sourCINEMA: Watchmen

The wise Nite Owl and the svelte Silk Spectre

Corey here:

Watchmen is set in an alternate version of the 1980s where Richard Nixon has been elected for his fifth term as President of the United States and the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. are on the brink of nuclear war. In the midst of bad diplomacy and corrupt politics, your friendly neighborhood superheroes have been banned from fighting crime due to a unanimous effort by the people to bring back the police.

Enter our ex-superheroes and their extremely mundane problems. The Silk Spectre is dating a giant, blue nuclear reactor, Dr. Manhattan, who is sick of humanity and his girlfriend. The Nite Owl is in love with the Silk Spectre, but he’s been gorging on too much Chinese take-out for the past ten years and EVERYBODY knows the Silk Spectre loves a man with muscles. Ozymandias is trying to hide his homosexuality from the world, but his flourescent purple satin suit gives it away. Rorschach is suffering from identity theft (or so he says) and has a voice with a striking resemblance to that of Oscar the Grouch. At least we can connect with their problems, I guess.

Anyway, it comes time for the heroes to dust off their old spandex suits when an unavoidable nuclear apocalypse threatens the world and it seems that all of the retired superheroes have been targeted for assassination.

* * *

I can tell that the screenwriters tried very hard to interpret the graphic novel almost directly to the screen, but I feel that is the film’s downfall. The minute details that normally manifest themselves in comic books just don’t seem right for a film, especially when there’s a time limit. The amount of information thrown at the audience in the two hour and forty-five minute movie is about the same information the audience would be expected to learn after spending a day reading the graphic novel. By having all of this information rushed through just so it fits in the movie, the audience has little time to grasp the full concepts and ideas that are important to Watchmen’s plot.

Another distraction to the vast amount of plot developments is the presence of genitalia. No, seriously. Retired superheroes must be very lonely because they love sex. Ironically, the one hero who could care less about fornication, Dr. Manhattan, spends the entire film walking around in his birthday suit. I understand that the audience is supposed to connect with the characters and understand their emotions, but one less sex scene would not have inhibited the viewers’ ability to do so.


The Silk Spectre is totally into Dr. Manhattan's nuclear reactor, if you know what I mean.


Watchmen does save itself though. The film has only a few action scenes, which reminds the audience that the film is more than just a summer blockbuster-type superhero movie but instead a true drama. However, the action scenes that do occur are edited amazingly and leave the viewers in awe of the special effects. The soundtrack is delightfully 80s and at many points contradicts the emotion of what is on-screen (Frank Sinatra singing his way through the movie’s opening battle), which is an interesting move and makes for a more dramatic effect. Finally, the plot may be ridiculously farfetched and convoluted, but if you can somehow keep up with it, it proves to be entertaining and thought-provoking. The movie successfully closes leaving you with an enigmatic question: is a wrong worth committing if it ultimately means a right?

My Rating:
- Catch it while it’s still in theaters for the amazing visuals and sound, but be prepared to rent it on DVD later to catch everything you missed the first time around.