Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen is quite possibly the most important comic series to ever hit the stands. Not only is it an intriguing, enjoyable story with complex themes, characters and moral quandaries, but it practically redefined the medium and brought comics to greater critical prominence.
Is Zack Snyder’s adaptation of this seminal work groundbreaking? Not really. Most of its probing questions were already asked by its source material over 20 years ago, and furthermore had the benefit of pages upon pages of panels and prose to depict a unique, oddly believable world. Likely, many will find the finished film aesthetically cartoonish in comparison to last year’s The Dark Knight.
None of that matters, however. While Snyder’s depiction is unable to totally live up to the incredible density of Moore and Gibbons’ work — as comics aren’t dependent on length and pacing in the same way as film — it remains an incredibly acted, directed and executed film that, even truncated by last-minute studio cuts, is able to stand up as a film and morality play in its own right.
Is it a successful adaptation? Without a doubt. While Moore has disparaged virtually any attempt to adapt his works to the screen and considered Watchmen unfilmable, it seems more likely that he’ll have to eat his own words. What Warner Bros. has shipped to theatres is a nearly three-hour picture that, against all odds, actually manages to capture the comic’s characters, themes and atmosphere to a tee. Consultation from the graphic novel’s penciller and co-creator Dave Gibbons certainly helped.
For the uninformed, Watchmen follows Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), an outlawed masked vigilante who reunites his former compatriots in an attempt to uncover a “mask-killer” plot — one that left Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Edward Blake/The Comedian dead on the grimy streets of 1985 New York. In this astounding opening scene, the aging Blake trades blows with a skilled, silhouetted opponent in his penthouse apartment, breaking down laughing and sobbing, “Mother, forgive me,” before being tossed out a window to his death.
What follows in the next two-and-a-half hours is an exploration of Watchmen’s timeline, one where actual costumed heroes — and in the case of post-human Dr. Manhattan, a superhero — have been part of the American zeitgeist since the late 1930s. Much like the comic, it is a harrowing story, one where the ethics of masked vigilantism are questioned, time and choice are deconstructed, and the ultimate moral decision is made.
While the cast is great all-around, Jackie Earle Haley is the standout performance, the former child actor plumbing psychological depths as dark as the late Heath Ledger’s Joker — possibly darker, as Rorschach models himself as a protector of the innocent. Billy Crudup is absolutely fascinating as the superhuman, emotionally detached Dr. Manhattan/Jon Osterman, and Morgan is strangely likable as the nihilistic Blake.
Watchmen is visceral, brutal and tremendously moving. While The Dark Knight broke ground with a realistic sheen, this film will leave you asking important questions about heroism, history and morality.