I know it’s a full week late, but I kinda don’t even want to review this film. If ever there was an unreviewable film, Watchmen is it.Why? Well, many have tried. Go online and there are a ton of reviews, sure. From people who are huge fans of the book; some of them loved it and there were some who couldn’t get past the subtle (but thematically huge) changes. From people who never read the book and were able to take it on its own merits as a film, for better or worse.
After all these reviews, there is no real consensus. I think the only facts we can really agree on are these: Jackie Earle Haley pwns as Rorschach; Jeffrey Dean Morgan does a good job as the Comedian; the world at large is not mature enough to accept Dr. Manhattan’s dongpiece and move along; the film is nearly three hours and feels like it; Ozymandias’ endgame is not entirely like the book but has the same end result; the use of Philip Glass’ music during the Dr. Manhattan sequences was inspired, and set the tone perfectly; director Zack Snyder definitely has a great eye for visuals; the old-age makeup is pretty terrible, especially on Nixon (who is in the film way too much, in my opinion); the opening credits sequence is one of the best parts of the film; and it is a film that is (mostly) slavishly faithful to its source material.
This last fact is I think what may prevent Watchmen from really taking off with the public at large. These characters are not household names; kids do not wear Rorschach pajamas to bed and sleep with a stuffed Bubastis, unfortunately. Will the viewing audience care enough about the characters without having read the book? Why would they care if shots in the film are exact replicas of panels from the comic? Does the film work on its own? Watchmen has been out for a week already, and there is no definite answer. Some, like Roger Ebert, really enjoyed the film. Others have not. All have very strong opinions, mostly because two hours and forty minutes is a big investment.
It all makes for a confusing situation. Alan Moore, writer of the comic miniseries, has called Watchmen “unfilmable”. This has been challenged by many in the geek community who have said that nothing is unfilmable, pointing to adaptations of Burroughs’ Naked Lunch or Heller’s Catch-22 or whatever. But neither of those film adaptations set the world on fire, and ultimately I think Moore is right. Even if you adapted Watchmen to a 12-part HBO miniseries, as Terry Gilliam had once suggested, you still run the risk of losing pieces of story in the process of adapting to a new medium. What Moore was saying isn’t that Watchmen could never be put in front of cameras, but that by doing so you would have to make changes that would modify the story to a degree he found unacceptable. While I think the changes (generally) work within the context of the film, ultimately I think it’s lost a few of its core elements, specifically in the Ozymandias department (though I think Matthew Goode did a good job, but then again I'm a fan of David Bowie so maybe I'm partial to his take on the character).
Ultimately, I wanted to like Watchmen more than I actually did. That said, I would like to see it again to see if maybe I can get a fresh perspective. I’m a bit afraid to, though, since I’m not sure I have time to sit in a movie theater for three hours. Especially when I felt every second of it the last time. Maybe I can get in an IMAX showing soon, that would be worth it for sure.
