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This review first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette. To read this review at its original source, click here.
Watchmen is astonishing. It is an instant classic, a lusty, no holds barred, laser precision adaptation that throws all caution to the wind, embracing both slavish reverence and dark satire with equal dynamism. The film transcends the superhero genre that gave it life even as it feeds off of it for sustenance. The result is a sophisticated intersection of heady philosophy, shocking violence and gratuitous sex. Watchmen is indubitably the most lavish adaptation of a graphic novel ever made and quite possibly one of the finest book-to-screen endeavors ever produced.
Watchmen is set in 1985 but takes place in a neo-noir, dystopic, Blade Runner-esque alternate history in which conservative politics dominate, President Richard Nixon has been elected to an unprecedented fifth term and the United States is teetering on the brink of war with the Soviet Union. This apocalyptic state of affairs has driven the paranoid population to engage in desperate and increasingly anarchic acts. It used to be that costume-clad superheroes were there to keep the peace, but such vigilantism is now illegal. All the old superheroes have either retired or now work for the government.
When the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is hurled from the top of his New York apartment to his death hundreds of stories below, and industry tycoon Adrian Veidt, aka Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), barely escapes an assassination attempt, Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), who’s never abided by the government’s cease and desist order, decides to investigate. Recruiting some of his old allies — including his old partner the Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson); Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman), the sexpot daughter of one of the original superheroes; and Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), a scientist who, thanks to a radiation accident now possesses powers Superman only dreamed of — Rorschach uncovers a diabolical conspiracy in the last place he ever expected.
Watchmen subverts the superhero archetype completely. To call the protagonists “heroes” is one of the book/film’s primary satirical joke themes. In attempting to discover what superheroes would look like in the real world, Watchmen reveals that those attracted to such a lifestyle are the fringe-skirting aberrational misfits of society. Some of these men and women — vulgar, fetishized and megalomaniacal — are worse than the criminals they put away. In Spider-Man, great power may come with great responsibility, but in Watchmen great power comes with a propensity to use it for whatever ends the superhero sees fit. The Comedian is like Captain America, minus the moral compass, murdering and raping as it suits him. The Nite Owl is a maladjusted, neurotic coward, and Rorschach, who narrates the film, is a hate-filled misanthrope who sees the world as a seething, sin-filled cesspool of wickedness not worth saving. But they are all more real than all their genre kin. Spray-painted in a dark alleyway is the narrative’s prime moral puzzle: “Who watches the Watchmen?” Who decides what is right and what is wrong? Who enforces those decisions? And perhaps most important, who polices the policemen?
Not satisfied with simply deconstructing the human psyche, Watchmen also examines what it looks like if a god were to truly live among us. Rather than hide in plain sight and devote himself to doing good, Watchmen contends that a superman would have so little in common with us that he would feel the opposite of empathy — he would look upon this planet as we might look upon an ant colony. Dr. Manhattan has completely lost touch with his humanity and no longer cares what happens to Earth. His heightened state has eradicated his compassion and perhaps even his soul.
When Watchmen — considered a seminal work of the comic book medium — debuted in 1986, Time magazine heralded the Hugo award-winning graphic novel as one of the 20th century’s greatest pieces of literature. It was also deemed utterly unfilmable. Using superheroes as a framing device within which to write a sweeping philosophical treatise on the inherent wickedness of humankind, the idealistic impossibilities of uncompromising moral rectitude and the abuses of unchecked power, author Alan Moore created a world as dense as any philosophical text. None of the intellectual heft of the novel is lost in translation. All of Moore’s (who has distanced himself from the film) numbing nihilism and obsession with emotional and physical impotence is present. Just don’t come if you don’t want to think. Watchmen demands much of its audience but its rewards are worth the mental gymnastics. That director Zach Snyder (300) — who was born to make this film — refused to dumb the material down for a larger audience will enchant fan-boys but may alienate some who just want stylized sex and violence.
To that end, Watchmen is like no other watered down superhero movie you have ever seen. It works hard to earn its R-rating, refusing to pull its punches. The film is brutally violent and gory, calculatedly misogynistic and kinkily hypersexual. Snyder isn’t using the violence for cheap thrills; we’re meant to feel revulsion even as we’re titillated. The reason there’s no arch villain in Watchmen is precisely because the enemy is us and our own malevolent natures.
For some, Watchmen will be far from perfect. At 161 minutes, it is inarguably long. It contains far more exposition than action for a typical superhero film. And it doesn’t quite tap the zeitgeist. As much as the filmmakers want the film to speak to our post 9/11 era, this is still (thankfully) a film with Tricky Dick and trigger-happy Russians. And yes fanboys, Snyder changes the ending — though not the spirit. In fact, his solution is so simple, elegant and organic, Moore may be asking himself why he didn’t think of it.
Last year Warner Bros. transformed the superhero genre with The Dark Knight. They’ve done it again this year with Watchmen. Don’t be surprised if you feel the need to see the intensely sensorial experience more than once to take it all in. I walked out of the theater dying to go right back in and do it all over again. Watchmen is wildly ambitious, a provocative, viscerally spectacular, intoxicatingly stylized, massive budgeted superhero epic that astonishingly delivers intellectually. Entertainment and intelligence. Might that be called art?
