Watchmen | Little White Lies

Watch­men

06 Mar 2009 / Released: 06 Mar 2009

Three superheroes in a dark, gritty setting: a person in a golden armoured suit, a person in a dark costume, and a person in a leather jacket.
Three superheroes in a dark, gritty setting: a person in a golden armoured suit, a person in a dark costume, and a person in a leather jacket.
5

Anticipation.

There’s been about four decades of it, not to mention a court battle that left us wondering if this version would ever see the light.

4

Enjoyment.

Sex, violence, angst… This is an incredibly faithful adaptation of Alan Moore’s masterpiece.

4

In Retrospect.

It would be harsh to ask for much more: Zack Snyder succeeds with an excellent adaptation.

A big-screen ver­sion of Alan Moore’s sem­i­nal graph­ic nov­el has final­ly arrived, but was it worth the wait?

Not just one of the most antic­i­pat­ed films of the year, but of the last quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry. The great­est graph­ic nov­el ever writ­ten. The one that Ter­ry Gilliam, David Hayter, Dar­ren Aronof­sky and Paul Green­grass all failed to adapt for the big screen. The one they said no one could. That’s a lot of weight for a film to shoul­der. All of which makes 300 direc­tor Zack Snyder’s Watch­men even more impres­sive: it’s styl­ish, adult and very, very faithful.

How do you intro­duce super­heroes no one has ever heard of? Who don’t have super­pow­ers? Who are just dam­aged men and women who dress up in fun­ny cos­tumes? How do you explain that a lumi­nous blue demi-god helped Nixon win the Viet­nam war and stay on as US pres­i­dent? That a new gen­er­a­tion of masked vig­i­lantes have been out­lawed and some­one is mur­der­ing them?

Sny­der does it all in one bril­liant stroke. Scored to Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are a‑Changin’’, the stun­ning open­ing-cred­its mon­tage glides us through a star­tling new vision of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. Gaudi­ly dressed men arrest­ing bank rob­bers. JFK picked off by a grin­ning cig­ar-chom­per behind the grassy knoll. An astro­naut stand­ing on a lunar sur­face with a giant blue fig­ure reflect­ed in his visor. Those for­mer vig­i­lante heroes being dragged into retire­ment, asy­lums or the morgue.

From there on in, even at two hours and 40 min­utes, Watch­men nev­er slows down for a sec­ond. Actu­al­ly, that’s not true. It slows down a lot. Whether it’s super­hero sex or sequences of bru­tal, bone-snap­ping vio­lence, Sny­der loves to lean on the slo-mo, savour­ing and styl­is­ing the action at every beat. Take the famous scene where retired crime-fight­ers Nite Owl II (Patrick Wil­son) and Silk Spec­tre II (Malin Aker­man) bat­ter a gang of alley-thugs: faces crum­ple, bones burst through flesh and blood spat­ters. Get used to it. Bul­lets in brains, arms sliced off with a buzz saw, a man burned to death with cook­ing fat, splat­ty evis­cer­a­tions… X‑Men: The Last Stand, this ain’t.

Con­cus­sive as they are, Snyder’s chop-socky fight sequences are as the­atri­cal as the rest of his film. From Nixon’s pros­thet­ic nose-job to the rain-soaked syn­thet­ic back­drops, Sny­der nev­er allows us to for­get he’s mak­ing a com­ic-book adap­ta­tion. Then again, no com­ic-book has a sound­track as incred­i­ble as this: Nat King Cole’s Unfor­get­table’, Nena’s 99 Luft­bal­loons’, Hendrix’s All Along The Watch Tow­er’. And truth is, Watch­men shouldn’t feel like a com­ic-book super­hero flick. It’s a PT Ander­son movie: a trau­ma­tised ensem­ble of char­ac­ters, not much action, lots of talk.

That’s why Sny­der recruit­ed actors not stars – a cast of ace char­ac­ter-thes­ps who breathe real, soul-sick human life into their icon­ic roles. Behind a bald, buff, bright-blue coat­ing of CG, Bil­ly Crudup hides elec­tric flick­ers of pain in the impas­sive face of mas­ter-of-mat­ter Dr Man­hat­tan (whose mod­esty Sny­der has no mod­esty about hid­ing). Jef­frey Dean Mor­gan aces his decade-span­ning turn as amoral sociopath The Comedian.

Matthew Goode grows steadi­ly inside his role as the smartest man in the world’, mil­lion­aire mys­tery man Ozy­man­dias. Patrick Wil­son effort­less­ly con­vinces as the doughy, impo­tent Bat­man-like Nite Owl II. But his Lit­tle Chil­dren co-star Jack­ie Ear­le Haley is the best of the lot, nail­ing the sadis­tic self-hat­ing as twist­ed detec­tive Rorschach. None of you under­stand,” he growls after send­ing a shiv-wield­ing crim­i­nal to a hor­rif­ic end. I’m not locked up in here with you. You’re locked up in here with me!”

Admit­ted­ly, Malin Aker­man doesn’t make as much impact as her latex fetish cos­tume. Scor­ing a porny slo-mo sex scene to Hal­lelu­jah’ is pret­ty wince-induc­ing. And come the apoc­a­lyp­tic fin­ish, any­one who hasn’t read the graph­ic nov­el is prob­a­bly going to be left scratch­ing their head. Moore’s sto­ry is dense, detailed and nev­er designed to be swal­lowed in one sitting.

Maybe this is why the full weight of emo­tion, grim humour and tragedy loaded in the nov­el doesn’t (quite) come through. At times, Sny­der seems to unpack the dra­ma in slick sequences rather than one long flu­id sto­ry, intent­ly cross-cut­ting his way through Moore’s com­plex weave of flash­backs, mul­ti-char­ac­ter plot­lines and alternate-’80s expo­si­tion. There’s a say­ing that a mas­ter­piece has already found its per­fect medi­um. Sny­der has done as good a job as any­one could have done. That’s a loaded com­pli­ment. But as com­pli­ments go, it’s a huge one.

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