Watchmen
WORDS: Joseph Attard /
Zack Snyder's Watchmen (18, 143mins) adaptation is nothing short of a cinematic miracle.
That's no indication of its actual merit; the jury is still out on the film's success. There's no doubting its reverence of the original subject matter, but something has definitely been lost in translation.
No, the miracle of this movie is that it exists at all. Alan Moore's seminal comic series, which stands as the only graphic novel ever to receive the prestigious Hugo Award and appear on TIME magazine's 100 Top Novels' list (among other decorations) has evaded celluloid for two decades, and it's easy to see why.
Taking into account the troubled history of Moore adaptations, an assertion by Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons that the moment for a film has passed and the sentiment of veteran directors (including Terry Gilliam) that the movie is 'unfilmable', the simple fact that Zack Snyder's take has struggled out of development hell is unquestionably miraculous.
But are we talking water into wine or Ronald Lacey's face being melted off at the end of Raiders Of The Lost Ark? That really depends on who you ask.
For the benefit of any Watchmen virgins, the film is set in an alternative 1985, where masked avengers have influenced the course of history - resulting in a more militaristic American involvement in the Cold War - which has brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation (represented by an ominous doomsday clock set mere minutes from midnight).
In a development blatantly nicked by The Incredibles, superheroes have been outlawed, save for government-sanctioned agents including sociopathic Vietnam vet The Comedian (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and the only genuinely superpowered hero on the block, Doctor Manhattan (represented in true blue and naked fashion by Billy Crudup).
The rest of the cast assume their roles comfortably for the most part, in particular Jackie Earl Hayley's Rorschach, whose take on the ink-blot masked, fedora-clad vigilante rivals Heath Ledger's Joker in my book.
Also noteworthy are Patrick Wilson's Nite Owl, whose Clark Kent-worryingly timid out-of-costume persona makes for a dynamic contrast with Rorschach's grim stoicism.
As for Matthew Goode's Ozymandias: while likely to divide fans, I found Goode's unfathomable Aryan solemnity perfectly suitable for the part.
Less successful is Malin Akerman's Silk Spectre. While doing the business on the aesthetic front, Akerman lacks the fire to consolidate the role and is relegated to plastic-wrapped eye candy as a result. But aside from that minor blip, the casting is faultless and recaptures my enthusiasm for the characters, so few problems there. But what of Zack Snyder’s direction?
I tend to go along with Moore's mini-review of Snyder's 2007 adaptation of the graphic novel 300 in which he described the flick as "racist, homophobic and sublimely stupid", leading him to refuse accreditation for Watchmen.
As a Watchmen purist, I was initially unconvinced that Snyder's visually striking but ultimately hollow approach to filmmaking was really suited to the subtleties and complexities of Alan Moore's magnum opus, which juggles delicate issues of rape, utilitarianism and the fascistic nature of vigilantism tied into a post-Cold War America on the verge of nuclear war.
In fairness to Snyder, he has succeeded where superior directors failed in squashing a twelve-issue limited series with multiple narrative threads into a (relatively) palatable two hours and forty minutes (although a three and a half hour director's cut is threatened).
In typical fashion, he has more or less directly lifted the comic onto the screen, with very little of the original plot left on the cutting room floor.
How, then can an adaptation of such reverence to its subject be anything less than a resounding success?
Well, basically because the film is such a static translation that it's likely to be completely impenetrable for newcomers, while Snyder's garish visuals and over-reliance on bullet-time will grate for fans of the comic, when they're not weeping from the ecstasy of fan service on such a monumental scale.
And that is not even to say that everything that made Watchmen great as a graphic novel has been carried over successfully.
Unfortunately, the film suffers from the fact that Moore's comic is firmly contextualised within its 1980s setting.
Despite the movie's valiant attempts to recapture the essence of the era with a nicely bombastic licensed soundtrack and some fashion disasters on show which would make Trinny & Susannah weep blood, it all comes across as parody rather than a believable backdrop to the narrative.
Everything, down to Richard Nixon's plastic snout, feels more than a little overblown.
Some creative licence on the part of Snyder would have benefited this effort: I get the impression he was intimidated by the scale of the project.
But in attempting to appease sweaty fanboys with the closest possible adaptation of Watchmen, he has simultaneously made the film difficult to appreciate in its own right and alienated anyone who has never approached Moore's comic saga.
I read a good review by one critic who suggested that it might have been interesting had Snyder shaken up the role of the superhero in film in the same way Moore did for comics.
With comic book adaptations currently making up around 99% of films released these days, such a cutting expose could not have come at a more appropriate time.
I have to agree with Gibbons in as much that the moment for a literal adaptation of Watchmen as envisioned by Alan Moore may have passed us by.
So, did I enjoy the film? Hmm? yes, I did. But would I recommend it? I would certainly drag my fellow sceptical purists to a showing, and probably leave a copy of the graphic novel behind for the uninitiated to flick through.
And, once they've been transformed into a new generation of sceptical purists, they can make up their own minds about renting the DVD.