© Copyright 2009 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Fox McCormick // Mar 6, 2009 at 3:39 am
Wow. How much did they pay you to write that horseshit? Was it just so they could get their numbers up on the tomato-meter over at Rottentomatoes? There was no intelligence to be found here. Snyder just through a bunch of convoluted crap at the screen and then when people didn’t get it, he could just smile knowingly and say “of course you don’t”. There was no emotional connection to any of these characters. None. You don’t see any of the reasoning for why they do what they do. And you don’t care. I wanted desperately to like this film, I really did. I defended it against one and all saying don’t judge it based on the graphic novel. Judge it based on the movie itself as a whole. Well it’s been judged and found guilty. I’ve never walked out of a movie in my like, but three quarters of the way into it, when half the theatre was heading to the door, I was sorely tempted to go with them. The heart and soul was cut out of this movie. It was the movie that couldn’t be made. And it still hasn’t.
2 Dav // Mar 6, 2009 at 4:30 am
I agree whole-heartedly. I’m sure many will dismiss this film because of its length and complexity, but it’s rewarding indeed if you look past its glamorous exterior.
3 Grinth // Mar 9, 2009 at 1:19 pm
“Watchmen demands much of its audience but its rewards are worth the mental gymnastics. That director Zach Snyder (300) — who was born to make this film — refused to dumb the material down for a larger audience will enchant fan-boys but may alienate some who just want stylized sex and violence.”
I found myself wanting less stylized sex and violence and more mental gymnastics. I didn’t think there was anything terribly complex or densely philosophical about the film. Relative to the comic medium as a whole, yes, but across artistic mediums, not so much. A little subtlety would have been welcome as well.
Overall, there were elements I enjoyed but in the course of its almost three hour sprawl and there were enough negatives, in my opinion, that they canceled the positives out. As such, I left the theater with a rather lukewarm feeling.
4 yinka wills // Mar 10, 2009 at 6:57 pm
This was a film totally different from others.
Snyder created a hyper-real world. The visuals were stunning.
It was mind boggling watching it on a normal screen. It would be heart attack material on an IMAX screen.
I’ve read, the graphic novel. And I’m not a fanboy, but a woman whose teenage son likes it. Made sure I would read it before seeing the film.
I became interested after seeing the first of the truly amazing trailers.
It is faithful to Moore and Gibbons original work for about 80% of it. The actors were well picked. Fabulous ensemble cast.
Jackie Earle Hayley WAS Rorschach.
And as for Jeffrey Dean Morgan.. his vile, violent, Comedian seemed to have just walked out of the pages of the original novel.
Those two performances dominated the film, the others were supporting characters, who played their parts well, particularly Wilson as Nite Owl and Cruddup as Dr Manhattan. His detached, godlike being was both sad and chilling.
This was an ADULT meditation on the superhero. It required concentration, ability to recognise complex concepts.
And the ability to handle stomache churning violence.
Weak points were some of the musical choices, and the awkward, gratuitous sex scenes. I saw it the day it came out, in London. To my surprise, the cinema was packed.
I share Brandon Fibbs’ view.
I can’t wait to see it again…
5 Cneil // Mar 11, 2009 at 7:06 am
I was able to see this movie after my buddy that works for LucasFilms here in Singapore was able to snag a free ticket. Before I continue, I should note that I saw the slightly-edited Singapore version of this film so my viewing experience was different than the other people on this site.
Brandon, you once commented that there is a class of comedy movies out there that are on a race to the bottom, each attempting to outdo the other in terms of crude humor.
There’s also a new class of action movie that is on a race to show the most gore. In the past, there was a limit to what could be believably shown with red dye and corn syrup. Now, aided with computer graphics and sophisticated split second editing, there is no limit to the atrocity that can be displayed. Like he did with 300, Zack Snyder decided to use this movie to participate in the game.
This film asks some compelling philosophical and political questions, but it presents them in flawed, loaded way. Does Moore really believe that if Nixon had not have fallen, the U.S. would have slowly inched toward nuclear war? Why must the God-like character have a sex drive? Would America really be so resilient after a nuclear attack?
It can’t be denied that this film does some incredible things. The montage at the beginning of the film is the perfect visual amalgamation of a junior-level high school American history class. The references to Romanticist poetry and Greek literature will resurrect memories that have been firmly buried since college level Lit. class.
The Watchmen synthesizes these cultural references into a artistically crafted post-modern package and, looking past the gratuitous content, that is precisely the problem with the film. People who haven’t been trained to evaluate the philosophical underpinnings of texts that they consume will be unconsciously pushed by this film to accept a word where God is flawed, truth is relative, conservatism is bad, violence is unpreventable, life is cyclical, and justice is unobtainable.
And of more pressing concern is what the ending of this film teaches the viewer about nuclear war. Just as there are Christians who rejoice in persecution because they have been taught to do so; should a nuclear war even sweep the planet, there will be a tiny segment of ragged, cancer-stricken, comic-book-enthusiast survivors in the population that say, “Cool, this is just like Watchmen.” The non-postmodern, non-relativist, firmly-rooted-in-reality conclusion is much different.
6 brn // Jul 25, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Fox, cretins like you are the reason why more movies like Watchmen don’t get made and movies like Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li do.
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