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Regardless of
your opinion of Zack Snyder’s Watchmen—I’m assuming that
you have one given the movie’s strong opening weekend box-office
and its source’s rabid following—I’ll ask you to step back and
consider what a miracle Snyder’s accomplishment is by inception
alone. Snyder has not only brought to life a complicated,
anti-mainstream graphic novel of 416 packed pages that most fans
considered inadaptable. He has done so after the project was
publicly denounced by source-author Alan Moore, whose fans are
devout and could have just as easily been offended by the idea
from the get-go. Snyder has done so at the colossal budget of
$150 million, put up by Warner Bros., which has shown a
near-unbelievable confidence in the risky project. And Snyder
has done so despite complicated litigation between Warner and 20th
Century Fox, the studio that initially had rights to the film
but gave them up in a turnaround deal that it claims had a
changed-element clause Warner violated. But here Watchmen
is, storming the multiplexes—3,611 of them, a record for an
R-rated picture—and it’s being hailed by many.
Some may
argue I’m providing Snyder an inordinate amount of credit given
he didn’t even write the movie, nor is he responsible for the
legal negotiations that allowed it to open on-time, but it’s
challenging not to think of Watchmen as an auteur piece.
After all, I love the movie and Snyder is the man responsible
for anchoring its numerous artistic successes with cohesion. The
picture clocks in at 2 hours and 43 minutes, but it’s so
thematically dense and stylistically marvelous that I was never
once bored. Yes, Watchmen makes some missteps and is at
times uneven, but when has a movie so unlikely in nature
provided so much food-for-thought in so many arenas—artistic,
social, and political? I’m sure Moore’s original is great—I had
too much trouble reading the panels to get past Page 10—but
Snyder has given its noted complexities the punch of both
old-fashioned (in story-arc) and cutting-edge (in technology)
cinematic bravura.
The film
takes place in an alternate reality. It’s 1985 and the United
States has won in Vietnam, allowing Nixon to push on as
President without term-limits. But the country is not at
peace—nuclear war with the Soviet Union is imminent, with the
nation’s emblematic “nuclear clock” at five minutes to midnight.
Nixon has banned all superhero activity except for that of Dr.
Manhattan (Billy Crudup), the only one of his kind with
supernatural powers. Manhattan, once a young scientist, became a
part of a quantum universe when accidentally locked in an
activated “Intrinsic field subtractor” test chamber. This left
him with incredible capabilities: his alternate perception of
the world was ultimately the driving force of the U.S.’
successful strategy in Vietnam. Manhattan does not process
events linearly, which usually allows him to foretell the
future, but something catastrophic blocks his vision of the
outcome of the Cold War. Essentially a psychological human with
overwhelming, inhuman capabilities and responsibilities,
Manhattan falls into a period of deep social isolation and has
no desire to remain on Earth.
Meanwhile,
vigilante narrator Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), another
member of the titular group of formerly-lauded superheroes,
lurks in dark alleys trying to find out who killed the Comedian
(Jeffrey Dean Morgan). Rorschach believes the Comedian’s murder
is closely linked with a plan that could result in nuclear
doomsday. He is eventually joined by Laurie Jupiter a.k.a. Silk
Spectre (Malin Akerman) and Dan Dreiberg a.k.a. Night Owl
(Patrick Wilson), who have their own suspicions about what has
happened. Rounding out the Watchmen is Adrien Veidt a.k.a.
Ozymandias, now a billionaire with a fortress in Antarctica,
where he claims to be working on a solution to the nuclear
conflict.
Before even
digging into the layers of sociopolitical commentary, I first
noticed how human and realistic everything about Watchmen
felt, a credit to source-author Moore, adapters David Hayter and
Alex Tse, and director Snyder. It’s not easy to make superhero
movies—especially those with grandiose world portraits like
Watchmen—and yet I never questioned the story’s
believability, nor found it goofy. For instance, even I, an
ardent defender of Nixon, had no trouble conceding that the
former President may indeed have tried to remove term-limits had
his quest for further national security crisis-mandated
executive power been successful.
In terms of
story, Watchmen represents the most credible film
depictions of what a society with superheroes might really be
like. Outside of Dr. Manhattan, who is really more of an
allegorical symbol than a literal object, the Watchmen behave
like humans thrust into extraordinary circumstances. They find
themselves in a position in which justice can be exacted in an
unjust society, and they respond to the situation not
necessarily in the ways we would expect them to, but in ways we
can believe they would. Even more so than Bruce Wayne, who
despite his empathy and grounded nature still defies gravity,
these characters show awareness of external society in ways
comic-book figures usually do not. This isn’t always in
reference to the arms race, either; the often-Shakespearean
relationship-dynamics between the Watchmen resonate dramatically
with the audience. Even the fading love between Laurie and Dr.
