Dawn of the superheroes

Watchmen
Review by Nathan Weinbender

In retrospect, Superman led a very simple existence. He was nearly invincible, he wore a flashy costume and had a beautiful girlfriend, and his main concern, other than saving the world from time to time, was keeping his real identity veiled behind a pair of horn-rimmed glasses.

Today’s superheroes are much different: They’re dark and brooding, bundles of neuroses in capes, and the focus has shifted from their amazing abilities to their vulnerabilities and personal anguish.

Now that superhero films have officially been legitimized with films like “Spider-Man 2,” “Iron Man” and “The Dark Knight,” it was only a matter of time before someone filmed Alan Moore’s “Watchmen,” a remarkable graphic novel that not only represented a major turning point for comic book artistry but also brought philosophical and sociopolitical issues to the forefront of the medium. If ever a comic could be described as thought-provoking, it’s “Watchmen.”

The Watchmen are like the Fantastic Four’s dysfunctional cousins; we’ll call them the Cynical Six. They are the second string of caped crusaders (following the Minutemen in the 1940s), and after years of respect and canonization, they have been outlawed by the government. They are set against the backdrop of an alternate version of our world in 1985: Nixon is in his fifth term, the world’s metropolises are criminal cesspools and U.S.-Russia relations are on the brink of nuclear disarmament.

The plot is set into motion with the murder of the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a crass and brutal ex-hero now working as a government informant. Investigating the crime is Rorschach (a brilliant Jackie Earle Haley), a masked vigilante who discovers a plot to kill his fellow Watchmen. He serves as the voice of the film, narrating his journal entries in a Travis Bickle-like growl.

Other retired heroes include Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), a blue, radioactive figure who could just as easily save the world as he could destroy it; his girlfriend, Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman), a second generation avenger fed up with Manhattan’s dedication to his powers; Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson), who leads a quiet, boring existence when he isn’t flying his airship over the city at night; and Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), a millionaire, entrepreneur and genius who has successfully marketed his own superhero image.

All of these characters are amalgams of others that have come before, but Moore took everything in a new direction by lowering their defenses and placing them in real world scenarios. When Superman fights Lex Luthor, or when Peter Parker slings his webs through New York City, it’s pure, wonderful escapism. When Dr. Manhattan, depressed and dejected, transports himself to the desolation of Mars, it carries a certain weight. There is no salvation for humanity if our sole saving grace is such a haunted figure.

“Watchmen” runs nearly three hours, but it rarely slows down. The director is Zack Snyder (“Dawn of the Dead,” “300”), who speeds through the story and amps up the violence to the point where the unwitting may go into shock.

He throws in some nice touches here and there, including what I believe was a vague “Citizen Kane” reference, and a soundtrack that includes well-known rock songs: The opening montage set to “The Times They Are a-Changin’” is terrific, but the sex scene featuring Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” is palm-to-forehead pretentious.

The plot is an unwieldy creature, and while it slowly unfolded on the page, allowing us to slowly discover its secrets, it feels crammed into a manageable running time on the screen. For those uninitiated with the “Watchmen” universe, the film may seem impenetrable. As someone who has read the original graphic novel, I followed it all just fine.

Adapting the book must have been a daunting prospect (the script is credited to David Hayter and Alex Tse, but who knows how many writers have tinkered with it over the years). Not only is it incredibly ambitious—Moore himself called it unfilmable—following dozens of characters and madly hopping back and forth through time, it is of wildly divergent tones: It acts as a sort of new age tribute to old-fashioned superhero conventions, but it simultaneously thumbs its nose at them, and its cheeky reverence shook up the sagging comic industry of the ‘80s.

Moore, who goes uncredited here, also gave his characters debilitating flaws, and he forced them to make ethical decisions that directly undermined the very purpose of their existences as superheroes. We recently saw glimmers of this pessimism in “The Dark Knight,” which some have already labeled as the pinnacle of superhero cinema, and although “Watchmen” hardly lives up to the intensity of that film, it is still a good picture in its own right.

Directed by Zack Snyder. Written by David Hayter and Alex Tse; based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Starring Billy Crudup, Patrick Wilson, Malin Akerman, Jackie Earle Haley, Matthew Goode, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Carla Gugino. R; 163m.