Watchmen is set in 1985 America in a parallel universe where Nixon was not only not impeached, he was elected to a third term in office. But that’s the most believable thing about this parallel universe in which masked crusaders fight crime (and each other) and a physicist’s accident transformed him into a superhuman entity known as Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) capable of leveling a city in seconds. Luckily, he’s fighting for the good guys.
The film is based on the graphic novels of the same name. Most people who have read the comics agree: it’s epic in scope and an excellent read. I’m not one of those people—I’ve never read it. All I’m going off of here is the movie.
It begins with one of the masked crusaders, the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), being murdered. Another of the crusaders is convinced that this is there is a plot to get rid of all masked crusaders. Rorschach (Jackie Earle Hayley) sets out to investigate and prove his theory. Thus begins a three hour long preachy gore fest replete with fantastic fight scenes and good special effects.
This movie is hell to rate. It does not rise to the level of success of say the equally gory Kill Bill (a movie that deserves a rating of -10.5 on the scale) nor does it fail quite as spectacularly as Battlefield Earth, an 11. When the end credits began to roll, it wasn’t immediately clear to me if this was a good movie or a bad movie that deserves to be on the positive end of the B.E. spectrum. (Remember, a negative rating means the movie is good.)
What is clear is that this is the kind of movie that you would have to watch more than once to fully comprehend. Unfortunately, with a run-time of 3 hours, it was enough of a trudge the first time. A long runtime is not in-and-of-itself a crime, but the movie seriously lacked coherence between scenes. The viewer keeps getting dropped in one vignette after another. It just didn’t flow.
Since one measure of whether a movie is good or not is the desire to watch it again, I give Watchmen a rating of 5 on the B.E. scale. (What saves it from being an 8 is some decent acting throughout.)
I am a great fan of the graphic novel, and I am here to tell you that you need to read it. It's considered to be one of the most important graphic novels ever written.
ReplyDeleteNow, for the movie. It was doomed to fail in respect of giving the graphic novel its full due; some things do not translate well into film, as they can appear cheesy or overdone. I thought the first half of the movie did a really good job of staying true to the novel, but the second half veered away from the novel in many aspects. I still don't know exactly how I feel about it; it's just NOT the quality of the graphic novel. Check it out.
Thanks for the comment, Ashley. I might just check the novel out. I only hear good things about it.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I did not do was write the novel off based on the movie. I know some things just don't translate well.