Manhattan—shown graphically in a sex scene that involves a blue
member, if you know what I mean—on some level feels
probable within the mirror-universe established. And it’s hard
to argue that Rorschach, despite his constant nihilism, doesn’t
appeal to the voice inside of us that craves life’s messy truths
at all costs and abhors the moral decay of American society.
Much of the
film’s deep sociopolitical commentary is achieved merely by
putting the themes on the table and exploring them. Watchmen
is not an overtly partisan picture, but it adopts several points
of view from both sides of the political spectrum. New York
Post critic Kyle Smith observantly writes that the movie
shows an “eagerness to argue with itself,” which works well
because it allows viewers to explore every angle of the
political parallels in Moore’s universe. Most of the ideas come
to fruition in the third-act, so it’s hard for me to discuss
them without spoilers. I will say that the movie serves as a
thought-provoking dissection of the pros and cons of
peace-through-strength governance, the questionable necessity of
objective media coverage, how far executive power can extend
without becoming tyrannical, what the government’s core
responsibility to the people is, whether ethical ends can come
from unethical means, and more. Even with the occasional
cheap-shot at Nixon—or, in the final scene, Reagan—Watchmen
proves itself a thoughtful and valid political work, which is
ultimately all a viewer of any persuasion can ask for.
Furthermore,
beyond all of its intellectual and parabolic values, Watchmen
still works as a great nuts-and-bolts, comic-book-adapted
superhero flick. While the typical Friday night set of teenage
boys will probably dislike the picture, those who love well-made
pop-art but don’t necessarily go to the movies for anything
beyond simple entertainment will still love Watchmen.
Audiences will swoon over the gorgeous images, which once again
take CGI to new heights and are integral to the storytelling.
The colors are vibrant and the action’s sense of motion is
impressively realistic. One particular sequence in which Dr.
Manhattan seeks refuge on Mars is particularly enrapturing.
Ensuring these visuals and the accompanying story never get
boring, Snyder and editor William Hoy perfectly pace the film
for its near three-hours. And then there is perhaps the movie’s
greatest pleasure—its obligatory (but far out of the ordinary)
dream girl. As Silk Spectre, Malin Akerman is radiant in the way
that Old Hollywood’s leading ladies used to be but rarely are
anymore; she will be the object of every straight male viewer’s
desires for months to come. More than any of Snyder’s elaborate
visual tricks, Akerman’s attractive face, physique, and
screen-presence make the IMAX version of Watchmen a
must-see.
Thus far, I
have nothing but praised Watchmen. But as I noted in the
opening of this review, the movie does have its faults, two of
which are particularly pronounced. The first is its unfitting
selection of classic rock songs for the soundtrack. While Snyder
and his music supervisor likely picked old standards like Bob
Dylan’s “The Times They Are ‘A-Changin’” and Jimi Hendrix’ “All
Along the Watchtower” to juxtapose familiar artifacts of the era
with the film’s revised version of history, their well-known
choices feel so lazy that the experience is occasionally
reminiscent of Tropic Thunder’s parody of Vietnam movies
filled with CCR tracks. The film’s other big misstep is the
absence of needed story-background. An explanation for
Roscharch’s moving-ink-blot mask is notably absent and I
would’ve liked to have known more about the life-history of
Ozymandias, who becomes integral to the plot. Perhaps these
issues will be resolved in Snyder’s 4 ˝-hour-long director’s cut
due out later this year.
Detractors
may argue that the above two flaws are more pronounced than I
have made them seem and that Watchmen is full of other
problems. Many reputable critics hate the movie just as much as
I love it. But I think there’s one thing everyone can agree on:
Watchmen joins the ranks of The Dark Knight and
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button as one of the most of
the most layered, ambitious, and chancy projects tackled by
Hollywood in recent years. Even those who ultimately don’t find
Snyder’s achievement resonant will have a tough time arguing it
isn’t a hell of an attempt. It’s precisely this type of gutsy,
high-minded motion picture that we filmgoers must champion so
that mainstream product doesn’t become completely soulless and
safe, sort of like that one movie Snyder made two years ago.
-Danny Baldwin,
Bucket Reviews
Review Published
on: 3.10.2009
Screened on:
3.6.2009 in IMAX at the Regal
Escondido 16 in Escondido, CA.
Watchmen is rated R and runs 163
minutes.
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