Directed by: Zack Snyder
Written By: David Hayter and Alex Tse based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore (uncredited) & Dave Gibbons.
Starring: Malin Akerman (Laurie Jupiter/Silk Spectre II), Billy Crudup (Dr. Manhattan/Jon Osterman), Matthew Goode (Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias), Jackie Earle Haley (Walter Kovacs/Rorschach), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Edward Blake/The Comedian), Patrick Wilson (Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl II), Carla Gugino (Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectre), Matt Frewer (Edgar Jacobi/Moloch the Mystic), Stephen McHattie (Hollis Mason/Nite Owl), Laura Mennell (Janey Slater), Rob LaBelle (Wally Weaver),Robert Wisden (Richard Nixon), Frank Novak (Henry Kissinger).
Watchmen is the first truly interesting, truly great movie of 2009. It is the only movie so far this year that I want to re-watch almost immediately. That the film has some flaws is probably to be expected – how can you realistically expect an adaptation of Alan Moore’s dense graphic novel masterpiece to be perfect – but it is a film that has been spinning in my head since I saw it. It’s
a fascinating, visual masterwork.
I doubt that we’ll see a better opening credits sequence to any movie this year than what we get at the beginning of Watchmen. Set to Dylan’s The Times They are a Changin’, the film condenses nearly 40 years of alternate history, from the second World War to the mid-1980s, into a compact 4 minutes, that immediately immerses us into the world that the film has created. It’s 1985; Nixon is still President, the Vietnam war was won easily, and America and the Soviet Union on the brink of nuclear war. Masked avengers, or superheroes or vigilantes or whatever you want to call them, have been outlawed after years of them being “protectors” of society. The police didn’t like these “masks” taking all their glory, and doing their job for them, and the public reacts to their often violent means negatively, forcing Nixon to outlaw them. Most of the superheroes have retired to relatively quiet lives, but a few remain active. But these aren’t superheroes like you get in most comics. These guys are deviants, sycophants, sociopaths, violent men – or at least most of them are.
When a former mask, The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is murdered, it bring together a group of his “friends”, Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson), Silk Specter
(Malin Akerman), Ozymandias (Matthew Goode) and Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) to try and figure out if this was a random crime, or if someone is deliberately picking off old superheroes. And since no one knows their real identities, except for those in the group, perhaps it could be one of them.
Now let’s get those pesky flaws I mentioned at the top of the review out of the way now, just so we can get past them, and move onto what makes Watchmen a truly spectacular film achievement. Malin Akerman and Matthew Goode are both about a decade too young to play their roles, which would still be okay if there was any real evidence that either of them understood their characters. Akerman seems to have been cast because she would look good in (and out of) her skin tight spandex suit – and that she does. But there is something a little too hopelessly naïve about her. Goode on the other hand, plays Ozymandias as just one step away from a preening, dancing fairy – in short he’s a little too effeminate. Ozymandias is a pretty boy sure, a spoiled rotten brat, but he Goode goes a little too far here. Some of the dialogue is a little too on the nose, and little too far out there (often this is when Richard Nixon is on the screen, who again, I think they go too far with, especially his nose). Yes, the movie is a satire, yet I wish the movie didn’t feel the need to nudge you and wink quite as often as it does.
There are other flaws in the movie as well. In fact, if I wanted to, I could rip the movie to shreds –
some critics already have done that. To them the movie has been storyboarded and planned to death, it is too hollow, too emotionless, to slavish and reverent to the source material, a masturbatory exercise in style, its not realistic enough, its too long, its too slow, too complicated, too simplistic etc, etc. If they hate it, so be it. I don’t really care.
For me, Watchmen is the most interesting film I have seen in quite some time. It is almost the flip side of the same coin as last year’s The Dark Knight. While Christopher Nolan and his cast in that film made the superhero movie the most realistic it has ever been, Zack Snyder and his cast have taken Watchmen to another level – way over the top. That it isn’t realistic isn’t a flaw, it’s a choice. The movie exists in a world that never was, and could never possibly be. It takes in New York and Antarctica and on Mars, but these are the same places as they are in our world, but are wholly unto themselves.
It was only a matter of time before some one finally looked at the psychology of superheroes, and Alan Moore, way ahead of his time, did that 20 years ago with Watchmen. What kind of person would want to dress up as a superhero and fight crime anyway? In Watchmen we get the answer. Rorschach does it because he is disgusted by the filth, the violence, the sex
that has infiltrated every part of society. He’s like Travis Bickle, the “hero” of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, except even further down his own little world. His mask is a constantly shifting Rorschach blotch that gives as much insight into his mood as his face would be able to – perhaps more. The Comedian does it simply because he likes violence. He thrives on it. He justifies his actions, but he is essentially someone who likes to kill, maim and torture, and being a “superhero” gives him an excuse to do it, and lets him off the hook without any consequences. Nite Owl does it, because without his costume, he is nobody – he has no personality, nothing to say of any interest to anyone. As Dan Drieburgh, his is an impotent loser, the kind of man who in the throes of passion, stops to take off his watch. As Nite Owl, he can be what he wants to be. Laurie did it to please her mother, who did it because she had an ego and liked it to be stroked, was pretty, and liked the attention it brought her. Ozymandias did it almost as a challenge – he’s the world’s smartest man, and feels it’s his responsibility to save the world.
