crudup effectively captures Dr. Manhattan's otherworldly disconnectedness and Patrick Wilson is not bad as a Bruce Wayne post Batman character who finds life purposeless and dull without his alter-ego.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Carla Gugino hover somewhere in the middle between the good of Crudup and Wilson and the utter disasters that are Malin Akerman and Matthew Goode. Morgan struggles only because most of his character motivation is cut for time. Gugino as the original Silk Spectre is a functionary character who only exists because the plot kinda requires her to.
As Akerman's mother she allegedly pushed her daughter into being a hero. That however, will not be as clear to those who haven't read the book. Akerman tosses off her character's deepest motivation to be a hero in a toss off conversation with Wilson's Nite Owl as they prepare for some kinky masked love making.
The romantic subplot is also an ineffective holdover from the novel. Short shrifted by time constraints, it means little in the context of the central plot and takes up a lot of time for what amounts to some mild well shot female nudity. It doesn't help that Akerman, under an awful wig, is less expressive than Rorschach's masked moving ink blots.
Matthew Goode as Ozymandias is handicapped by the fact that Alan Moore in the comic seemed to find him the least interesting character. His back story is dull and his super power, the world's smartest man is mostly left off screen. He does seem to have super strength, at least in the late fight scenes, but under a David Spade haircut, he doesn't exactly cut an intimidating figure.
Maybe Ozymandias isn't supposed to be intimidating. Maybe that is beside the point but then why the fight scenes? Oh who cares. In the end, that is the real question. Who really cares? Beyond the Watchmen cult, the Watchmen movie will be a curiousity that likely will not linger on to far past opening weekend box office.
Among the cult, I can only hope that they find comfort in their fellow fanboy's indulgence of the thing they love so much. Otherwise we could have mass handwringing on the level of post Phantom Menace depression, a depression that lingers still for far too many basement dwellers.
