Watchmen (2009)

I'm going to be blunt. Watchmen is a fascinating comic book/graphic novel/whatever you want to call it. I read it over the winter in anticipation of the upcoming film and decided that it was an excellent piece of literature, if extremely raw and untamed, and turning into a feature film would be both very simple given the story's scene structure and extremely difficult given the subject matter. So suffice it to say, the whole thing is fascinating.

The movie? Complicated.

The story itself is complex to begin with, so I'll try to be brief. Watchmen takes place in an alternate universe where superheroes are real, but aside from one real exception, none of them really have any actual superpowers. In fact, "masked adventuring" is actually considered something of an American hobby or pasttime, like flag-pole sitting or baseball. History basically goes on the same as our own until that one real exception, a being known as Dr. Manhattan, arrives on the scene, with the ability to manipulate matter pretty much on whim. With this new being at the disposal of the American military, Nixon wins the war in Vietnam in like a week or something, repeals the 22nd Amendment, and is reelected four times due to his overwhelming popularity therefrom. Meanwhile, masked adventuring becomes illegal due to its apparent subversion of the law, and superheroes (other than a choice two who're contracted out by the government, Manhattan and The Comedian) all go underground, mostly retired. The story really begins when The Comedian is unexpectedly murdered in his New York City apartment, causing a chain of events led by an investigation by Rorschach, a hero who never quits no matter what it takes (and usually, it takes killing people). And that's hardly scratching the surface.

As far as being faithful to the original source material, it's incredible just how much they did stick to the book. Really, only little bits here and there were altered, other than the ending (which pretty much had to be changed to make it even remotely understandable for the general viewing public). So for fan service, I have to give the film an A.

Ultimately though? B-? Maybe?

See, I watched this movie in two halves. The first half, up to the point where Rorschach is caught (there's the extent of my spoilers, but if you'd read the book, you'd obviously know that already), is nearly spotless. Metaphorically, of course, there's in fact lots of dirt and grime and gore and sex and ugly stuff throughout the entire film, but as far as sticking to the original story goes, almost verbatum, and giving us the real feel of the comic itself, the first half is unprecedented among its comic-book-movie peers in giving us exactly what any fan could've dreamed. It's well nigh perfect.

After that... it gets... accellerated.

Like, all of a sudden, nearly every scene seems rushed. And unfortunately, I'm pretty sure it had to be, given that otherwise the movie probably would've been about five hours long, give or take a half an hour or so. The comic book itself is so drawn out, the actual action sequences were like tiny bits of cream cheese sweetening an otherwise unexciting bundt cake of plot and dialogue. The movie deftly navigates through the sequence of events as they actually appeared in the book (with a few liberties taken with the flashbacks) up until that crucial hour and a half mark, at which point everything becomes very hurried.

Don't get me wrong. I think this is as good an adaptation of Watchmen as the world could've hoped for. It gets all the main points of the book out without sacrificing much of the flavor of the characters, although here and there I must admit the casual watcher probably would be a tad lost unless they'd read the original comic book. Still, the story is well told, and the ultimate morbid message that mankind is doomed to kill itself unless it does something very drastic is kept very intact, even without the giant vagina monster. (Or whatever it was. Yes. I'm thinking it was a good thing they didn't try to translate that one to the big screen. If you're very lost right now, that's okay. It kind of confused me when I read the book.)

The problem, I think, is similar to the problem with Knowing, actually, at least in part. The ending is really just kind of a downer. We're left to wonder if the heroes have done the right thing, as the entire film is basically one big ethical question really. It's left on a much more hopeful note than Knowing was (i.e., any hope), but even that hope ends up falling into question as everything they've fought for may end up overturned by a very small guesture. It's a difficult movie, no question, and the problems it wrestles with have no easy answers.

Well, other than the fact that it's all kind of moot since it's a movie about superheroes anyway, but that's beside the point.

Rating: 7 out of 10. I'm honestly hesitant to give it that high. It makes it to the seven-star mark because of just how well-done it is, and the overall cool factor is pretty darn high. Ultimately, I think it just flounders too much at the end, leaving us missing a lot of the good parts from the book and left with all of the gorey parts. It really lacks the heart of the comic, which serves to offset the otherwise morbid tone, giving the movie a much bleaker feel. Still, I can't imagine fans being very disappointed, and it does basically make the same ultimate point: we are our own worst enemies on this earth.