Zack Snyder directs this adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's graphic novel set in a parallel Earth in 1985, where despite the threat of nuclear war, superheroes are prohibited from using their powers. But when one of their number is murdered, the outlaw heroes, including Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), Silk Spectre (Carla Gugino), Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson) and Moloch (Matt Frewer), unite to defend themselves.
| 2 hr 43 mins |
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The seminal limited comic book series Watchmen (the first to be published as a "graphic novel") still stands as a high water mark of comic-book artistry. Over 12 issues spanning 1986-1987, writer Alan Moore and illustrator Dave Gibbons conjured a fascinating and alarming alternate reality for 1985. If superheroes functioned within the continuum of American history, they would, of course, affect the course of human events, and the course of human events would affect the superheroes in return. As the graphic novel was a postmodern comic book, director Zack Snyder's adaptation qualifies as a postmodern superhero movie. Both ask us to consider what superheroes mean to us, why they have such a hold on our imagination. The answer should rattle the nation's mallrats or, at the very least, confuse them. So far, so good. [ show more ]
As seen in Snyder's faithful but limited rendering, Watchmen explores an America in which most superheroes saw their vigilantism outlawed by the government. Nevertheless, two sanctioned heroes-a Nietzschean "Superman" imbued with nuclear capability (Dr. Manhattan) and a costumed hero coopted as a secret operative (The Comedian)-made Vietnam a cakewalk, Nixon a three-term president, and established a tentative world peace with their super-deterrence. When a killer throws The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) through the plate glass window of his high-rise apartment, disbanded heroes reunite to mull over the possibility of a "mask killer" picking off superheroes; meanwhile, Dr. Manhattan (a motion-captured Billy Crudup) skips the planet, advancing the Doomsday Clock by tipping the Cold War balance of power toward World War III.
Screenwriters David Hayter and Alex Tse render the complex plot in reasonably coherent fashion, though certain plot points may be lost on the casual viewer. In his comics, Moore wrote himself a Gordian knot, then undid it in an audacious climax, one that the film necessarily streamlines. Still, streamlining is what undoes this Watchmen, perhaps unavoidably. Refusing to believe a film of Watchmen could artfully tell the same story, Moore removed his name from the project long ago. "With a comic, you can take as much time as you want," Moore said. "But in a film, by the nature of the medium, you're being dragged through it at 24 frames per second." Terry Gilliam, one of three major directors once attached to the project, concluded it could only be done honorably as a five-hour miniseries.
Undeniably, Watchmen retains a healthy saturation of subversion in its deconstruction of archetypal superheroes, from the cigar-chomping punisher that is The Comedian to Dr. Manhattan's blue nudity and dangerously philosophical quantum perspective on the universe (I guess that's why they call it the blues). The characters are accurately interpreted as psychologically damaged: the psychopathic Rorshach (Jackie Earle Haley, ideally cast), with his ever-shifting mask of ink blots; Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), a super-genius with a God complex and an ancient-world fetish; retired Silk Spectre Laurie Juspeczyk (an underwhelming Malin Akerman), with self-esteem issues borne of being Dr. Manhattan's estranged lover; and one-time Nite Owl Dan Dreiberg (standout Patrick Wilson), who pines for Laurie, but has been rendered impotent since being forced to hang up his cape. The film retains one of the novel's most pungent jokes: that only breathless violence and costumed role play can cure what sexually ails Dan.
The graphic novel brimmed with significance, but the film fails to evince a clear perspective on its various elements: the flash and dazzle too often drown out the ideas, and besides, Moore was right: the necessarily ruthless forward momentum allows no time to ponder them anyway. Savored on the page, Watchmen evokes contemplation and an emotional response; in his screen version, Snyder excels at recreating the spectacle (with the help of Fight Club production designer Alex McDowell) and retains the toughness of the story, but only sporadically connects with its funkiness (one of Gibbons' best gifts) and its transcendent, contrapuntal layering of meaning (one of Moore's).
