Watchmen (2009)

There will be spoilers.

In the months leading up to the release of Watchmen in 2009, Zack Snyder’s career seemed like it was about to explode. The trailers for the film didn’t advertise the stars—or the story, for that matter—as much as they did the stunning visuals and the work of “the visionary director of 300.” The buzz around the film reached deafening levels, and it seemed that with Watchmen’s release, Snyder would become Hollywood’s hottest director. Little did we all know that the film would not mark the beginning of his prime as much as it would begin something of a downhill slide. Snyder still has his defenders—understandably so—but the release of Watchmen turned out to be a relative anticlimax akin to Snakes on a Plane. It wasn’t a failure; it just didn’t turn out to be the sensation people expected.

Above all, Watchmen is an example of Hollywood appeasing a loud minority rather than the usual movie-going public. Sometimes the barrage of fan mail and grassroots movements can trick Hollywood executives into thinking that this is something everybody wants. For example, take Joss Whedon’s Serenity. After the cancelation of Firefly in 2002, the show’s fans became so vocal in their demands for more that Universal decided to finance a follow-up movie. When it didn’t do well financially, it shouldn't have been seen as a surprise. Not many people watched Firefly. That’s why it was canceled. Yet a small group of fans were able to get the film made. The same thing will likely happen if the rumored Arrested Development movie ever gets made. Though it would likely cost only a few bucks to make, I would be shocked if it made any money at all.

Sure Watchmen may be—as the ads claim—“the most celebrated graphic novel of all time.” That doesn’t mean it's all that mainstream. Even people who don’t read comic books can identify Batman and Superman, and that’s mostly because they've become so omnipresent. If you said the words “Silk Spectre” to anyone, they would likely respond with a puzzled glare. Fans of the Watchmen story were far more receptive to the film, and that’s because they already knew what they were in for. Meanwhile, when Jack from down the street goes to see a superhero movie, he wants to see action and adventure. He’ll be a whole lot less excited when all he gets are a bunch of seemingly normal people sitting around and talking about their feelings. Watchmen's monumental second week drop-off at the box office was inevitable. The die-hards went to see the film the first weekend and were appeased. Others saw it and told everyone they knew to avoid it like the plague.

The reason it has taken me this long to catch up with Watchmen is because a) I’m not the world’s biggest Zack Snyder fan, and b) I was told I would hate it had I not read the source material. Therefore I decided that I would not see it until I sat down and read the graphic novel. That never happened, and this past week I eventually relented. What I found was a film with sporadic moments of greatness but just as many (if not more) problems. It ultimately felt like little more than fan service directed at a group of which I am not a part. By that I am not saying that the story of Watchmen is weak. I am merely saying that a film has to become its own living, breathing thing rather than a mere beat-for-beat translation. I understand why Snyder and friends decided to be so faithful to the visuals and story of the source material, but that approach is much better in theory than in practice. You’re leaving us outsiders in the cold.

The film’s best moments come at the beginning and the end. The opening sequence—which features the death of Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Comedian—provides a good indication of the dark, violent film to come. Even better is the opening credits sequence, which contains a great deal of exposition without ever being too obvious (unlike the rest of the film). Unfortunately, there’s a whole lot of dead space in between that and the climax, which I actually quite liked. I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of a superhero film where the villain accomplished his/her mission, and Watchmen does that, and well. The moment when Veidt reveals that he has already destroyed New York—along with several other cities—was surprisingly powerful, as was the moment when we witness the destruction of the Big Apple itself. Funny how the one moment Snyder and company allegedly changed from the source material turned out to be one of my favorite scenes. That’s the beauty of adapting rather than outright copying.

There’s more power in that those few scenes than there are in the rest of the film put together. Many of the performances seem awfully stiff, leaving little room for the bursts of emotion to be all that effective. Only characters like Rorschach and The Comedian seem to have all that much personality. Everyone else is on the same wavelength, and the dialogue-heavy scenes don’t inspire much excitement because they aren’t really talking about exciting or interesting things.

What hurts the film the most is one of the few conflicts between Snyder and the material he’s dealing with. Watchmen seems to be a story which frowns upon excessive violence, yet Snyder’s aesthetic has long been famous for how he seems to worship it. While that may have helped the silly yet intermittently exciting 300, it does little to elevate Watchmen. At times his love for making everything as extreme as possible can make the experience far too unpleasant. With the exception of the moments I mentioned above, there’s little joy to be found in this film. What’s problematic is that Snyder has yet to fix his obsession with brutality, as this year’s horrifying Sucker Punch turned out to be little more than a feature-length experiment in bad taste.

Somewhere within Snyder there exists a great director, but we have yet to see him use his gifts to the best of his ability. His next film, the Christopher Nolan-produced Superman reboot Man of Steel, might provide him an opportunity to make a slightly more palatable superhero film. I think he’s a director that deserves success, so long as he is able to recognize his flaws and is willing to fix them. Putting him in the hands of someone like Nolan is probably exactly what he needs at this point. I hope we ultimately look back on the era of Watchmen and Sucker Punch as a time when Snyder was still working out the kinks.

GRADE: C+