The movie would be fascinating enough, perhaps even great enough, had these been the only characters in the film. But Dr. Manhattan raises Watchmen to an entirely new level – one that is profound. Dr. Manhattan exists outside the laws of humanity and emotions. He remembers what it
was like to be human, so he tries to hold onto that, but in the end he cannot. He cannot stop seeing the world on his own level – everything made up of tiny particles, and strings. A living person and a dead person are essentially the same on the level that Dr. Manhattan sees them. Why should he care what happens? When he finally does seem to show some emotion, in his speech to Laurie about her uniqueness, he really isn’t saying that he loves her for who she is, but because of her uniqueness – not as a person, but as a series of particles. Out of any of the millions of human beings that could have resulted when her father impregnated her mother, she is the result. He doesn’t “love” her in the way we mere humans perceive it – he is simply amazed by her DNA. And what does the character of Dr. Manhattan say about God? Clearly, Dr. Manhattan has moved beyond the human realm, and now he is essentially God. He can create or shape whatever he wants to. And if it only takes two decades from him to lose his humanity, what does that say about God as we perceive him in our world, who even by the most conservative of estimates, has had more power for over 6,000 years? And we nothing more than termites to him, like we are to Dr. Manhattan?
But now I find myself rambling on about God, and not so much about Watchmen. Since I have already gone on far too long, what I will say is this – Watchmen is an entertaining movie from start to finish, filled with some great acting, wonderful music choices (truly, Snyder has a sixth sense for marrying songs with images like Tarantino and Scorsese do – his choices of
Dylan, Hendrix and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah’s are particularly inspired, and I love the idea of opening the movie with Dylan’s Times They are a Changin’ and ending it with My Chemical Romance’s Dylan remake of Desolation Row). The film is a visual marvel, marrying great, grimy cinematography, to pitch perfect art direction and costume designs, and a complex sound design. They acting, despite my reservations about Akerman and Goode, is almost uniformly excellent – particularly Haley as the deranged Rorschach, Wilson as Nite Owl (even if he has kind of played this role before), Morgan as the Comedian and especially Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan, who somehow under all the CGI, and despite the distraction of his giant blue swinging penis in half the shots, somehow makes us understand Dr. Manhattan, while keeping the right emotional distance from the character. Watchmen may not be a perfect film, but it’s one that I can see myself watching again and again to ponder everything in it. In fact, I want to go see it again. Right now.
Written By: David Hayter and Alex Tse based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore (uncredited) & Dave Gibbons.
Starring: Malin Akerman (Laurie Jupiter/Silk Spectre II), Billy Crudup (Dr. Manhattan/Jon Osterman), Matthew Goode (Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias), Jackie Earle Haley (Walter Kovacs/Rorschach), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Edward Blake/The Comedian), Patrick Wilson (Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl II), Carla Gugino (Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectre), Matt Frewer (Edgar Jacobi/Moloch the Mystic), Stephen McHattie (Hollis Mason/Nite Owl), Laura Mennell (Janey Slater), Rob LaBelle (Wally Weaver),Robert Wisden (Richard Nixon), Frank Novak (Henry Kissinger).
Watchmen is the first truly interesting, truly great movie of 2009. It is the only movie so far this year that I want to re-watch almost immediately. That the film has some flaws is probably to be expected – how can you realistically expect an adaptation of Alan Moore’s dense graphic novel masterpiece to be perfect – but it is a film that has been spinning in my head since I saw it. It’s
a fascinating, visual masterwork.I doubt that we’ll see a better opening credits sequence to any movie this year than what we get at the beginning of Watchmen. Set to Dylan’s The Times They are a Changin’, the film condenses nearly 40 years of alternate history, from the second World War to the mid-1980s, into a compact 4 minutes, that immediately immerses us into the world that the film has created. It’s 1985; Nixon is still President, the Vietnam war was won easily, and America and the Soviet Union on the brink of nuclear war. Masked avengers, or superheroes or vigilantes or whatever you want to call them, have been outlawed after years of them being “protectors” of society. The police didn’t like these “masks” taking all their glory, and doing their job for them, and the public reacts to their often violent means negatively, forcing Nixon to outlaw them. Most of the superheroes have retired to relatively quiet lives, but a few remain active. But these aren’t superheroes like you get in most comics. These guys are deviants, sycophants, sociopaths, violent men – or at least most of them are.
