Watchmen

(2009) dir. Zack Snyder
viewed: 03/10/09 at AMC Loews Metreon 16, SF, CA

The “it” movie of the moment, Watchmen, if you didn’t already know, is an adaptation of one of the most notable comic book series created in the 1980′s (some would argue “ever”).  The comic, written in the waning days of the Cold War, imagined an alternate reality where superheros are real, that they helped to end the Vietnam War, ushering in a five-term Nixon presidency, until they are outlawed.  And while the Cold War raged on, with a God-like “hero” Dr. Manhattan as the ultimate Cold War weapon, the world still was heading toward midnight on its “doomsday clock”, the metaphor for inevitable nuclear war and the end of the world.

The book of Watchmen, which is a compliation of the comic book series, has come to stand as a criticism of the Reagan era and a “deconstruction” of superhero mythology.  The heroes in Watchmen are all flawed versions of recognizable existing heroes, some more pointedly than others.  They are vicious vigilantees or venal misogynists, lamed, drunken, and lacking in nobility.

So, after many attempts over the 20+ years since its release, the powers that be in Hollywood hired director Zack Snyder to bring this film to life.  Snyder, whose other comic book adaptation, 300 (2006), earned him the street cred to take this “holy” script into actualization in film.  And Snyder does manage to make things “look” pretty interesting.

Snyder’s visual style in 300 was something totally over-the-top and quite impressive.  And he gets these characters looking pretty cool.  He makes fight sequences with more than Matrix-like visual flair, artifical as hell, but slicker than grease.  Probably the best of these is the opening fight between The Comedian (the Captain America gone bad character) and his masked assailant who tosses him out the window.  He flies toward the window fast, but when it breaks, it moves very slowly.  Blood drips onto the iconic happy face (which is the comic’s visual “logo”) slowly and refinedly.  The whole fall is a bit of visual viruosity.

The beginning of the film, starting with this sequence, and transpiring for the first hour and a half of this two and three quarters hour of a movie, is the unravelling of a mystery.  Filling in the backstories that lead the Watchmen characters to where they are, the classic comic book trope of the “origin story”, led by the character Rorschach (the noirish vigilante with the hidden face), the question becomes: who is out to kill the “masks” (heroes)?

And while the mystery lasts, I found the film quite engaging.  I had read the book some 15 or more years ago, but had forgotten a lot of the details.  But as the story unfolds and the more loaded metaphors and meaningful tropes come to light, the whole thing gets pretty silly.

And the sillyness was there throughout.  The film uses music very poorly to telescope ideas and supposedly to set mood.  See, this is still 1985 in the alternate universe.  We’ve got Nena and her “99 Luftballoons” (why?) at a dinner meeting.  During a scene where two characters have sex, we get the reprise of “hallelujah”.  And the complete lack of imagination in this area sort of displays the lack of vision in others.

Snyder does his best and works the fanboy/geek angle hard.  But he’s also pretty lame in referencing himself, how many “300′s” can you spot in this movie.  Oh, yeah, he made 300, too.  While this might sound awfully nitpicky, my point would be that amid the massive details and the perfectionism, there is also a whole lot missing and it’s most painfully obvious in the more emotional sequences or the profound revelations.

The thing is, this book Watchmen was of its time.  A critique of the present in 1986/7.  And while the film adheres to this timeline, the modernization of the heroes’ costumes and the kick-ass fight sequences are almost the opposite of the point.

The darkness of a character like The Comedian is almost lost in a sense.  If you take that character as a darkened up Captain America, he’s quite interesting.  Captain America was the all-American fighting the Nazi’s, shaking hands with the president sort of guy.  So, if Captain America stayed true to the government’s evils in Vietnam, the Nixon administration, doing the CIA dirty work, he’s gone down the dark hole away from idealism and heroism to become a tool of the darkness of Nixon/Reagan covert operations.  It’s an interesting twist.

In the long run, Watchmen is a little too heavy for itself.  At nearly 3 hours, it packs in a lot and keeps moving pretty well.  Like I said, as long as the mystery lasted, I was kind of hooked in.  But the pompous message, the ironies, the depth of the twists and morality issues…becomes almost funny.  It’s not that the message is dated per se, but just that it’s the film’s own lack of ironic awareness can’t endure.