Dr. Manhattan, meet Dr. Hollywood
Whew! TinseltownNs go-to graphic-novel guy didnNt ruin Watchmen. But he doesnNt get it, either
The most eagerly anticipated (as well as the most beleaguered) movie of the year (if not the century), Watchmen is neither desecratory disaster nor total triumph. In filming David Hayter and Alex TseNs adaptation of the most ambitious superhero comic book ever written, director Zack Snyder has managed to address the cult while pandering to the masses.
Warner Bros., which battled Fox for possession of the property—from which author Alan Moore has, typically, removed his name—is marketing Snyder, who remade George RomeroNs Dawn of the Dead in 2004 and had a surprise mega-hit two years later with his adaptation of Frank MillerNs comic book Thermopylae, 300, as a “visionary.” ThatNs a grateful studioNs code word for “competent hack.” The master of the video-game aesthetic has successfully streamlined MooreNs 12-part graphic novel and, even at a running time that tops two hours and 40 minutes, made it commercially viable.
In its movie incarnation, Watchmen (which first appeared early in Ronald ReaganNs second term) could be most simply described as an apocalyptic sci-fi murder mystery cum love story set in an alternate universe in which masked superheroes are real, albeit largely retired, thanks to Richard Nixon, who is enjoying his fifth term as president—in part because the greatest of the Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan, a mutated atomic scientist who glows like blue kryptonite and possesses unlimited cosmic powers, settled the Vietnam War in a week. The story unfolds, amid many noir tropes (endless night, constant rain) and numerous flashbacks, in the shadow of impending nuclear obliteration.
As the U.S. and Soviet Union face off over Afghanistan, the irascible renegade “mask” Rorschach (played, in an inspired bit of casting, by Jackie Earle Haley) discovers that an even-more-asinine colleague formerly known as the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) has been murdered. The Comedian is a cigar-chomping asshole responsible for doing away with the alternate universeNs Woodward and Bernstein, as well as numerous Vietnamese and hippie protestors; at his height, he claimed to embody the American Dream—so his death has a particular resonance. Rorschach, a paranoid type who keeps a Travis Bickle-oid journal, jumps to the conclusion that someone is plotting to kill all surviving Watchmen, although he fails to persuade either Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), the most successful of the “masks,” or his depressed onetime partner Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson) to come out of retirement and join him on the case.
Meanwhile, Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), to whom the president (Robert Wisden, brandishing an alarming ski-jump nose) has given the responsibility of deterring RussiaNs nuclear threat, is increasingly alienated. Having offended his inamorata, the erstwhile Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman), by projecting a pair of avatars for her sexual gratification while he solves a difficult equation in the lab, the azure godling violently teleports himself from his boudoir to a guest TV appearance with Ted Koppel (Ron Fassler), and then, angry at being accused of spreading cancer, sulkily bungs off to Mars. After Rorschach is set up, busted and sent to the pen, the two second-generation masks, Nite Owl and Silk Spectre, return to action both in public (rescuing fire victims from the roof of a flaming apartment tower) and in private (humping like porn stars amid the piles of their passionately discarded superhero paraphernalia in Nite OwlNs flying whatchamacallit).
It should be apparent that Watchmen is founded on a pop mythology nearly as detailed as Lord of the Rings. Moreover, in its parodic historical references, integration of various written texts and temporal simultaneity that only the comic-book page can afford, the graphic novel has a modernist structure even more complex than its charactersN tangled genealogy. Snyder enriches the mix by riffing on alt-N80s periodicity—a simulated McLaughlin Group with Pat Buchanan opining on the nature of Dr. Manhattan is particularly funny—and a strategic N60s soundtrack. Indeed, the credit sequence that scores a frozen tableaux history of the Watchmen and their precursors the Minutemen to the young Bob Dylan declaiming “The Times They Are A-Changing” is far wittier filmmaking than any of the movieNs excessively juicy fisticuffs or the escalating pandemonium Snyder orchestrates as Watchmen staggers toward its climactic Armageddon.
Although the ending has been somewhat modified from the novelNs, let it be said that Watchmen doesnNt lack for self-confidence or even entertainment value. Its failure is one of imagination. SnyderNs movie is too literal and too linear. Social satire is pummeled into submission by the amplified pow-kick-thud of the sub-Matrix action sequences; not just metaphysics and narrative are simplified, but even character is ultimately eclipsed by the presumed need for violent spectacle.
The philosopher Iain Thomson (who valiantly brought HeideggerNs Being and Time to bear on his reading of Watchmen) maintained that Moore not only deconstructed the idea of comic-book super-heroism, but also pulverized the very notion of the hero—and the hero worship that comics traditionally sell. For all its superficial fidelity, SnyderNs movie stands MooreNs novel on its head, trying to reconstruct a conventional blockbuster out of those empty capes and scattered shards.
Watchmen was directed by Zack Snyder; written by David Hayter and Alex Tse, based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons; and stars Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Matthew Goode, Patrick Wilson, Billy Crudup and Malin Akerman. Countywide.