Where the comic mostly created its own pop culture references, the film uses existing ones to good effect (a McLaughlin Group scene that accomplishes grounding exposition and chuckles) and bad (the clichéd and distracting recreation of Kubrick's War Room from Dr. Strangelove). Snyder's (over)use of source music is likewise hit and miss ("Unforgettable" and "All Along the Watchtower": yay; "The Sound of Silence" and "Hallelujah": nay). The director of the Dawn of the Dead remake and 300 is least impressive when obviously relishing the gory bits, the juvenile but happily fleeting way Snyder applies his authorial stamp.
Overall, Snyder should be commended for what he's pulled off here, in particular a flat-out brilliant opening-titles sequence that, for once in the film, explores a clever double-meaning. Using montage and Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'," Snyder both primes the story with a review of superhero history over decades of change, but also schools the audience: pay attention, for the times you know, they are a-changin' to an alternate reality.
To be fair to Snyder's Watchmen, repeated viewings will allow audiences to tease out and consider more of its meanings, and the promised release of both a Director's Cut and an Extended Edition will restore more of the comic while allowing the film to breathe more, presumably for the better. The only real compromise Snyder made was to negotiate his theatrical running time with the men footing the bill, and its doubtful he had any choice in the matter. Any film that depicts a "superheroic" rapist-brute as a self-styled parody of America's "true face" can hardly be accused of thematic squeamishness, and any film that sends readers back to the comic for Moore (and Gibbons) has served the public interest. [ show less ]
In terms of conceptual grandeur “Watchmen” is like the “Magnolia” is comic-book films - bold strokes of cinematic genius layered with complex yet loose socio-political metaphors which don't quite link together with complete satisfaction. Zack Snyder gives us as faithful an adaptation of Alan Moore's celebrated comic as is cinematically possible, at times overly reverent to the often obtuse material but on the whole a surprisingly coherent rendering of the complex story.
The setting and environment of Moore and Snyder's revisionist world is difficult to penetrate. Put yourself in a world where masked superhero vigilantes exist with a keen self-awareness of the silliness of such a concept. It's the mid 80's, Richard Nixon is still President and the Soviet nuclear threat against the U.S. has resulted in ticking clock Cuban Missile Crisis-like standoff to world annihilation. The man who holds the ability to deter this event is a blue superhero named Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) who has the ability to change the molecular structure of his body and other objects around him. [ show more ]
When one of his compatriots 'The Comedian' (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is murdered, the masked vigilante Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) comes out of hiding to reunite his former league of heroes - the Watchmen - to investigate. Rorschach finds all his old buddies, Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson), Silk Spectre (Malin Ackerman), Ozymandias (Matthew Goode) have all gone straight, leading regular civilian unmasked lives in retirement. When Rorschach's gumshoeing connects the Comedian's murderer with the current political crisis the stakes are raised enough to reinvigorate the Watchmen with the same idealistic fervour they once had.
The opening is a bravura title credit sequence showing the involvement of masked superheroes in many of the pop culturally significant events of the past century. The scene compresses much of the generational backstory of the first half of the book neatly into one package and establishes the story's throughline theme of pop cultural awareness. Snyder compliments the mash-up with a soundtrack of poignant rock tunes including Jimi Hendrix, Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, and even some less memorable like the 80’s topper “99 Red Ballons” by Nena. Watch for other fun pop culture references, like the Dr. Strangelove War Room set recreation, all of which add to the self-reflexive cultural complexities.
Perhaps the most astonishing surprise is Snyder's ability to make the obtuse 'unfilmable' elements work. The treatment of Dr. Manhattan as a transformed Jesus Christ-like resurrected God, specifically his trippy journey to Mars which made no sense to me on the page, provides with one of the more elegent detours in the story. His lengthy backstory is aided by cleverly borrowing Philip Glass' great music cue from the final scene of "Koyaanisqatsi".
At this point in the film Zack Snyder reaches an enormously high creative peak. In fact, the entire second act sustains this high through Rorschach's backstory, Silk Spectre/Nite Owl's passionate love affair to Rorschach's breakout from prison.
