Who Watches "Watchmen?"

It takes a special kind of a person to enjoy a movie like "Watchmen." Fan worshiped and critically endorsed, "Watchmen" has long been a household name in graphic novel reading. Written in 1986-87 by Alan Moore, author of "V for Vendetta" and "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," "Watchmen" is a gritty, cerebral, honest morality morass that reeks of influences ranging from Raymond Chandler to Bryan Talbot. It’s important to note that "Watchmen" is not based off of a comic book, but rather its bloodier grown-up cousin the graphic novel. You will not find a traditional hero, be he super or spider, in this film; this is a world where heroes die and the unthinkable takes place. This is the world of Rorschach and The Comedian, where little girls get eaten by dogs and internal organs stick to ceilings.


Set in an alternate version of the mid '80s, with our nation still caught in the throes of the Cold War, the United States has emerged unquestionably victorious in Vietnam due to the timely intervention of its masked champions. But once the war is over, the heroes find themselves obsolete and unwanted by the public who forces them into retirement, vigilantism, or accepting government positions. Things seem to be quieting down until one of their own, The Comedian, is murdered at the hands of an unknown assailant. This puts a burr in the boot of Rorschach, who tries to rally allies against this invisible hand and pull their attention away from the sky, where all wait for the ominous nuclear forecast to come true.

The question when going into a movie based off of one of your favorite books, comics, or novellas is never "How good will it be?," but "Will they screw this up?" And in this case they didn’t; at least not completely. Granted if you’re looking for a reason to hate "Watchmen" you’ll find it; it has its flaws. At times the violence crosses into the threshold of unnecessary gratuity, some of the rich background subplots like the interaction between a newspaper stand owner and kid, or Rorschach’s psychiatrist and his wife are marginalized to create space for the elephantine narrative that makes up the main story, and blue penis (I say no more!). But every decision I saw running through film maker Zack Snyder (of 300 fame) I agreed with. Deviation from source material was minimal; if anything Snyder can be accused of embellishment, adding fight scenes and violent upswings to presumably maintain the interest of those mistakenly seeking an action film. At curtains though, the only thought that crossed my mind was "it was the best we could hope for." Deep in my heart of nerd hearts, I wish every great piece of literature could be transformed into a "Lord of the Rings"-type trilogy, but I understand the restraints placed upon the adapters and for what it’s worth Snyder made the transition to big screen as painless and honest as he could.

No more was the dedication to source material apparent than Jackie Earl Haley’s depiction of Rorschach, the smallest badass this side of John McClane. Just imagine a five foot nothing, ugly as sin red headed Dirty Harry and you get the idea. When he wasn’t occupied with throwing deep frying oil on inmates and growling some of the best lines I’ve ever heard uttered (“None of you understand. I’m not locked up in here with you, you’re locked up in here with me!”), Rorschach provided the beat of the city through his Phillip Marlowe-like narrative, spouting hardened phrases and his simplified view of the world: that extremes require equal force to contain them.

All of the characters in "Watchmen" are pillars to aspects of moral relativism, giving you an equal opportunity to find an identity in one of them. The Comedian (Jeffery Dean Morgan) sees people as animals, so he decides to be the biggest and the meanest dog in the yard. After thinking of Morgan as that Ghost from "Grey’s Anatomy" that my sisters seem to love, I was surprised he was able to pull off the brutality and reckless abandon of the role, but he did an exceptional job. Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson) is a timid genius of a man trying to inject some good in the world. His interaction with The Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman) gave the film a kind of normality that bordered between lovable and boring from scene to scene. Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), the one true ‘superhero’ gifted after an accident with the ability to rearrange matter, plays the role of the apathetic observer and arbiter. Being the ace in the hole of the United States' military, Dr. Manhattan’s only connection to the world seems to be Silk Specter. A character of introspective reflection and sadness in the novel, I was disappointed to see him relegated to a role of heavy machinery that simply moved plot along as needed. Ozymandias (Matthew Goode) also seemed to not carry the same level of gravitas he possessed in print. Written as an altruistic wealthy playboy fashioned in the image of Alexander the Great, he too seemed to fall short of expectation, shown instead as a cold, distant environmentalist.

Watchmen is a visual feast, akin to the styling of artist Dave Gibbons' original drawings. The characters pop against the gray dullness of the world. Costumes of the heroes are fashioned ironically after muscle suits and spandex you would come to expect from comic book characters, which serves only in further compounding the sense of surrealism that surrounds the film. With a few glitches, the soundtrack was well arranged and carried you into each storyboard with the appropriate level of tension and dismay. Although I was delighted by the opening collage set to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin,” some of the selections seemed awkward and ill-placed. Most notably was Leonard Cohen’s Hollywood-saturated classic “Hallelujah” set to a love scene, which may sound idyllic but set the wrong tone.

All in all though, while "Watchmen" fell short of becoming the epic it deservedly should be, it still retains enough thoughtful pause and unique personality to warrant a viewing. At the very least I hope it prompts those who have not thumbed through the source material to give it a shot and revel in the texture and grime of its predecessor. So who will watch the Watchmen? Well I hope you do, dear reader, and if you attend with an open mind I think you’ll find something worth seeing. I give the Watchmen 4 blue penises out of 5.

Taken from my article at The Commuter