Watchmen

Wow.

I'm a fan of the graphic novel, so let me confess my bias right up front. But wow. What a great movie. No, scratch that. What a great adaptation of the book. Yes, Alan Moore, I said it. The <quote>unfilmable<un-quote> has been filmed, and Zack Snyder did a terrific job. The movie is about as faithful as it could be and still come in under 5 hours (way under 5 hours, it did). It is as beautiful a creation on celluloid today as Dave Gibbons' artwork was on paper back in the 80's. And the story is an earnest a representation of, I believe, Moore's every intention.*

Opinions on this movie will vary. I'm already reading a groundswell of criticism around staying too true to a story best left on the printed page. Sure. I get that. But Snyder had a heck of a challenge in creating something to appeal to the uninitiated yet also appease the rabid fanbase. I think he did an admirable job. It would have been, perhaps, a better movie if it were streamlined a little more, but it would have lost something precious along the way.

If you're a fan of the graphic novel, I recommend it. If you're curious and can handle some extreme violence, I recommend it. And if so, go see it in the theater. Visually, it's one of the most stunning movies I've seen since... I don't know when.

For the uninitiated, here's a brief summary of the plot, which will help you make sense of the convolutions going on but won't give anything away:

In 1985, an alternate America has won the Vietnam war, with Richard Nixon still in the White House, and now the world is on the brink of nuclear disaster. The cold war is being tracked by a doomsday clock who's minute-hand inches towards midnight at each new threat. Midnight will toll with the assumed imminent launch of tens of thousands of nuclear missiles aimed at destroying the world several thousand times over. The movie starts with the clock reading just a few minutes to midnight.

The Vietnam War was won thanks to Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), a former physicist who was caught in an experiment which disintegrated him down to the molecular level but gave him with the ability to change matter at will (including his own, thankfully, as he put himself back together again into the rather impressive form of a large, blue, glowing naked man with relatively little modesty) including the ability to see his own future, who stepped into the rice paddies and blasted the Vietcong into smithereens in six days, giving us our victory.

The Russians see him as a threat, the coldness of a cold war depending on a stalemate between the two superpowers, something difficult to maintain when the other side has a demigod keeping watch, and they continue to stockpile their nukes higher and higher assuming that he could stop perhaps 99% of all of their simultaneously launched missiles, but even the 1% left would destroy the bulk of the U.S. well enough.

Aside from Dr. Manhattan, costumed vigilantes are outlawed. Apparently there has been a rash of them since World War II, starting with a group known as the Minutemen formed in the 30's to clean up the prohibition-era streets and help stop crime, regular men and women without any superpowers at all (except an innate ability to kick ass) but a common goal to right wrongs and help protect (if not serve). One of them was the Comedian, a larger-than-life character with no moral center; a questionable one, at best.

One by one the Minutemen are retired, something that was woven into scenes throughout the entire graphic novel, but which Snyder cleverly condensed into a brilliant series of flashbacks during the opening credits (with Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin' playing in the background), and now, in the relatively more modern era, a new group of costumed heroes called the Watchmen has formed. Modern times means modern criminals and perhaps a more modern approach to vigilante justice, and the Watchmen became a little too enthusiastic in their pursuits, prompting the oft-graffiti'd phrase displayed on walls in the background: "Who watches the Watchmen?" Thus the ban on costumed heroes.

(Naked blue supermen tilting the balance of the cold war in America's favor: notwithstanding.)

The Watchmen are/were:

• Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson) who no longer flies his owl-ship through the night looking for evil-doers but has grown bored in his civilian life, and soft because of it
• Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), the self-proclaimed "world's smartest man," now a billionaire trying to eliminate human dependency on fossil fuels
• Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman), a.k.a. Dr. Manhattan's girlfriend, who find her life unfulfilled living with someone who views human existence no more or less altered by such trivial matters as life and/or death
• Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), the last remaining vigilante who gives fuck-all about the outlawed nature of his mask, continues to fight crime in the shadows of the night
  

The movie starts with the Comedian, now in his 60's and ostensibly retired, being violently thrown through the plate glass window of his high-rise apartment followed by Rorshach's investigation into his murder, and unfolds as an interlocking series of plots that culminate in a philosophical battle for the survival of all mankind. Seriously. I won't give anything away more than that, but yeah, seriously.

One word of caution to those uninitiated (probably scant few reading these pages): don't go in expecting the Justice League or the X-Men. This isn't a story about superheroes, per se, but a story about extraordinary people (most of whom are innately ordinary at the molecular level) in extraordinary times. And for you chillun's out there too young to remember the 80's, those huge glasses that Patrick Wilson wears were once stylish. Deal with it.

* Moore, being the complete dick that he is (see my ramblings about him back at the bottom of my review of this movie) won't watch it, so we'll never know. But I truly believe Snyder wanted to honor the man's work to the very best of his ability.