Last year The Dark Knight opened up the comic book universe for the masses. And now Watchmen slams the door shut and retreats to the basement to geek out. Just as I was getting fond of the comic book movies — I had forgiven Spider-Man 3, adored Hellboy 2, and was in awe of Dark Knight — here’s one that proves why comics are an acquired taste and why they fluctuate in popularity so wildly within every generation.
Nevertheless, though, comics — especially graphic novels, a term which is overused — are still big. As a testament to Alan Moore’s Watchmen, Time magazine named it one of 100 important novels — list buddies include The Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby. The graphic novel may be brilliant, but the film is a convoluted mess, a tired and ridiculous port of the source material. No wonder Alan Moore, who looks kinda like Karl Marx on Watchmen's back cover, had his name removed from the film credits. 
Before going any further let's settle some business: I’m reviewing the film, not the graphic novel, which I will leave untouched for its many fans, those who’ve seen the sun the last decade and those who haven’t — or, more bluntly, those who’ve had sex with a real person and those who haven’t. For people who haven’t read the book, like myself, don’t let anyone tell you that reading it is mandatory. The film negates the need to read the book, because, let’s face it, if we wanted to read we’d go to the library, not the movie theater. Besides, a film is obligated to work on its own terms within the medium. If it requires further reading to appreciate or “get,” then it’s not a film, but an appendix to the book and that’s just hooey. That goes for all films, not just Watchmen. The movie exists in a strange alternate universe: not only did Richard Nixon not resign but he was elected to a third term; masked superheroes emerge as social avengers and occasionally as troublemakers; the Soviets are ready to launch nukes at the United States (I guess that part is familiar); and blimps circle the skies for no apparent reason. It’s 1985, but it feels like the 2019 of Blade Runner.
Watchmen begins like most noir stories: in the rain with a grim voiceover narration. The voice is Rorschach, a gravel-throat superhero detective. His face is covered with a mask stained with mutating, but symmetrical, inkblots — I kept trying to notice a pattern or maybe recurring shapes to no avail. Rorschach is tracking down leads on a murdered superhero, a retired weapons expert and deadbeat named Comedian, who was thrown out a window from a height I wouldn’t recommend jumping from. His investigation leads him to other superheroes: hip brunette Silk Spectre, a Clark Kentish dweeb who used to be Nite Owl, the billionaire conglomerate Ozymandias, and Dr. Manhattan, a glowing-blue transcendentalist who might actually be God, or maybe just his proxy. 
These characters — with exception to Dr. Manhattan; more on him later — are not super as we might think of superheroes. They have no special abilities, no mutated DNA, no comet crystals or krypton allergies. They’re more or less like Batman: inventive gadget designers, lethal in a brawl and all-around street smart. The fact that the masked crimefighters co-exist with normal everyday folks is apparently what made the graphic novel so compelling. I wasn’t so compelled with the idea here, mainly because the superhero ideals don’t really exist. They talk about truth, justice and the American way, but they don’t actually go out and live under that credo. Their whole routine feels like a fetish game of dress-up, one that they hardly take serious. When Silk Spectre and Nite Owl do return to their superhero moonlighting, all they can muster is a post-coitus jailbreak for the ever-deranged and now maskless Rorschach, who tells the inmates, “I’m not locked in here with you; you’re locked in here with me.” The scene is fun, but it accentuates that there’s no dynamic between who these people are and what they represent. 
I’ve yet to mention a story arc, which is intentional since it’s so often abandoned for all the comic minutiae. The plot, though, involves the murder of Comedian and the devious implications behind it. Rorschach, the only one who senses a nefarious scheme, pushes forward even as the film skids into everyone’s origin stories, which might be effective tangents in a film with more focus or maybe a shorter running time (165 minutes). Instead the film spins out of control with each new series of flashbacks, some of which reveal how Vietnam was won (Dr. Manhattan microwaved the North Vietnamese Army into gibs) and others that provide us with the emotional anchor points of the characters’ lives (Rorschach killing a child abductor). All this is going on while the end game, which might be nuclear war with the Russkies, draws closer with no clear path through the nonsense. 
