Watchmen Review

Cinematic adaptations of comic books and graphic novels have long been a source of great contention. On the one hand, they can remain completely faithful to their source material and, well, flop. And on the other hand, they can take great liberties with their source material and, you know, turn a conspicuously large profit.



There is plenty of bleeding between the categories, too. In fact, the amount of films loosely based on comic books that have failed far exceeds any successful film adaptation, faithful or otherwise. In other words: it’s always a gamble. Take Frank Miller’s directorial debut of The Spirit, for instance, whose Rotten Tomatoes “freshness rating” is a paltry 15%, as opposed to the film adaptation of his own graphic novel series Sin City, which received a 77% rating. It’s Russian roulette. Very few instances has the timing been right, the market primed and audiences been responsive. This reality has been distorted by the heinous amount of comic-via-films that have reached blockbuster status lately. But, to harp on The Spirit again, what seems a patent formula for success can often lead to disaster.

So, what to make of the latest graphic novel adaptation, Watchmen, which is making its way to the silver screen after more than 20 years of project failures, licensing battles, derision from Alan Moore, the series’ author, and serious doubt by its cult-like faithful?



To begin, it might be helpful to issue some advice to both comic-via-filmmakers and comic-lovers-as-film-goers. Comics aren’t movies, and moviegoers aren’t necessarily comic book readers. So, that said, shooting for a middle-ground between the two is generally the best way to please the lowest common denominator between the two. And, more or less, Watchmen does just that.

The film springs into action almost immediately, inducting the audience into a visual vernacular as particular and unique as Snyder's previous film, 300. Billy Crudup (Dr. Manhattan), Patrick Wilson (Nite Owl) and Jackie Earle Haley (Rorschach) manage to ground the film and make up for many of its weaker points, particularly Malin Akerman whose turn as Silk Spectre is more distracting than maudlin and is a more grating difference between the graphic novel and the film than some of the missing or amended plot points.

The amount of screentime given to Dr. Manhattan comes at the cost of many of the graphic novel's finer plot points; but, considering the time window the film has to fit into, it is difficult to imagine how the film's conclusion and message could make sense otherwise.

While the atmosphere and tone the film affect are tuned perfectly to its source material, the film drifts out of key in plot and pacing at times, and tends to take a 300-like approach to action scenes, which seem amiss in this film. Nevertheless, for all of its pacing flaws (this is one of the many differences between films and comic books) the film does manage to deliver the story more or less intact, deviating conspicuously in the final scenes but still managing to deliver the same gravitas–laden message the graphic novel conveyed: power itself is unethical, and ethics themselves are never powerful enough. If no one is watching the watchmen, then the watchmen cease to be watchmen.

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