Movie Review: Watchmen - Page 3

Which brings us to the bad news. It'd be unfair to pin all the flaws of the film on Akerman and Goode, as their struggles would've easily been overshadowed in a better film. As much credit as Snyder gets for having the stones to finally get a Watchmen movie made, it still doesn't mean he was the right choice for the job. He's an adrenalin junkie action director, which works great when he sticks to speeding up zombies or greasing up Spartans to fight in front of green screens, but not as well when telling one of the most dense and complicated stories in the history of comicdom. When not assaulting the audience with an overbearing score and soundtrack, Snyder ups the levels of violence that were already fairly significant in the book, and needlessly extends fight scenes in a film that was already stretched to its limits with a 2 hour and 43 minute running time. While making sure that he got the right shots and moments from the series, Snyder neglected to get the right tone. Too often the heroes of the film seem bad ass, when they should seem disturbed and pathetic.

In many ways, Snyder is guilty of the same crimes the majority of the comic book community committed following the release of the 12 issue Watchmen mini-series from 1986-87 (along with the 1986 release of Frank Miller's seminal The Dark Knight Returns). Instead of trying to tell stories of greater sophistication and depth, the comics world decided that the lessons of Watchmen and DKR were to create darker characters and inject more "mature" themes into the world of superheroes.

But the biggest problem with Watchmen the movie is the same problem that infects most film adaptations of longer books: in order to get all the story into an acceptable running time (even one this long), the stories tend to be reduced to merely plot. In this way, Snyder is no different than prestige picture directors adapting literary classics. The film feels like a collection of scenes and plot developments, mashed into one another without the necessary time to develop its characters or invest us in the developments. To squeeze in the dense plotting of the book, the flavour is left out. Scenes that needed a few more minutes to breathe aren't given the time to do so, and threads that connect one development to another are sometimes left out. This is what kept me from truly embracing the film, in that I never felt comfortable enough with it to embrace it. The other flaws, be it subpar acting from some of the leads, the oppressively loud score, or Snyder's by now signature slo-mo action scenes would've been mere annoyances if the tone of the film was properly established.

Article Author: Andy Sayers

Andy Sayers is a technical writer from Canada, which automatically makes him funnier than people from other countries. When not writing about pop culture, he is consuming it alongside his loving wife.

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