“Would It Make You Smile If I Told You I Was Wrong?’” – A Review of “Watchmen”

Written By: David Hayter and Alex Tse (Screenplay), Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (Comic book)

Directed By: Zack Snyder

Starring: Malin Akerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Patrick Wilson, Carla Gugino

Watchmen needs little introduction at this point, especially if you’re reading a review of it here, but I’ll give it a go. The movie and graphic novel it’s based on are set in an alternate 1985 where superheroes are real and have drastically affected the course of history; being instrumental in the conquering of Vietnam and the election of Richard Nixon for multiple terms, as one example. It tells the story of a now-defunct supergroup as the last active member, a mentally unhinged crimefighter named Rorschach, rouses his old comrades to solve a mystery: who killed the Comedian, one of their own, and why?

The most positive press coming from most papers and trade publications describe the adaptation of writer Alan Moore’s seminal work as being okay but listless. A visually stunning film but, too caught up in homage to be relevant. The New Yorker went so far as to describe Watchmen as “embalmed.”

For the life of me, I can’t figure out what the professional reviewers are talking about when it comes to Watchmen.

Though reverent, the movie is anything but stagnant. The opening, which is comprised of a fight between an unknown assassin and the Comedian in his apartment and a title sequence that catches us up on a new timeline rife with costumed heroes is a microcosm of the film’s triumphs. The duel which sets off the events of the story virtually recreates the graphic novel frame-for-frame, but the title sequence is an invention of director Zack Snyder that adds tremendously to the tale.

I think it’s mostly a failure of imagination on the part of the reviewers. To suggest that Cold War-era paranoia of nuclear attacks that could come at any moment without warning and the looming fear of a world that is being rent asunder by our actions are dated and not relatable for a modern audience is laughable. Where have these people been living for the last eight years? I’d love to buy an apartment there.

There are also varying opinions that the characters are dull and uncaring (for instance Patrick Wilson’s Night Owl) or disturbing and unsympathetic (leveraged mainly at Jackie Earle Haley’s Rorschach), suggesting that many people have missed the point. We aren’t supposed to feel unambiguous support for Rorschach because he is very clearly a broken individual with a sense of absolutism that is unsettling to our modern sensibilities. Likewise Night Owl is supposed to feel wishy-washy and impotent (literally) because he’s ceded what little power he had to affect his world, and even when he does seize the reigns again it may not be enough. Watchmen, both the source material and it’s adaptation, are meant to make the viewer uncomfortable throughout, and this doesn’t jibe with what people who aren’t used to comic books expect from the medium and it’s mythologies. Even the previously most somber superhero movie, The Dark Knight, reassures us very firmly that Batman, despite doubts about his methods or choices at the end of the day is just, noble and necessary. Watchmen on the other hand demands we ask if the idea of superheroics is worth it at all. Every time we see and hear a gruesomely accurate act of violence, every time we witness how much worse off the world seems for it’s bevy of heroes, and every time we glimpse the mind of the kind of person who would wear a costume and fight “evil”, we have to ask if this parallel 1985 would be better off without them.

As you can guess, I liked the movie and highly recommend it. There are few adaptations that can walk the fine line between faithfulness to source material and the need to be an independent work of art without falling, and Watchmen strides it confidently. There’s more than enough of the novel’s set pieces and overall spirit there to bear the title, but it takes liberties with interpretations of characters, intent and content that in many ways I find it a superior work. Alan Moore, especially he’s writing a superhero story, has a bad tendency towards condescension and pessimism about his characters. While everyone’s still flawed and all-too-human in the movie, you don’t feel that they’re laughable or pathetic; you take them seriously.

For people who aren’t familiar with the novel, I can still recommend it whole-heatedly. There is a complete story here that unfolds with few loose ends and missteps. There are a few things that don’t get enough fleshing out (for instance how Nixon was able to stay in office so damn long, or the Keene Act which out-lawed superheroes), but you pick up enough that the main body of the story makes sense and is fulfilling.

Now we come to the spoilertastic portion of the review where I talk about the ending and things that got changed/deleted. So if you haven’t seen it yet, don’t read beyond this point.

Seriously, I’m warning you.

Go get a sandwich or something.

Still here? Alright.

First off, there’s little remnant of the many background characters that lent a lot of heart to the novel. Bernard and Bernie only make two appearances for instance, the biggest at the end. But oh, what an appearance it is. That little moment where Bernard embraces Bernie, in a desperate attempt to shield him from a blast of radiation? It’s a powerful moment of two normal people reacting to the overpowering and horrific that resonates deep, even though we don’t know them by name. They stand for for every one of the 18 million(!) dead by Ozymandias’ hand.

The ending is the thing that’s most going to annoy purists. No squid = no good, in a lot of fans’ eyes. I was pretty cheesed at the framing of Dr. Manhattan myself, until my girlfriend broke it down for me. Unlike the alien threat of Ozymandias’ original plan, everyone on Earth is absolutely certain that Dr. Manhattan exists, and they know he’s capable of repeating “his” actions. Unlike the alien invasion, there’s not a lot of reason to question it. Sure, there’s the somewhat uncomfortable extrapolation, that now we’ll have a society that has every reason to believe god is real and vengeful, and that will have weird effects, but so would a society that believes it’s hunting an alien menace across the stars. Ozymandias’ plan is never meant to be sane, just have a certain result.

That change also effects the whole tone of the movie. Now instead of focusing purely on the nuclear threat, we’re dealing with the overall destructive nature of man. This is why Dr. Manhattan doesn’t intervene and simply destroy all the nukes on Earth, why Ozymandias is trying to solve the problem of infinite renewable energy, and more broadly why the Comedian is right at the first meeting of the Watchmen: our problems and our flaws are larger, deeper than an arms race, and much harder to solve. Even if that threat was removed, something else would come up in it’s place. As evidenced by the world we are living in right here, right now.