I'm Watching Watchmen

Rating: B+
Being a comic book enthusiast, Zack Snyder’s movie adaptation of the graphic novel, Watchmen, proved to be a cinematic work of art. This harsh and alternate reality of the year 1985 portrays a world where superheroes are the norm and hating them happens just as often as seeing them. When a group of former heroes come back together to investigate the murder of a past colleague after years of disbandment, due to government intervention, they discover a horrible plot to kill millions. Some of these costumed individuals were used, abused, and murdered just as often as they helped. Most people either love this movie or hate it, and the main reasons to hate it are because of the differences from the graphic novel and the not-so-fantastic job in the wardrobe department.

Having read the written work by Alan Moore, after viewing the movie, I have found one main difference between the two, which would be the conclusion to a very twisted tale of a struggle for world peace. Giving away the ending to a newly released movie would be simply rude. However, ending a movie the same way you would end a comic book simply would not work. More people visit the movie theater than read comic books. Maybe it’s because the stereotype about comics is that they are childish and immature, yet going to see a movie about talking chihuahuas is perfectly fine. Some people simply will not buy a giant monster being a conspiracy to create civility between two warring nations, thanks to the smartest man on the planet. This is too much of a science fiction scenario for the general population. It’s not “realistic”, no matter how ridiculous it is to hear someone walk out of a movie saying, “it wasn’t realistic enough” or “that would never happen in real life”. That’s why it’s a movie. Unless it’s a documentary, it isn’t supposed to be realistic. This is why we have a little thing called imagination. But, because the imagination in people has died or is becoming that way, we cannot have a giant monster engineered from an extraordinary man destroying cities and still maintain blockbuster quality. So, we must go with something more “realistic”, a device of war meant to destroy civilizations. Something that was very nice was the homage to the original source, being the genetically enhanced lynx that remains at the side of Matthew Goode’s character, Adrian Veidt, or his superhero name, Ozymandias. Mainstream America can grasp this much easier than the more supernatural occurrence found in the comic. So, this is the compromise that must be made in order to try and entertain everyone that chooses to see this movie.

Another difference from the movie and the written work is leaving out two important characters that we see constantly throughout the graphic novel. These two characters are the newsstand vendor and the kid sitting next to him reading a fake comic, “Curse of the Black Freighter.” These two characters make the audience care about what happens at the end of the movie to everyone that is killed. The graphic novel has a total of twelve chapters and these two characters appear in each one of them. This creates a bond between the reader and the characters that does not occur in the movie. The reasoning for why this could not possibly happen in the movie is simply the time limit. The movie runs for well over two hours, coming close to three, meaning the director would have considered this and must have been relying on the fact that people would have to connect with the fact that it is New York City that is destroyed. It would have hit home with other disasters such as 9/11. This would make people feel sad about what happens but isn’t as effective as using characters from the newsstand. However, these two are shown when the city is destroyed, paying tribute to the graphic novel once again.

Cinematically, this movie is absolutely astounding. The opening montage shows what looks like slow moving pictures, reminiscent of the portraits from Harry Potter. Another great quality about the look of the movie is that a great number of shots are set up to give credit to the graphic novel recreating its scene art, yet again paying tribute. It becomes very apparent that Snyder is a very big fan of the work and wants to make as close to a mirror to the graphic novel as possible. This is very commendable and should be recognized as a great accomplishment in the movie because of its devotion to the source material.

The few differences between the graphic novel and the movie are not so great as to call the movie bad. Acting wise, Jeffery Dean Morgan (The Comedian) and Jackie Earle Haley (Rorschach) were incredible while others like Malin Akerman (Silk Spectre II) and Billy Crudup (Dr. Manhattan) could have possibly been the wrong choices to make. This and some of the costumes and make up could have been justification enough to find faults within the movie. I mean, it was pretty bad to see an obviously fake nose hanging from Nixon’s face that looked like play-doh molded in a farmer’s hands and thrown on a guy’s face and said, “it’ll do.” But, all in all, this incredible twist on saving humanity that has never been done before is reason enough to call this movie great and Zack Snyder’s devotion to the source material should not be over-looked as well. So, should you be watching Watchmen? Most definitely. You’ll be in for one hell of a treat.