Cinema King's journal - July 21, 2009. Tonight a comedian died on Blu-Ray. And Zack Snyder's ambitious adaptation of Alan Moore's sacred graphic novel has never looked - or downright been - this good before.If there's one thing comics fans can agree on, it's that Moore's 1985-6 classic (illustrated lovingly by Dave Gibbons) is almost gospel as far as funny books are concerned. If there's a second thing we (because I'm one of you) can all agree on, it's that the film adaptation - from the "visionary" director of 3oo (itself a filmed version of Frank Miller's Spartan text) is highly divisive; you love it, or you hate it, but there's no middle ground. Of all the people I know who saw the film and read the book, I'm the only one who liked it. (Uninitiated folk who hadn't read the book, like my father, liked the film, too.) With the director's cut released on DVD now, I'm pleased to say that I like Watchmen a little bit more now.
For those who haven't read Moore's seminal book (and, really, you should), Watchmen takes place in a dystopian 1985 where Nixon is still president, where America won the Vietnam War, and where superheroes existed but have been forced to retire. The film begins with the murder of one of those retired masked avengers, The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, pitch-perfect at laughing in the face of life's absurd joke). Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley, who I'd like to see get an Oscar nod for his spectacular performance), the last vigilante, believes there's a conspiracy afoot and tries to warn Night Owl (Patrick Wilson), Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman), and Dr. Manhattan (a CGI'd Billy Crudup, who keeps his Mastercard voice), who initially doubt his theory. An assassination attempt on Adrian "Ozymandias" Veidt (Matthew Goode) and worsening tensions at home and in the heating-up Cold War quickly change the heroes' perspectives, forcing some out of retirement and to a cataclysmic, now-classic climax.
It's impossible to talk about the film as if the director's cut didn't exist, because this is the Watchmen you should see. Though it runs three hours long, the director's cut patches up the flaws of the theatrical release - wooden acting, poor pacing, and a streamlined yet loosey-goosily-loyal treatment of the source material - even if it doesn't restore Moore's fishy ending (it's a pun, not a knock on the man from Northampton). Akerman didn't strike me as particularly solid in the theatrical cut, but she's at worst serviceable and at best complex in the new version. Crudup brings plenty of emotional depth to the seemingly withdrawn Manhattan, Wilson is his standard schleppy self (a perfect fit for Dan Dreiberg, the ultimate schmuck), and Goode - though he's not given much in the film to work with - does a more than decent job of wrestling with his great powers and his greater responsibility to the planet.
The stand-out in the cast - Morgan aside - is Haley, who is so far 2009's Heath Ledger as far as outstanding performances go. Haley completely becomes Rorschach, inhabiting everything from his posture to his gravelly voiceover - and, after Adaptation., anyone who can make me enjoy narration and isn't named Morgan Freeman is doing a lot of heavy lifting. (Of course, to remove the iconic narration from the source material would here be criminal, especially when it contains such fanboy-giddy lines like, "The city screams like an abbatoir full of retarded children.") Haley does a great job with the mask on, but once the inkblot face is removed he unleashes a range of facial twitches and verbal tics that will probably get snubbed by the snooty Academy.
The director's cut is a more loyal adaptation of Moore's work (again, ending notwithstanding), reintegrating a lot of the book's smaller moments and taking the time to build an entirely new world. Extended scenes with Nixon (though the actor portraying Tricky Dick isn't as talented as Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon) as well as amped-up flashbacks (especially Akerman's) and extended conversations (as with Dr. Malcolm Long) create the sense that this three hour epic is just that - a huge-in-scope undertaking. What's most welcome in the 24 new minutes of footage is some more material with Stephen McHattie's Hollis "Nite Owl I" Mason, whose life - and death - are finally given the sadly nostalgic treatment the book afforded him; with this comes more Carla Gugino, too, as Silk Spectre's fame-crazed dramatic stage mom, who is less compelling and perhaps a bit too showy. At three hours, the film can now relax and breathe for a second (the theatrical cut suffered a bit from over-exposition - a necessary evil with such weighty material - while the original climax seemed rushed and frenetic), giving fanboys and newcomers alike the chance to really watch the Watchmen.
And by the end, you'll forget all about that dang squid, anyway.
Watchmen is rated "R for strong graphic violence, sexuality, nudity and language." The director's cut is slightly grittier, but both edits feature gory close-ups of extreme violence, including vaporizations of people, street fights, and the hacking and sawing of several gory body parts. While Dr. Manhattan is almost exclusively naked (and blue - we see everything), other sexual content includes one sex scene with nudity and one abortive one without, as well as discussion of adultery, rape (an attempted rape is shown), erectile dysfunction (treated humorously), and sex as placation. Language consists of several F-bombs tossed around lightly.
Note: the director's cut includes neither Tales of the Black Freighter nor Under the Hood. These are still available separately, though a flyer inside the DVD case teases of an "Ultimate Collector's Edition" 5-disc set coming in December, which will contain both side-features. For my money, though, the film is stronger with these as separate bonus features than as part of the film proper, and so I recommend eschewing the 5-disc splurge set and sticking with two separate discs.
Verily, I can only think of a few remakes that have been better than the original - 1941's The Maltese Falcon, 2006's