Comic Book Movies 101: Watchmen

3rd Feb 2011

I was so excited about watching Watchmen again for this review – I’m not really a comic book nerd, but when the graphic novel that made it into Time Magazine’s top 100 novels of all time (http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1951793,00.html) you know you’re onto something special.

Although brilliant, the novel isn’t exactly an easy read. For many years it was considered to be un-filmable, and you can see why. Deeply layered, brutally violent and dark in the extreme it certainly wouldn’t make easy viewing if done right, and Alan Moore’s novels are notorious for not translating well onto the big screen (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen anyone?). It’s a story ostensibly about superheroes but is more a treaty on nihilistic despair that makes one ponder that age old dilemma – can the ends ever really justify the means? Hardly X-Men then.

In spite of its supposed untranslatability, Watchmen seemed to have found in Zack Snyder a director sensitive enough of the novel’s significance, and aware enough of its importance to fan boys and girls the world over to not attempt to remove the darkness to make it more palatable to the mainstream audience. Obviously given the length and weight of the novel a number of things had to be cut (like the wonderful/terrible Tales of the Black Freighter story-within-a-story), and some things have changed to make them more topical for a contemporary audience. We loose [spoiler alert] the giant squid in favour of a much more pertinent form of destruction – a terror attack.

The movie starts as a classic whodunit as a group of retired costumed “heroes”, the Minutemen, separately investigate the murder of one of their own. The brilliant opening sequence sets up this alternative 1985, where Nixon is still President and America remains entrenched in the Cold War despite having the ultimate deterrent in the form of the six-foot, bright blue, omniscient Dr Manhattan.

We’re taken through each of the Minutemen’s back stories. We watch Dr Manhattan intone his way through his life story, with the air of someone so bored with existence that he can’t even be bothered to kill himself (not that he could). Billy Crudup makes a good stab at the role as the apathetic Dr Manhattan and it can’t have been easy playing a naked, glowing, god-like entity who has lost touch with humanity to the point where he decides to bugger off to Mars and leave us to get on with it.

We see The Comedian rape and pillage his way through Vietnam with a smile on his face and a cigar in his mouth and then in one aggressively graphic and violent scene, attempt to rape one of his Minutemen compadres.

We’re also given a glimpse into Rorschach’s genesis and as Rorschach Jackie Earle Haley delivers a powerhouse performance. Arguably the most gripping of the film, his ability to be more terrifying and threatening than the criminals he takes out is a testament to what a well conceived, written and portrayed character Rorschach really is. He is completely inflexible in his belief in moral absolutes and in spite of his brutality and mental instability is the only one of the Minutemen who isn’t prepared to sacrifice millions to save billions. For all his inhumanity he’s arguably the only true-human of the bunch.

It’s impossible to talk about Watchmen without at least touching on the use of violence in the film. It was always going to be a difficult balancing act remaining faithful to the novel’s graphic depiction of violence, whilst trying to produce a movie that would make it past the censors. For the most part it manages to walk that fine line, aided in no small part by the decision to keep a distinctly “comic book” feel. Indeed a number of key shots are lifted verbatim from the graphic novel. Moreover, the palate of the film is either too vivid or dark to exist in a real world setting, so the Watchman universe is given a sense of otherness which allows the director to really let loose.

That’s not to say that the violence on screen is throwaway as it so often is in CGI heavy comic book movies. When people get punched in this world, you feel it. The Comedian’s aborted rape of Silk Spectre I is the scene in the film that stands out as being the most shockingly violent. There is an intimacy to the way its shot that makes the scene more intense and difficult to watch than the prison break scene, even if by comparison the violence in it is pretty tame.

It’s a real shame that the aborted rape scene has become the thing sticks with me from this film. Surely I should be left wondering what I would be willing to do if it meant bringing peace to the world, what I would be willing to sacrifice and if I could live with that decision. But sadly that’s more of an after though here. With so much graphic violence on screen, it’s impossible not to have your focus almost exclusively on that, which trumps any emotional reaction you should be having to what is meant to be the overarching theme of the story.

On screen, it’s impossible for that message not to be overshadowed by the violent way it’s portrayed. In the novel, the violence only helps to enhance and highlight the message. This is, I guess, what Alan Moore meant when he said Watchmen shouldn’t be turned into a film. It’s already in the perfect medium in graphic novel form.

Ultimately Watchmen is the definitive comic book movie that’s not a comic book movie. Unlike other films of the same genre, it does pose real questions to its audience even if those questions lack some of the power they had in the original source material and are lost somewhat in all the beat-em-up action. It’s a very grown up comic book movie with dark characters, who have appointed themselves positions of authority whereby they are able to make questionable choices that effect the whole world. It’s not an easy watch, but it’s certainly a worthwhile one. Just make sure you take the time to read the graphic novel too, otherwise you really will miss out on Moore’s real vision for the story.