Ozymandias gazes at the bank of TV monitors as news reports of the catastrophe air on every station. He turns to his audience, the rest of the masked adventurers from the world of ""Watchmen,"" and plainly asks, ""Don't you see?"" It may as well be director Zack Snyder (""300,"" ""Dawn of the Dead""), anxious as his careful film adaptation of the legendary graphic novel comes to a close. Although he produced a faithful bite-size version for the screen, he seems painfully aware that he could only skim the surface of the world of Watchmen.
""Watchmen"" begins with the murder of Edward Blake, an aging costumed adventurer (we avoid the term ""superhero"" in this alternate 1985). Nearly as soon as his corpse hits the ground after being thrown from his top-story penthouse, the sociopathic sleuth Rorschach shows up on the scene to investigate.
When he discovers that Blake was kindred adventurer the Comedian, he begins visiting former adventurers to warn them what he assumes can only be a mask killer. We meet all the other adventurers in turn, their interrelated histories, the cultural implications they've had on the Cold War and eventually uncover a elaborate conspiracy plot that will leave your head spinning if you aren't familiar with the book.
The story of Watchmen makes it to the screen largely intact. As in ""300"" before it, ""Watchmen"" has portions that follow its source material panel for panel. There are digressions in the details conspiracy that Ozymandias weaves over the course of the film, arguably to make the story more resonant to a generation that fears terrorists and environmental destruction more than nuclear annihilation.
Visually, the film stuns. Doctor Manhattan, the glowing blue superman who single-handedly wins the Vietnam War, towers over the marshy battlefield, glowing brilliantly and bursting Vietcong like bloody balloons of flesh. Even in the background, his fluorescent glow overpowers each scene he's in, bringing his awesome presence to the screen with requisite awe. His glass palace on Mars is gorgeous, and its collapse will bring tears to your eyes.
Speaking of Manhattan, hats off to Billy Crudup for a note-perfect performance of the man who trades superpowers for his humanity. The monotone, emotionless drawl of Crudup's character, particularly when he meditates on his origin, characterizes the distance that Manhattan feels from his former species better than any CGI ever could.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Jackie Earle Haley also do great service to the Comedian and Rorschach, respectively. Morgan brings that key mix of glee and desperation to the Comedian that is necessary to make him human, and Haley is completely insane, as Rorschach should be.
The attention to detail with little things, like the proper label for the baked beans Rorschach munches on, dashes of pop music quoted in the novel or the sign for Hollis Mason's garage, demonstrate a great appreciation of the Watchmen universe. However, much still has to be omitted to cut the film down to its three-hour running time—the background characters of New York, the news vendor and his comic-reading customer, the ""Tales of the Black Freighter"" comic segues and all the ancillary reading that Alan Moore included at the end of each issue of the comic are all left on the cutting room floor. A director's cut is on the way to DVD, but it will likely be pushing five hours.
Director Terry Gilliam said it best when he was previously trying to adapt the film for the screen: ""Reducing [the story] to a two or two-and-a-half hour film [...] seemed to me to take away the essence of what Watchmen is about."" No film was ever going to capture the entire experience. What Snyder has done is given us a three-hour crash course in Alan Moore's masterpiece, albeit an enjoyable one.
Grade: B
