Review- Watchmen (2009)

Directed by: Zack Snyder

Written By: David Hayter, Alex Tse

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

Adaptations are always tricky business. 'It's never better than the book' people say, yet sometimes there is a freak accident like Jaws and (I might be in the minority here) The Hunger Games series. But are we suppose to compare it to it's source material? Many people argue that they're two different beasts and should be treated differently. But how can they be two different beasts when a good portion of the story and themes came from the other beast? Are you suppose to judge a movie by how well it adapts the source material or watch it without the bias of having read/watched/played the source material? It makes it hard to judge a movie correctly.

Watchmen is particularly hard because of it's source material. I have never read the graphic novel it's based on but I have read a ton about it and it's extremely well received and quite a few comic fans consider it the best comic book ever made. I've seen images from the pages and they look stunning. My assumption is that the movie doesn't hit the graphic novel by a long shot, but is the movie bad? I'm not so sure but I do believe this; I think most good elements of this movie is only because of the graphic novel and not because of anyone in the movie's production.

It reminds me of David Fincher, known for adapting books onto the big screen. For example, I thought Gone Girl was a highly entertaining mystery crime thriller. But most of what made that good was the fact that it was based on a highly entertaining mystery crime book. He even hired the author to write the screenplay. He merely got a talented cast and crew and gave the film a dark sleek look. But I can never really consider any of his book-to-screen movies masterpieces because they are all literal adaptations and thus the unique elements of the movie are not unique. But let's also look at something like The Dark Knight, directed by Christopher Nolan. It's not a masterpiece but I think it's pretty close. It took the comic book character and morphed it into something different and unique. It had more than just a stylish look and a talented cast and crew.

What did Zack Snyder do? Well, he takes a lot of specific images from the graphic novel (and imagery from other things) and adapts them for film, and I think those work perfectly. I also thought the use of color was good. He worked hard to emulate the visual style of the comic books he adapts. I noticed this in Man of Steel as well as the trailer for Batman Vs. Superman and it's abundantly clear in 300. I like that he sneaks little bits of imagery and it's something to appreciate. However, a lot of parts feel like in-between moments and are noticeably less impressive, perhaps because those scenes didn't have any pictures from the comic to base the shot off of.

The story is quite different. Many people say that Watchmen can't be adapted correctly and that may be so. The movie spends a lot of time on flashbacks and it's not until the last third of the movie that the plot picks up. I appreciated that it went out of the standard narrative and I liked the slower pacing (Which was surprising, because every other Snyder film seems to have pacing issues). I liked the ideas in it, I think that noir-esque mystery and the Cold War elements could have worked great if the flashbacks were more brief and the main story was the focus of the film. There are some parts of the story that needed set ups earlier in the film so that there were better pay offs and a focus would have fixed that. It feels like Snyder was so worried about recreating certain scenes that he forgot to see if they all fit together.

I thought the cast did a great job except for Malin Akerman, who played Laurie Jupiter/Silk Spectre II. Jackie Earle Haley (Rorschach), Billy Crudup (Dr. Manhatten), Jeffery Dean Morgan (The Comedian), and Patrick Wilson (Nite Owl II) were great. It's the technical aspects that I think went wrong. Cinematography, when not emulating specific comic book images, was sort of funky. The soundtrack was good except for the original themes, which lingered over the dialogue and scenes in such a way that it slowly became irritating and I kept hoping to hear the music go quiet for a few seconds. I'm not against slow-motion but most scenes in the movie could have gone without it. The worst part of the movie, though, was the horrendous makeup given to Robert Wisden, who played Richard Nixon, and Carla Gugino, who played the original Silk Spectre.

I'm not really sure who to blame and who to thank for the good and bad elements of the film but I think there are just enough good elements to outweigh the bad, even if it's not by much. Snyder has the tendency to do this, and I'm not sure if he's taking bad creative decisions by other people in production and making them watchable or if there are always enough good decisions by people in production to make Snyder's mistakes watchable or if Snyder took a great graphic novel and turned it into something only watchable. But at the end of the day that's what Watchmen is; watchable.

6/10