Is it possible that an Alan Moore comic has finally been turned into a movie Moore will be happy with?
That's probably a bit of a stretch, but "Watchmen" is certainly a movie that any fan of the graphic novel should be fairly happy with. It sticks to the comic faithfully, though some changes to the ending were made, probably to make the story more cinematic. But overall, the message has not changed. The feeling of intense paranoia that pervaded American culture in the 1980s comes through loud and clear. A lot of younger people don't remember what it was like living under the shadow of nuclear annihilation, but after a viewing of "Watchmen," they'll have seen a pretty close approximation of it. Though, admittedly, a five-term Nixon presidency is a concept so terrifying that it makes the real-world history of the 1980s seem benign and peaceful.
Happily, Zack Snyder has put together a film that justifies calling him "the visionary director of '300,'" a claim that seemed dubious in the months before "Watchmen" was released. There are a lot of things that could have been done wrong, especially on a movie that had been in developmental hell for almost a quarter of a century.
A big part of what made this movie work so well was that the cast avoids the big names of Hollywood. At one point Tom Cruise was considered for the role of Dr. Manhattan, a casting choice that could've have single-handedly killed the entire movie. Billy Crudup, on the other hand, fit the role like a glove. Though it might have been nice if he had fit the role like a pair of consistently worn boxer shorts - or even just spandex. Unfortunately, the viewer gets to watch quite a lot of Crudup's blue junk dangling in the Martian wind. Fortunately, it's just another bit of filmic strategy, giving another example of how much Dr. Manhattan has been removed from his human origin. The decision to use Crudup's voice rather than something more alien was an excellent choice. Dr. Manhattan would be a strange sight to behold for the average person, but the normal human voice saying inhuman things only goes to prove just how far behind Dr. Manhattan left humanity in evolutionary terms.
The best performance in the film came from Jackie Earle Haley. Usually, actors portray characters, but in this case, Haley became Rorschach. It's hard enough to convey emotion when wearing normal street clothes and 10 times as hard when your character's face is a constantly shifting Rorschach pattern. At one point in the film, the Rorschach mask is pulled off of Haley's face, and he screams for them to give him back his face, and the moviegoer can't help but think that it might have become a little more real than it really was supposed to be.
"Watchmen" is another example - like "300" - that graphic novels can be rendered on the silver screen without losing one iota of the quality that made them art. It gives modern audiences a rare glimpse into the psyche of an era that is usually dismissed as a relatively happy time of bad music and worse fashion. It reminds us all that the past isn't always - or even usually - a better place.
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'Watchmen'
Now Playing
Grade A+