When a former mask, The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is murdered, it bring together a group of his “friends”, Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson), Silk Specter
(Malin Akerman), Ozymandias (Matthew Goode) and Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) to try and figure out if this was a random crime, or if someone is deliberately picking off old superheroes. And since no one knows their real identities, except for those in the group, perhaps it could be one of them.Now let’s get those pesky flaws I mentioned at the top of the review out of the way now, just so we can get past them, and move onto what makes Watchmen a truly spectacular film achievement. Malin Akerman and Matthew Goode are both about a decade too young to play their roles, which would still be okay if there was any real evidence that either of them understood their characters. Akerman seems to have been cast because she would look good in (and out of) her skin tight spandex suit – and that she does. But there is something a little too hopelessly naïve about her. Goode on the other hand, plays Ozymandias as just one step away from a preening, dancing fairy – in short he’s a little too effeminate. Ozymandias is a pretty boy sure, a spoiled rotten brat, but he Goode goes a little too far here. Some of the dialogue is a little too on the nose, and little too far out there (often this is when Richard Nixon is on the screen, who again, I think they go too far with, especially his nose). Yes, the movie is a satire, yet I wish the movie didn’t feel the need to nudge you and wink quite as often as it does.
There are other flaws in the movie as well. In fact, if I wanted to, I could rip the movie to shreds –
some critics already have done that. To them the movie has been storyboarded and planned to death, it is too hollow, too emotionless, to slavish and reverent to the source material, a masturbatory exercise in style, its not realistic enough, its too long, its too slow, too complicated, too simplistic etc, etc. If they hate it, so be it. I don’t really care.For me, Watchmen is the most interesting film I have seen in quite some time. It is almost the flip side of the same coin as last year’s The Dark Knight. While Christopher Nolan and his cast in that film made the superhero movie the most realistic it has ever been, Zack Snyder and his cast have taken Watchmen to another level – way over the top. That it isn’t realistic isn’t a flaw, it’s a choice. The movie exists in a world that never was, and could never possibly be. It takes in New York and Antarctica and on Mars, but these are the same places as they are in our world, but are wholly unto themselves.
It was only a matter of time before some one finally looked at the psychology of superheroes, and Alan Moore, way ahead of his time, did that 20 years ago with Watchmen. What kind of person would want to dress up as a superhero and fight crime anyway? In Watchmen we get the answer. Rorschach does it because he is disgusted by the filth, the violence, the sex
that has infiltrated every part of society. He’s like Travis Bickle, the “hero” of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, except even further down his own little world. His mask is a constantly shifting Rorschach blotch that gives as much insight into his mood as his face would be able to – perhaps more. The Comedian does it simply because he likes violence. He thrives on it. He justifies his actions, but he is essentially someone who likes to kill, maim and torture, and being a “superhero” gives him an excuse to do it, and lets him off the hook without any consequences. Nite Owl does it, because without his costume, he is nobody – he has no personality, nothing to say of any interest to anyone. As Dan Drieburgh, his is an impotent loser, the kind of man who in the throes of passion, stops to take off his watch. As Nite Owl, he can be what he wants to be. Laurie did it to please her mother, who did it because she had an ego and liked it to be stroked, was pretty, and liked the attention it brought her. Ozymandias did it almost as a challenge – he’s the world’s smartest man, and feels it’s his responsibility to save the world.The movie would be fascinating enough, perhaps even great enough, had these been the only characters in the film. But Dr. Manhattan raises Watchmen to an entirely new level – one that is profound. Dr. Manhattan exists outside the laws of humanity and emotions. He remembers what it
was like to be human, so he tries to hold onto that, but in the end he cannot. He cannot stop seeing the world on his own level – everything made up of tiny particles, and strings. A living person and a dead person are essentially the same on the level that Dr. Manhattan sees them. Why should he care what happens? When he finally does seem to show some emotion, in his speech to Laurie about her uniqueness, he really isn’t saying that he loves her for who she is, but because of her uniqueness – not as a person, but as a series of particles. Out of any of the millions of human beings that could have resulted when her father impregnated her mother, she is the result. He doesn’t “love” her in the way we mere humans perceive it – he is simply amazed by her DNA. And what does the character of Dr. Manhattan say about God? Clearly, Dr. Manhattan has moved beyond the human realm, and now he is essentially God. He can create or shape whatever he wants to. And if it only takes two decades from him to lose his humanity, what does that say about God as we perceive him in our world, who even by the most conservative of estimates, has had more power for over 6,000 years? And we nothing more than termites to him, like we are to Dr. Manhattan?But now I find myself rambling on about God, and not so much about Watchmen. Since I have already gone on far too long, what I will say is this – Watchmen is an entertaining movie from start to finish, filled with some great acting, wonderful music choices (truly, Snyder has a sixth sense for marrying songs with images like Tarantino and Scorsese do – his choices of
Dylan, Hendrix and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah’s are particularly inspired, and I love the idea of opening the movie with Dylan’s Times They are a Changin’ and ending it with My Chemical Romance’s Dylan remake of Desolation Row). The film is a visual marvel, marrying great, grimy cinematography, to pitch perfect art direction and costume designs, and a complex sound design. They acting, despite my reservations about Akerman and Goode, is almost uniformly excellent – particularly Haley as the deranged Rorschach, Wilson as Nite Owl (even if he has kind of played this role before), Morgan as the Comedian and especially Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan, who somehow under all the CGI, and despite the distraction of his giant blue swinging penis in half the shots, somehow makes us understand Dr. Manhattan, while keeping the right emotional distance from the character. Watchmen may not be a perfect film, but it’s one that I can see myself watching again and again to ponder everything in it. In fact, I want to go see it again. Right now. 
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