When it was published in 1988, Alan Moore's Watchmen was hailed as the coming-of-age of graphic novels.
Featuring a sophisticated writing style, muscular art and adult themes in an ironic inversion of the superhero genre, Watchmen was a conscious evolution from the previous generation of comics. Appearing the same year as Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen established Moore as a modern comics master and opened up a readership for more mature, literary graphic novels.
Watchmen has beaten a tortuous path to the screen, despite its popularity and critical acclaim. A battle over the movie rights delayed production and seemed like it would bar the film's release last summer.
But Moore hasn't been waiting on the edge of his seat to see his masterpiece hit the big screen: After disappointing renderings of his graphic novels From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Moore disowned the adaptation of his other landmark, V for Vendetta and denied any interest in the results of Zach Snyder's direction of the just-released Watchmen film.
Watchmen examines the fates of a band of former superheroes years after they were forced into retirement by a Congressional ban on masked vigilantism. (Sound a little like The Incredibles for adults?) The theme of nostalgia is, subtly and unsubtly, the star of this show, as the characters face what they believe to be pending nuclear holocaust in a Cold War that shows no signs of ending.
Watchmen presents an alternate reality in which the history of the 1960s, '70s and '80s is drastically shaken by the creation of Dr. Manhattan, a god-like superhuman with the ability to infinitely manipulate time and matter. But Dr. Manhattan isn't the formula to ending the arms race as some officials thought, and international tension escalates. Simultaneously, each former masked hero's microcosm is wracked by a series of mysterious murders that draws the old band together and reveals the haunting, sordid details of their past together.
Alan Moore has claimed that Watchmen is unadaptable, and longtime fans of the comic have often agreed strenuously, citing the book's unique exploration of the graphic novel format as a roadblock to cinematic adaptation. Aside from the obvious power of the illustrations themselves, Watchmen uses devices such as a comic-within-the-comic to heighten drama and highlight story motifs.
But many of the comic's most striking visual juxtapositions are, in fact, cinematic in nature - cutting between simultaneous scenes, visual flashbacks and epic gore all belong to film as much as comics. The most difficult aspect of the graphic novel to adapt, it turns out, is its unwieldy story. Watchmen doesn't offer much in the way of a traditional, linear plot; while there is an action-filled frame story, much of the book's psychological development and tension is drawn from fragmentary flashbacks and the characters' feelings toward their perceived past.
Watchmen pays off as a movie in terms of pure entertainment; there are bloody fight scenes, shocking twists and sexual tension enough to keep up the pace for two and a half hours. But when the movie tries to embody the original's semi-political, fatalistic philosophy, it starts to falter.
Zach Snyder's interpretation of irony is to layer an iconic, sometimes inappropriately cheerful song over a scene of desperation, grief or unjust violence. But the device gets old, and sometimes unintentionally comical. And Snyder's trademark slow motion action sequences also start to feel mildly humorous; after 300, his speed-ramping technique will inevitably feel a little like unintentional self-parody.
Nonetheless, the new Watchmen film delivers plenty of powerful action sequences as well as its share of sweeping entrances and eerie, awe-triggering expository shots (such as the angle on a towering Dr. Manhattan as he vaporizes the Viet Cong, a shot that has appeared in the film's trailers).
Jackie Earle Haley gives an especially powerful performance as Rorschach, the mentally disturbed vigilante who refuses to give up his job of "protecting" the populace even when the populace rejects, ignores or criminalizes his protection. He delivers the best line of the film, to a cafeteria full of prisoners: "I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with me."
Malin Ackerman gives a flimsy portrayal of Laurie Jupiter, a young woman who was pressured into the superhero life by her mother, the original Silk Spectre, but Jeffrey Dean Morgan pulls his weight as Edward Blake, The Comedian, a distinctly unfunny wreck of an American hero.
Zach Snyder's Watchmen isn't this year's The Dark Knight in terms of emotional or thematic depth, narrative tightness or dramatic interest. But it is successful as a blaze of colorful entertainment inspired by a revolutionary work.