Like Robert Rodriguez's "Sin City", "The Watchmen" is not a comic book film for kids. Snyder embraces all the naughtiness of the book - Malin Ackerman's Silk Spectre is red hot and her steamy love scenes with Nite Owl retain all the thrusting carnality from Moore's pages. Snyder also has fun showing us all the bone breaks and blood gushing missing from all other super hero films. It's far from hardcore exploitation though, using the hyper slo-mo cine language from his previous graphic novel film "300", the Rated R scenes are graceful and dreamlike.
The film just misses out on greatness. The dialogue, most of which is lifted right off the page, suffers in the translation to screen. What sounds like punchy words designed for each frame comes off as overly-familiar Raymond Chandler noir dialogue. And after two acts of inspired unconventionality, unfortunately the third act resorts to a lazy recycling of the worst conventions of the genre. Snyder wraps up the plotthreads with rudimentary confessionary speeches, revelatory flashbacks and James Bond-like world domination plotting. The same type of ‘Hardy Boys’/Scooby Doo moments I despise in investigative mysteries. It’s a shame that despite the innovative methods of storytelling no one could get around the elementary and rushed plot resolution.
Though not everything Snyder throws at us sticks, "Watchmen" is still a supremely 'watchable' film. The muddied metaphors never distract us from the awesome muscular bravura which will titillate all the senses of your body. [ show less ]
I can't hear what Blue Man Group guy is saying because his penis speaks so loudly.
Dr. Manhattan is referred to as a "walking nuclear deterrent."
"Yes, I carry a big stick," said Dr. Manhattan, so named because his schlong is the size of an island.
Big blue penis in the lab, big blue penis on Mars, big blue penis about town. If exhibitionism is a super power, then VH1's Rock of Love is the new Heroes.
This movie disappointed at the box office and I'll give you a big flaccid blue reason why.
It's all thanks to a horrible science accident which gave Dr. Manhattan the powers of a God. "And I used them primarily to build a gigantic moving sculpture on Mars," he says. "One day, Cher and I will call this our home." [ show more ]
Evidently, Dr. Manhattan was a tremendous asset to the U.S. in Vietnam where his blue schlong sprayed napalm at the hapless Viet Cong in some sort of Apocalypenis Now. "And," added Manhattan, "my penis harvested the rice paddies and carried baskets on its head."
Hey, big flaccid blue penis, what was it like to be in one of the most highly anticipated movies of the year?
"I loved posing for the cast photo. I'd swing my head to the right, I'd dangle my head to the left. I'd scoop up dust bunnies from the floor between photos. I'd stretch around corners to scare production assistants."
Where are the powers?! There's one hero whose primary power is the ability to hold a match in front of a spray can and shoot flame. Another has the super power to give crooks the finger. Most of these costumed heroes have the same kinds of super powers possessed by the costumed revelers on Halloween in the Castro.
"Here's a blue-headed salute to Halloween in the Castro!" said Dr. Manhattan as she decorated her lab with a fabulous show of colored light and mirror balls.
I must say my favorite Watchman was The Comedian, who evidently even lacked the super power of being funny. Listen, if it's a comedian you want, then put a dickie on Bruce Vilanch, who at least can punch lines like nobody's business. If I had a dime for every crack about The Comedian "getting the last laugh" i'd pocket the entire opening weekend gross.
Here we have heroes who have sex together, which is the kind of heroism I tried and failed to achieve for years. The girls always go for the guy in the bird outfit - this must be what I did wrong in high school.
"John, the TV said you were on Mars," said one hero to Naked Blue Man.
"I'm taking a break before Hugh Jackman and I headline a show in Vegas," said Dr. Manhattan. "It'll be called Jackman and Johnson, and there will actually be a negative number of straight guys in the audience."
So by the end of the movie you realize that Armageddon is a good thing, and life goes on quite nicely a few months later. That's almost as comforting as the feeling of wearing my blue penis to work.
"Nothing ends, nothing ever ends" go the final words of this movie. And after nearly four hours, I was fully prepared to agree.
The opening credit sequence alone is worth the price of admission - it's masterful. But then begins a three hour and forty-three minute hang to the left. The Watchmen starts erect and gets increasingly flaccid and blue. [ show less ]
