Reay Jespersen

It’s 1985.
Over the years, America has had a number of costumed heroes in their midst - everyday people who dress up to protect their identities as they fight crime. A handful of these heroes have collected into organized groups, the most recent of which, including members from an earlier group, is called the Watchmen. After some members had been called upon by (still-reigning) President Nixon to help America in times of war, masked criminals were made illegal.

Cut to the current day, when nuclear tensions between America and Russia are at an all-time high. Someone has killed the aging Comedian, the gun-toting, violence-loving member of the Watchmen. Enter fellow Watchman Rorschach, a man of extreme social and political beliefs whose face remains unknown even to fellow members, always hidden behind a shifting, blotted mask. He believes that the killing was something more than just a grudge. Someone killed the Comedian for a bigger reason. While the theory is played down by his former partner Nite Owl, it’s underscored when another Watchman, the god-like Dr. Manhattan, chooses to remove himself from Earth after he’s confronted with having been the cause of cancer in past companions. Then Rorschach himself is set up, framed for murder and caught by police; not only finally unmasked taken out of action, but put into a prison with a lot of people he brought to justice. And as he fights to survive, we and two other Watchmen - Nite Owl and Silk Spectre - realize that he’s right: someone is taking out masked heroes, maybe to get them out of the way. Something’s going to happen. Something big.

Having waited twenty-odd years for this story to jump from the comic page to the big screen, fans of the published version certainly won’t be disappointed by the movie. It doesn’t capture everything that the comic portrayed - forgoing the subplots of the pirate story-in-story and its vociferous newsstand man tie-in, as well as the literary excerpts found in the comic - but instead focuses purely on the main storyline. The widely publicized comment from Terry Gilliam that the Watchmen was unfilmable isn’t disproven here, because what we see on the screen isn’t everything that’s in the comic. Nor could you likely capture everything that’s in the comic in a movie while still keeping the timing realistic and maintaining viewer interest. As featuring just the main story goes, however, the movie does an excellent job.

The performances are generally top-notch. Billy Crudup beautifully captures the detached Dr. Manhattan, Jeffrey Dean Morgan is a great Comedian, Patrick Wilson is very well-suited to Nite Owl, and a tip of the hat to Jackie Earle Haley as an absolutely perfect Rorschach. Haley doesn’t top Heath Ledger’s Joker as my favourite comic movie support character (it’s arguable no one could), but he isn’t too far off the mark. He puts in a flat-out excellent performance.
Less impressive, unfortunately, were Malin Akerman as Silk Spectre - she looked great but lacked a bit of passion, fading into the background a bit - and Matthew Goode as the brilliant and dangerous Ozymandias, who plays a role which simply felt bigger than his charisma could carry.

The music in the movie makes its presence known. Clearly the choice had been made to have it help both the feel of the story - the 80s pop reminding us when this is all taking place - as well as certain scenes, such as the subtlety of having “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” playing softly in the background when Ozymandias is confronting top drawer business icons about his intent to devise a way to give the world free power. The music isn’t always on the money - Jimi Hendrix’s classic “All Along The Watchtower” makes an appearance during a jail riot setting, arguably both too precisely apt and totally out of the 80s context - but it’s generally quite well done. It marks the first time in years that I’ll probably hunt down the soundtrack on CD to at least see what it features, if not buy it.

For all its exceptional execution, however, the Watchmen isn’t perfect. The effects, for one, were generally very well done but at times seemed like effects. As movie-goers know, the best effects are the ones you don’t notice, and here, for all their fine detail, they unfortunately made themselves obvious at certain points. A few times, Dr. Manhattan seems wholly superimposed on the background, wrinkles in aged heroes played by younger actresses look artificial, and the overhead reveal shot of Ozymandias’s Antarctic retreat looks every bit like the miniature version that was shot.
Also, for what’s generally done as a story where the real world is dark and troublesome and these real people in costume are standing up and trying to protect the public that hates them anyway, Nixon was portrayed as borderline cartoonish, complete with oversized nose and never assertive - at one time buffoonish - presence. That aspect totally lost the heavy feel of a looming threat of doomsday which was so integral to the feel of the comic.
And finally, what will likely be the biggest point of contention for comic lovers, is the much-buzzed-about change at the end of the movie. I’ll not spoil it for those who’ve read the comic but haven’t seen the movie (or who have now seen the movie but haven’t yet read the original story), but suffice to say it’s an aspect which purists will certainly have an issue with. For me, it was an unneeded change but one which, if they were going to make the change anyway for their own reasons, was handled very well. It essentially takes an alternate route around one aspect of the story and brings it back around to wrap same way anyway. As an aspiring writer, I can appreciate the craft and execution used to manage that so well, even if I don’t understand why it was done.

All told, Watchmen is a very well made movie adaptation of one of the most - if not the most - significant comic stories ever written. They didn’t set out to put everything in the original story on the screen, but instead stuck to the story that moviegoers would most want to see. And in that, combined with some exceptional acting and genrerally great effects, they certainly succeeded admirably.

If you’re a comic or superhero fan, it’s simply must-see.