Watchmen - The IMAX Review

It's been in production hell for about 20 years. Some of the best directors of our age, Terry Gilliam, Paul Greengrass, Darren Aronofsky have all had opportunities to direct. Arnold Schwarzeneggar was once in the running to play Dr Manhattan, John Cusack, Jude Law, Tom Cruise, Keanu Reeves were all once attached or rumoured to be so. And yet when the film was finally released the biggest cast name was Billy Crudup (Almost Famous, Big Fish).

It's been called the greatest comic book ever written, was listed in Time magazine 100 best books of the 20th century and been described as "unfilmable" by creator Alan Moore and yet Zack Snyder, the director behind Frank Miller's graphic novel 300 has successfully brought it to the big screen in an epic 160min adaptation. The big question on everyones lips, well anyone who's read the book, is can the sprawling, talky, philosophical genius of Watchmen really be distilled into a film. Unfortunately for the most Snyder part fails. The film is not the dissapointment many might label, nor is it the success some reviewers have called it. I think The Guardian got it right. Its a failed masterpiece which falls somewhere in between, but probably closer to a failure than a masterpiece.

What does Watchmen get right? Many things. The visual effects to begin with are a magnificent achievement. With the exception of Bubastis there isn't a single frame where the visual effects where not wonderous. Snyder should be commended along with the digital team and set designers for creating the universe of Watchmen so completely. Dr Manhattan, the giant blue naked god, is believable and convincing, and not once does his appearance jar the story, except is always on show blue dick. So too with Mars and Dr Manhattan's glass structure. It always feels real and natural.

The most brilliant aspect of the film however is how effectively the film uses mis-en-scene. The introduction of Nite Owl I and II, Hollis Mason and Dan Dreiberg is so effectively delivered that you get almost all of Hollis Mason's backstory in a single shot. The set design has painstakingly been created using the graphic source and Snyder and the crew have certainly demonstrated the level of love and affection for the characters and world.

The film also manages to cram in most of the central storyline, and some potentially dangerous scenes, cinematically at least, are handled with bravado and visual ingenuity. Standout scenes include the backstory of Dr Manhattan, a particularly violent back alley fight scene and anything involving Rorshach. But more on him later.

Its a shame then that so much of the script and film falls down. Snyder employs a slow motion technique in all the fight seqeucnes, similar to one he used to great effect in 300. Here however it undermines the brutality and chaos of the fights, the opening sequence and a prison break being the most notable casaulties. In fact the entire first act fails to light up the story. It feels bity and lacking in cohesion, screenwriters David Hayter and Alex Tse seem unsure of how to jimmy the dense back story and plot into the film and thus decide to use the opening act as a way to layer those elements which would have otherwise dragged the pacing down later in the picture. But that's not to say the script fails. This is probably the best film version of Watchmen we could have hoped for. There is way too much backstory and the screenwriters have put it in the most accessible and least damaging part of the narrative. Unfortunately the downside is that we lose some of the dramatic weight of those scenes.

It's clear watching the Watchmen that making this into a marketable and entertaining film was never an easy task and i'm reluctant to pick apart all the little problems with the script, mainly because for everything the film gets wrong there are some things it gets right, but one scene in particular garnered responses such a guffaws, mild laughter and in some cases utter bewilderment in the screening I was in. A love scene between Dreiberg and Laurie which should be the emotional high for them in the story, especially the impotent Dreiberg but actually ends up being the worst love scene i've ever watched on screen. Lacking in passion, emotion or sexuality, and played out to the legendary Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen, the scene if off tone, out of context and yanks the audience out of the film, forcing them to try and get back into it. If this is the last sex scene Snyder ever directs cinema as an art form will be a better place for it.

Whilst on the subject of the soundtrack, its another one of those elements which genuinely seemed baffling throughout. A opening montage of images which cleverly repositions the audience in this new alternate 1980's, with nods to historical times and people as well as throwing in the crucial moments of the Minutemen and other backstory elements from the book. Played out to Bob Dylan's the Times They Are A Changin' is very much a success and an effective way to begin the story, but after this very few uses of music feel natural, or like they exist in this story. Simon and Garfunkel, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix all pop up and it has a jarring effect on these cherished and iconic moments in the story. For me Watchmen is a film which deserved some clever music use, mainly to locate the back story moments historically, but the main action deserved a beautifully evocative score by a master of the craft. And the few moments when a score is used the film elevates into the arena of masterpiece, but these few moments only stand to remind us of what could have been.

The acting is also an area which left me wondering what could have been. For the most part the acting is good. Billy Crudup who has a near impossible task as the unemotional philosophical Dr Manhattan and yet he is always engaging, as is Patrick Wilson as Dan Dreiberg, a lonely, self deprecating character who feels impotent and obsolete both in life and love. Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Edward Blake is fantastic, revelling in the Comedian's sadistic fascistic distorted view of the world. The star of the film will know doubt be Jackie Earle Haley as Rorshach, every scene is a stand out and once the mask comes off he loses none of the menace and fear he instils with it on. Haley's performance is up there with the most recent stand out psychotic roles such as Anton Chirgugh and The Joker. Although Rorshach is less psychotic, his brand of absolute morality and no compromise one of his most redeeming features. The problems with the acting falls on two roles, firstly Malin Akerman as Laurie who is possibly the weakest role. Her performance is not bad but she doesn't convince and her character is sketched very blandly. I never get a sense of the reason she became a masked vigilante and also we never really see or understand why she is attracted to Dr Manhattan. Ironically she is one of the few characters to be given a resolution by the end of the film. The big problem though is Adrian Veidt, the smartest man on the planet. Played by Matthew Goode, the actor lacks the chops and presence to carry the role of the Ozymandias, a man inspired to unite the world by Alexander the Great. In the book, Adrian Veidt, his alter ego is utterly believable but here Goode's performance just lacks the presence, whereas which for example Crudup as Manhattan and Haley as Rorshach convince with authority. But there is also a sense of miscasting. Goode looks too youthful and slender, he never looks or feels of age. Add to this that the script plays him as the villain from his very first scene, he ends up coming across as a costumed Bond villain even equipped with his own secret lair. Although Alan Moore may have intended some slight reference to this idea, at no point in the book does he actually take on the mantel of villain. He is almost the anti villain. For fans and non fans alike this undermines the integrity of the character and distorts the theme of the book.

The big dissapointment though is that Watchmen never feels like anything more than a faithful if not excellent adaptation. It never manages to take on the weight and dramatic subtext that elevates the book above most other graphic novels. None of the characters feel like they achieve the resolution the book supplies, especially Dreiberg and Veidt, whose endings are either excised or mishandled.

Ultimately I enjoyed Watchmen and being a fanboy am also enjoying the heated debates the film has brought up. I sometimes wonder if that's more fun than actually watching the film. The book is so fervently cherished and fans tend to defend the material with terminal intensity, I'm no exception so I think that although there was a mild dissapointment that Watchmen the film never scaled the heights of the book, I think that Zack Snyder, David Hayter and Alex Tse as well as the cast, crew and everyone involved in bringing Watchmen to the screen deserve great credit for doing such a faithful job, but also for the little touches which were there for the fans. The film was good enough and fulfilled enough of what I was expecting for me to not be gutted. Plus on the IMAX the film looked stunning.

So, not the life changing experience the book was, but still a well crafted, faithful and entertaining filmic intepretation of one of the greatest graphic novels ever written. Violent, entertaining, funny, shocking and not in the least bit compromising. Who watches the Watchmen, on this evidence hopefuly a lot of people, and most should enjoy it.