In the latest superhero movie the question is asked ‘Who watches the Watchmen?’ The same could really be asked of the movie itself, and more specifically who should be watching it. For those not near, or indeed in the loop, Watchmen is an adaptation of what is widely considered the greatest graphic novel of all time. It has a rabid fan base, and a tortured history of attempts to get it to the screen (Terry Gilliam, Darren Aronofsky and Paul Greengrass have all been attached to the project). I can see why on both counts.
Clocking in at just under three hours, the complexity of the source material threatens to drown this film. Watchmen is set in an alternate 1985. Richard Nixon is in his third term as president thanks to a nifty alteration to the constitution, and America has a proud tradition of masked vigilante heroes who emerged to fight crime in the 1930s. Despite being outlawed in ’75, some remain in the service of the government, while others continue their activities illegally. When one masked crusader, a brutal thug called The Comedian, is murdered, his colleague Rorschach begins to investigate. He slowly drags other retired crime fighters along with him until they all discover a vast conspiracy.
Just so you know – I have not gone near the surface enough to scratch the plot of this movie. For example, I need to devote a separate paragraph to the only hero who actually possesses a super power. Dr Manhattan, altered in an experiment gone wrong, has the abilities of a god, is blue and spends much of the film walking around naked. He is used by the US as a deterrent should the USSR decide to heat things up during the Cold War. He was also very handy in helping America win the Vietnam War.
Given that I still haven’t touched on a truckload of sub plots you can see where the real problems lie in this movie – it is made from essentially unadaptable material. Fans want everything in there, but shoving everything in won’t work. It has to make sense to everybody else, but if you simplify it too much you risk losing what makes the original work so mind-blowing.
Director Zack Snyder has done an admirable job of doing the best he can. The movie is visually stunning – the colours and framing bringing the novel to life with a new clarity. He also doesn’t flinch from the moral grey area from which all his characters spring. No hero is simply heroic here. The Comedian’s outlook on life is dispiritingly true, though it leads him to commit heinous acts. The fascinating reversal of traditional superhero archetypes are all here – Dr Manhattan is a Superman who is so powerful he moves further away from humanity with each day, Nite Owl is a Batman whose impotence and self-loathing threaten to eat him up, and Silk Spectre (I and II) suffers as a Wonder Woman who defines herself largely by her sexual allure.
Jackie Earle Haley gives a revelatory performance as Rorschach, both with and without his mask. He truly nails the character as Alan Moore intended. Other actors have mixed success – Billy Crudup doesn’t really have a lot of acting to do as Dr Manhattan, Patrick Wilson is likeable as Nite Owl, Jeffrey Dean Morgan is mesmerizing as The Comedian, but Malin Akerman is miscast as Silk Spectre. Malin’s role could have used someone older, with more heft to her delivery. It doesn’t help that she is saddled with the worst sex scene I have seen since Eric Bana in Munich.
A lot of the pieces are there, but the final product is muddled. The ending is rushed, and it seems to be missing the most important thing – the constant implication that when stripped back, man is only capable of violence, and extreme action is needed to take it off its course to self-annihilitation. This is what justifies the final reveal … which is barely a reveal. The idea of humanity’s struggle against its own nature is also what justified the extreme violence in the novel. All we ultimately seem to be left with is the violence, some pretty pictures and some stodgy voice over that is better read than heard.
Watchmen is an interesting experiment that will make little sense to people unfamiliar with the source material, and somehow misses the point of that anyway.
