Film adaptations are a tricky thing8212;but comic adaptations are especially difficult. There are people who hold the original in such high regard that anything cut or changed is met with almost pure disdain. At the same time, there are bound to be aspects of the original work that just don’t translate well to the screen and need to be reworked, or the film risks losing the audience for the sake of staying true to the original material.
When Alan Moore wrote Watchmen as a 12-part comic book in 1985, his goal was to utilize the medium to its full effect. He was interested in creating a dense story full of aspects that wouldn’t work in any other medium. He wanted to write a comic book that could never be translated to film.
That didn’t stop anyone from trying, though.
For more than 20 years, various studios have been attempting to get a film version of the story off the ground. Too many names to be counted were attached to the project, including Terry Gilliam, Darren Aronofsky, Simon Pegg and Arnold Schwarzenegger. There were fans of the book (and Alan Moore himself) who said it shouldn’t be done, and Hollywood heavyweights who tried for years to get it off the ground who said it couldn’t be done. Finally, Zack Snyder8212;hot off his adaptation of another comic book, 3008212;stepped up to the plate and took a swing. Although the film version of “Watchmen” isn’t a total miss, it’s far from the home run that fans were hoping for.
Set in an alternate 1985, “Watchmen” tells the story of a group of former costumed vigilantes who are investigating a murder of a former team member and an apparent conspiracy against them. All the while, the tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union rise to the brink of a nuclear war.
For a movie that has so many great moments packed in, it also has nearly the same amount of failed attempts. Snyder stays slavishly faithful to some aspects of the book, so much so that there are shots pulled straight from the comic. But it’s instances like these where things don’t always work. Snyder seems trapped at times, torn between whether he should disregard what’s on the page and go with what works or give the fans that fleeting moment of satisfaction of seeing a panel they loved projected on screen with every little detail intact.
There is a lot of time spent building the characters, which makes some of the most satisfying scenes. Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the Comedian does the most with the least amount of screen time, making a lasting impression of an often-humorless man. Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach, a lunatic in an ink blot mask, is the character who’s not only the most pivotal to the plot, but also the most entertaining to watch onscreen. Billy Crudup as the lone, emotionless superhuman Dr. Manhattan was the most interesting character who took a backseat because of his more existential, science-oriented sub-plot.
Snyder focused a little too heavily on the sex and violence that comes with Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson) and Silk Spectre (Malin Ackerman)8212;which isn’t all that surprising given his previous films. Sure, it’s cool to see the two of them in action taking down street gangs, but it’s given more relevance than was intended and the overuse of slow motion that accompanies just about every fight scene gets old quickly.
The opening credit sequence is one of the high points as it gives the viewer an idea of how this alternate setting came to be. It’s a montage of all the major events in American history and how costumed heroes might have affected their outcome, all set to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’.”
This opening shows just how good Snyder is with his visuals when he’s able to incorporate his own ideas. It’s these moments in the film when you wish they would have just taken the book and used it as a starting point instead of a bible.
When he moves away from trying to transfer the page to the screen verbatim and lets the film breathe on its own, it shines. But too many times, he holds back in an effort to remain faithful to the source material. “Watchmen” isn’t the epic failure it could have been, but it does show that not every comic should be adapted to film.
