We went to watch the new Watchmen film over the weekend, a week after its premiere in Malaysia. We could have gone earlier, but we’d been meaning to go watch The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for a while now but one thing or another kept getting in the way, so we finally went for that last week. As I’ve posted before, I’d read the graphic novel the film is based on, so I knew what to expect going in and loved it. Judging, however, from the people who walked out before it was over in the cinema where I watched it and the overheard chatter about the film afterward, not to mention how poorly it’s been doing at the box office, it’s clear that most people either disliked it, or went in expecting a completely different kind of film.

After reading the discussion thread on the film on QT3 (much of which I should mention is very insightful and contributed a great deal to the opinions I’m expressing in this post), I found that perhaps the single best description of it is one posted by game reviewer Desslock: a $150 million art house film. Watchmen is not your traditional big budget summer blockbuster. It’s not even a superhero film in the traditional sense. It’s really an independent, art house quality film made for a very niche audience. It so happens that this one features superheroes as its characters, cost about the same as your typical Hollywood blockbuster, and was marketed to a mass audience who in all likelihood were led to expect something in the vein of Spiderman or Iron Man.

If the film was going to be in any way faithful to its source material, there was never a chance that Watchmen would be a conventional superhero film. Basically Watchmen the graphic novel can be thought of as a deconstruction of the superhero genre. Like all genres of fiction, superhero stories rely on a specific set of tropes that aren’t explicitly listed anywhere but that all writers and readers implicitly acknowledge and rely on. Some tropes are obvious and common to many different genres of fiction, for example, that good eventually triumphs over evil. More subtle but absolutely fundamental is the assumption that even if such fantastic beings as superheroes existed, they could meaningfully contribute to human existence in a positive way.

In writing Watchmen, Alan Moore worked to undermine these tropes in every conceivable way by placing superheroes in a credible and real world. If an adult in the real world walked up to you one day and told you he wanted to be a superhero and save the world, you’d most likely think he was clinically insane. Which is exactly what many of the “masks” in Watchmen were.

Just like they would be in our world, the costumed kooks who call themselves superheroes in Watchmen are for the most part ineffective. Some are publicity seekers who love to bask in the limelight and perform little actual superheroics. Others are in it for the money, as an easy way to win corporate sponsorships. More than few do it because running around in a cool costume arouses them sexually. And some do it because it allows them to do what they enjoy most, hurt and kill people, and get away with it. There’s only one superhero with actual superpowers in the story, and again Moore subverts the usual tropes by showing just how a truly superhuman being would act and behave, beginning with refusing to wear any clothes at all. Again, the end result is far from your traditional superhero story.

For the most part, Zack Synder has crafted an amazingly faithful adaptation of the graphic novel. In one way, this is great because Watchmen is a story strong enough to stand on its own. On the other hand, the film adds nothing to the original story. It doesn’t enhance it in any way or illuminate any particular aspect of it in an innovative way. In that sense, any merit that is present in the film belongs solely to Moore and not Synder. Here are my thoughts on each of the main characters as depicted in the film with spoilers:

Rorshach

Jackie Earle Haley is pitch perfect in this role. As Tom Chick mentioned in QT3, Rorshach is so compelling that there was a real worry that the illusion would be broken once the mask came off. As it turned out, he delivered perfectly and if anything Rosharch without the mask is even scarier than with it. One complaint that I do have about this aspect of the story is that the film never explains the origin of the mask and its significance. In fact, it’s made of a unique material created by Dr. Manhattan and Rorshach wears it because however much the shapes shift and changes, it is always only ever black and white, never grey.

Comedian

Jeffrey Dean Morgan does a good job but I found the physical resemblance to Robert Downey Jr. at some angles to be a bit distracting. One of his story arcs is noticeably absent from the film. When he confronts his killer early in the film, he comments that he isn’t surprised to see him again. This is because Ozymandias and the Comedian had a prior confrontation in the graphic novel and Ozymandias was soundly defeated. It can be assumed that Ozymandias trained himself harder than ever before after that defeat and fighting the Comedian wasn’t only to preserve his secret but was also a personal matter.

Dr. Manhattan

Not much to say here. The CGI work did have a bit of an uncanny valley look but it wasn’t too bad. Choosing not to digitally alter the voice was an inspired decision. The film never did explain the symbol on his forehead though. It a stylized representation of a hydrogen atom, a symbol that Dr. Manhattan reluctantly chose for himself after his government handlers insisted that he choose some kind of superheroic symbol to wear.

Nite Owl II and Silk Spectre II

Patrick Wilson is decent as the second Nite Owl while Malin Ackerman always seemed a bit out of her depth. Overall I still disliked the way the two characters were handled in the film. Nite Owl II is the nerd of the story, a kid who grew up idolizing the original Nite Owl but whose dreams would have come to nothing if he didnt have the money to make it a reality. But he doesn’t understand the world, and the depravity of humanity in the way that Rorshach, the Comedian and Ozymandias do. He tries to do good, honestly means well and is a decent person, but ultimately makes no difference. Silk Spectre II is somewhat the same, except that she’s a reluctant superhero, pushed into it by her mother who was herself a model first and a superhero second. Both are, in the end, only human.

The problem is that the film makes them out to look like kick-ass super-cool ninjas instead of what they really are in the graphic novel: middle-aged adults playing around in colourful costumes pretending to be superheroes. The fight in the alley, for example, was a completely gratuitous action scene that makes no sense in the context of the larger story. They’re competent at hand-to-hand combat certainly, but they’re not invincible. Contrast this with the far more believable fighting scenes featuring Rosharch which demonstrated how he made full use of the environment, but even so, could be defeated by superior numbers. The brutal and gory violence in that scene was also out of character for these two. Rosharch would be comfortable with outright killing people. These two would not.

Ozymandias

Probably my biggest disappointment in the film. I don’t have anything against the actor Matthew Goode. Instead, it’s Snyder who misstepped here. Ozymandias in the graphic novel was a blond, blue-eyed idealist who exuded goodness in every frame he was in. He was constantly portrayed performing good deeds, participating in charity events and giving money to the needy. In the film however, he had a distinctly sinister aura, leading viewers to instantly think that he was up to no good. Far from being the smartest man in the world, he comes across as a bratty prick. The attempted assassination scene in the film for example showed him as being callously manipulative, using the auto company executives as human shields. In the graphic novel however, he went out of his way to make sure that no bystanders were hurt.

The ending sequence particularly robbed the character of a lot of his depth. In the original version, Ozymandias is the one who has the last word with Dr. Manhattan before he leaves the galaxy. Rightly so, because this is a meeting of two gods, with Nite Owl II and Silk Spectre II excluded because events have moved past their understanding, and both of them know it. Ozymandias asks Dr. Manhattan, “Did I do right thing in the end?”

To which Dr. Manhattan replies, “Nothing ever ends.” Thus Dr. Manhattan wisely refrains from either condoning or condemning Ozymandias’ actions and suggests that he must wrestle with his own conscience and decide for himself if the sacrifice was worth it. In the film, it is Silk Spectre II who has an altered version of this exchange with Dr. Manhattan, completely changing the meaning of the scene.

There’s plenty more that I could say about the film but this post is long enough already. One last thing that’s worth noting is that I found the music choices, something that I don’t usually notice, nothing short of awful. I think music is supposed to complement a scene, not to compete with the visuals for attention. Still, warts and all, this is Watchmen on the silver screen, a monumental achievement that I didn’t think I’d live to see, and for that alone Zack Synder deserves plenty of praise. With this film likely being a commercial flop, Mr. Synder will probably not given this much money to play with for a long while.