Watchmen

Of the three studio films directed by Zach Snyder, two of them, 2004's Dawn of the Dead remake and now Watchmen, peak with the credit sequence. Watchmen's showstopper opening consists of a series of slow motion tableaux that recount an alternative history of post-war America in which costumed superheroes are not merely comic book fodder, but real people who dramatically shape the fate of the world. The set-ups reproduce storyboard frames from the graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Gibbons on which the film is based. It's a nifty bit of filmmaking that highlights Snyder's strengths; a maniacal attention to detail and brazen theatricality. This skill set makes for a Watchmen adaptation that hews closely to the source material in the most superficial ways; the plot, characters and action scenes are reproduced with a fanboy's adoring commitment. For fans of the comic, the film offers the giddy delight of seeing iconic superheroes burst into towering, Technicolor life and Moore's vivid alternative version of America is exactingly recreated. Moviegoers with no familiarity or loyalty to the graphic novel will be less rewarded by seeing characters like the Comedian and Silk Spectre brought to cinematic life, since Watchmen novices bring with them no affection for these figures. Even without Watchmen knowledge, the provocative themes of Moore's story and Snyder's bone-crunching aesthetic still make for a kinetic, thrilling theatrical experience.


Snyder's strict fidelity to the source material means that Alan Moore's thematic deconstruction of the superhero concept makes it to the screen more or less intact. Unfortunately, while Zach Snyder clearly adores the Watchmen universe and has a keen eye for empty spectacle, he is also profoundly vapid. Every frame shows loving devotion to glossy detail, but just as clearly every frame shows the authorship of a director who has clearly not thought through the implications of the material he's working with. While most of Moore's plot and characters, as well as his keen dissection of the superhero psyche and the psyche of a culture that creates superheroes, are faithfully reproduced in the film, it's a stilted, flat reproduction that lacks the graphic novel's density of reference and symbolism. The film is strong whenever Snyder can rely on the world created by Moore to provide a strong template. In those areas where the graphic novel offers little guidance, for example in the performances of the lead actors or in the choice of soundtrack, Snyder fails miserably. For all the blood and thunder of Snyder's epic approach, there is never the sense of an active mind engaging the material, just a drive to mimic the comic's iconography with maximum visceral impact. It's like watching a parrot tell a joke: he can say all the words in the right order, but you can tell he doesn't get the punchline.

The actors all look remarkably like their comic book counterparts, and a few, notably Jackie Earl Haley as the psychotic vigilante Rorschach and Billy Crudup as the god-like Dr. Manhattan, create vivid, memorable interpretations of their characters. In some cases, Snyder's search for actors who could bring David Gibbons' artwork to life left him casting people who look great in their costumes, but ruin everything when they open their mouths. Matthew Goode, playing the super-genius industrialist Adrian Veidt who moonlights as superhero Ozymandias, looks the part, but his performance is a train wreck that undermines much of Watchmen's plot tension and dramatic weight. It's a mistake made inevitable by the filmmaker's commitment to mimicry over active interpretation There are memorable set-pieces, but no real narrative flow, bravura images but no depth of feeling.

For all of Watchmen's failings as a fully realized drama, there's no denying the enduring power of Moore's world and seeing it recreated in light and sound is a treat. The real issue that keeps Watchmen from transcendence, more than Zach Snyder's lunkheadedness, is a matter of timing. Watchmen originally appeared as a twelve issue comic book series in 1986. At the time, it, along with other revisionist comics of the era like Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, revolutionized the way people looked at superheroes. After Watchmen, a character who chose, of their own free will, to don a cape and tights to fight crime, was under immediate suspicion of mental illness. Moore identified caped heroism as a pathology, and ever since, comic books have existed in a state of hyper self awareness. During the twenty years it took for Watchmen to make it to theatres, the character flaws that Moore helped introduce into the granite-jawed world of superhero comics have become required in films as well. Crippling neuroses are now as essential to cinematic superheroes as utility belts and alter egos. Coming out half a year after Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight, Watchmen feels like an unnecessary punctuation mark. None of that means that it isn't fun to watch a giant blue dude turn bad guys inside out. It totally is.