This leads us into Watchmen’s most glaring error: Dr. Manhattan, probably one of the most poorly written superheroes ever written onto a screen. (I’ve since read Roger Ebert’s review, and was confounded as to why he didn’t scrutinize this blue guy more.) Here’s a character that draws comparisons to deity, yet is so consistently stupid that I think he was married to Nick Lachey for several years. He has the power to obliterate every nuclear weapon on the planet, yet he teleports himself and his ever-present wiener to Mars where he meditates on a glass spaceship because … well, because why the hell not. And when the doomsday clock is about to strike for mankind, he pukes poetry about the human condition and asks rhetorical philosophical questions that contradict everything that’s been established from the simplest metaphysical level right on up. This is a misguided character in a chronically misguided movie. And seriously, enough of his glowing balls. It reminds me of that Film Snob entry on “film vs. movie”: A movie is where you see a woman’s bare breasts. A film is where you see Harvey Keitel’s penis. It doesn’t say anything about glowing genitalia; maybe in the next edition.
Penises aside, Watchmen is thematically confused, if not altogether morally bankrupt. Dr. Manhattan, and those he colludes with, actually make a case for killing millions to save billions. Only in a story this convoluted and preposterous would the characters be denied other choices. The fact that this movie even offers the choice proves that it’s edgy and daring, but to what cost? It sacrifices humanity for the characters’ egos, and that’s unforgivable in a superhero film. This last development, set in an Arctic lair of all places, reminded me of two films: First, Sophie’s Choice, where a woman is told to pick one of her two children to die in the Holocaust. And another, Fail-Safe, where Americans willingly nuke New York City to pacify the Soviets and stop an impending World War III. Both films offer their characters horrific choices, but we can sympathize with their dilemmas because they’re not omnipotent beings who act on their quantum subconscious (i.e. Manhattan), but real people with real hopes and fears. We sympathize because we respect the path that led to their choices. The audience is not given that much freedom in Watchmen, a movie that mandates our sympathy, yet never earns it.
The others superheroes aren’t so bad, though: Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson) plays a retired doofus well enough, complete with giant glasses and ill-fitting suits; Silk Spectre (Malin Ackerman, whose pluckiness I admired in The Hearbreak Kid) is both leggy and curvy in just the right proportions; and Rorschach seems to have a warrior’s code and maybe even morals under that smearing mask of his. Rorschach is played by Bad News Bear Jackie Early Haley, who’s so terrific that I was left craving for his own movie away from everyone else.I’ll just admit it: I hated this story. I hated the way it manipulated the characters into choices. And I hated the way it held itself in such high regard, as if it just assumed it were the coolest kid on the block without having to prove itself. Especially infuriating is the way it mythologized Watchmen’s flat, vacuous plot; give me Dark Knight’s three-dimensional mythology any day of the week. Director Zack Snyder (300), who honored the graphic novel by turning nearly every comic panel into a frame within his movie, is a skilled storyteller; it’s just unfortunate this story is so unfulfilling.
I also admit that I loved the rock ’n’ roll soundtrack — with Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel — and the high-octane action editing over it. Also spectacular are the visual effects: Nite Owl’s impressive bird jet, the electric field generator that creates god-like superheroes, Rorschach’s mask, and Dr. Manhattan’s array of explosion and teleportation tricks. Many of the effects are one-offs, little blink-and-you’ll-miss moments sprinkled throughout. One of them shows Manhattan’s circulatory system suspended in the air. Another has him analyzing an exploded view of a tank, as if every piece were pulled apart simultaneously. Visually, Watchmen is incredible. But just visually.
Does any of this Watchmen bashing matter, though? Probably not, simply because the hype has already been built and reversing it is something even Dr. Manhattan couldn’t accomplish (assuming he’s not on Venus when we’re looking for him). Comic books fans will love Watchmen, not because it’s worth loving, but because they’ve been programmed to love it, as if questioning its authenticity were a high crime against their beloved comics. Non-comic fans will enjoy the pop-art imagery, but they'll agree with this: Watchmen is overrated.This review originally ran in the West Valley View March 6, 2009.
