CinePhillyist Reviews... Watchmen

It certainly begins promisingly enough. Rather than starting things off with a long chunk of narration, explaining in dull exposition where we are and what's going on, the film instead uses a brilliant opening credits sequence, consisting of a series of wonderful, wordless tableau, to introduce us to Watchmen's parallel Earth and give us a quick visual summary of its history—especially the history of its superheroes. Best of all, the song playing on the soundtrack throughout is Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'." The soundtrack in general consists mostly of classic pop songs; a lot of them work, but some are just inappropriate—for instance, I really didn't need to hear Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" during the long, drawn out, slow motion sex scene. (And I'll have more to say on long, drawn out, slow motion things later.)

Watchmen takes place in a 1985 when Nixon is still president of the United States. In this world, costumed crime fighters actually existed (and once even formed a group known as the Watchmen), but have since been outlawed, leading most of them to retire, and one or two to go underground or begin secret work for the government. Tensions between the US and the USSR are running high, and nuclear war seems inevitable. But America still has an ace in the hole: Dr. Manhattan, the only living super-powered human. He was once a physicist named Jon Osterman (Billy Crudup), but a lab accident transformed him into a glowing blue being with God-like powers. Dr. Manhattan helped the US win the Vietnam War and made many technological advances possible. Now he acts as a kind of deterrent to any who would consider attacking the United States.

The event that really kicks off the film's plot is the brutal murder of The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a costumed crime fighter who was secretly working for the government. Another crime fighter, the vicious paranoid psychopath Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), begins an investigation into The Comedian's death and becomes convinced very quickly that the murder is part of a dark plot to eliminate all the costumed crime fighters, perhaps in order to keep them from interfering with some even larger and more dangerous conspiracy. He seeks out his fellow heroes, partly to warn them of the danger, and partly to determine if they might be involved. First up is his old partner, Dan Dreiberg (Patrick Wilson), a timid, lonely nerd, and the second hero to bear the name Nite Owl; then comes Dr. Manhattan, as well as Manhattan's girlfriend, Laurie Jupiter (Malin Akerman), the second Silk Spectre (her mother Sally, played by Carla Gugino, was the first). Dreiberg passes Rorschach's warning on to Adrian Veidt (Matthew Goode), once the hero Ozymandias, now a successful businessman, and known as the smartest man on Earth. But it's not until Rorschach checks up on one of his old enemies, Edgar Jacobi (Matt Frewer), once known as Moloch the Mystic, that he starts to pick up the trail that will lead him to the terrible truth. In the process, the Watchmen reunite, the world is nearly torn apart, and many lives are lost.

The film is extremely faithful to the story, the words, the visuals, and the characters of the source material. Yes, certain subplots had to be cut out to save time, and the ending was drastically altered, probably for fear that audiences would find a giant alien squid a little hard to swallow. But something was always going to have to be cut out, and in general Snyder, and screenwriters David Hayter and Alex Tse, chose well what to keep and what to leave out. And as for the film's ending, it might be rather blasphemous to say it, but in some ways it actually makes more sense than the graphic novel's.

I was afraid Snyder would shy away from depicting the characters in all their broken and twisted glory—that he might even try to turn a character like Rorschach into a more traditional, Batman-like hero—but the film actually does a reasonably good job of showing us just how messed up these people are. Dreiberg could probably be a little chubbier, and Laurie a bit more shrill, but I'm not complaining too much about that; they're a little easier to take this way. And anyway it's still clear that not one of them is a well-adjusted human being, because what well-adjusted human being would put on a costume and a mask and go fight crime? What person could remain normal and human after gaining God-like powers and the ability to see all of his life—past, present, and future—simultaneously?

As far as the performances go, the only actor that I found a little disappointing was Billy Crudup. He sounds and acts less like a removed and enlightened being, and more like someone who just might be a little retarded. (As for all the controversy about Dr. Manhattan's blue, glowing penis... I don't really get it. Yes, it is a little jarring to see a penis just sitting there, nonchalantly, in the middle of a mainstream American movie. But it's just a penis. It's really not that big a deal.)

For fans of the graphic novel, there's much to enjoy. Just seeing the story and characters you know so well up on the big screen, moving around in full color, is exciting in and of itself. And there are many wonderful details in the background of each shot which further enrich the story and really bring it to life. (I particularly like that the quick shot of The Outer Limits was kept at the end, although I kind of wish they'd gone ahead and revealed that the episode that was playing was "The Architects of Fear," as Moore lifted part of the plot of the book from that episode. Then again, with the way the ending has changed, it wouldn't make as much sense.) For people who are not fans of the graphic novel... I'm afraid it may get a little confusing. Reading a book is naturally a longer, slower experience; you can sit down and take your time with it, so as the plot unravels you're able to take it all in. But the film is forced to move quickly and glaze over certain details, which may leave the uninitiated a bit lost.

"Quickly," as I use it here, is a relative term. The film's greatest sin is in its pacing and its length. Ironically, Snyder may have kept too much of the source material. The film just goes on and on, and more and more story keeps rolling out, until you're just exhausted. Part of the problem, of course, is Snyder's infamous love of slow motion (you know what I'm talking about if you saw his dreadful adaptation of 300). There is far too much of it in the film, especially during the drawn out action sequences. Other sequences, though not in slow motion, feel like they are. The second half of the movie seems particularly tired and slow, although the prison riot sequence—which features some of the best dialogue in the movie, courtesy of Rorschach ("You don't seem to understand. I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with me.")—is a highlight. The story also gets a bit cheesy and clumsy in the latter sections. It feels like a mistake, for instance, to introduce Veidt's antlered tiger Bubastis at the end of the film, with no explanation. This creature is featured throughout the book, so you have time to get used to him, and to slowly work out that he must be the product of advanced genetic engineering. In the movie, he comes completely out of left field and is nothing more than a confusing distraction that should have been discarded.

While he's sometimes too faithful to the book, at other times Snyder veers off course for no obvious reason. His worst offense comes near the end, when he has Nite Owl witness a death that he did not see in the book, and respond with the most tired of hero cliches: falling down on his knees and screaming, "No!" in rage and horror. What was the point of adding in such hackneyed posturing?

But as I look back on the film, I have to admit that overall it's a pretty effective adaptation of the graphic novel. It's entertaining, dramatic, moving, funny, exciting, and thought-provoking. It doesn't do as much deep analysis and deconstruction of the comic book medium as the book, but how could it? It's not a comic book.