Watchmen

I think that Watchmen may be impossible to review.  I’ve read reviews praising what other reviews panned and damning what others deified.  I have friends who have seen it and loved it, loved it except for the ending, hated the whole thing, and a few who refuse to see the movie because they feel that making a film adaptation of Watchmen is misguided.

After having seen Watchmen myself, I have to cast my vote with the latter.  At least in the sense that the movie, as good as frequently is and as faithful to the text as it can be, is ultimately a gutless retelling of the comic’s plot that pares out the things that make Watchmen really resonate as a ‘graphic novel’ (or ‘maxi-series’, depending on when you first read it and in what format).

The sleek cinematography, complete with director Zack Snyder’s trademark fetishistic slo-mo, blood, violence and nudity are all present on film.  The pirate comic, the streetcorner, the backing material are mostly gone or severely diminished.  The first group are the things that I loved about Watchmen when I was ten years old.  The second are the things I like about the comic now.  I like the control and complexity in Moore’s script and in Gibbons’ layouts and pencils, things that are by the very dint of being filmed absent from the film.

Watchmen the film is ultimately a very slick looking, very bombastic presentation of all the things I loved when I was ten.  As a film adaptation of the main plot, it is entertaining; I don’t hate it.  The acting is mostly solid (with Malin Akerman being the weak link in that chain and Jackie Earle Haley and Billy Crudup both doing an particularly great job of bringing two very difficult characters to life), the action looks nice (and I’ve always secretly been a bit of a sucker for Snyder’s slow motion antics), but it’s hollow in comparison to its source - very much like the bulk of the Harry Potter films in a lot of ways.    I liked it.  I’ll watch it again.  It was entertaining.  But it doesn’t hold a candle to the original.