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WHO WATCHES THE "WATCHMEN"?

I usually adore films adapted from comics, particularly the first midnight showing, when the most zealous fans come dressed in full superhero regalia. These are the rare moments when a trip to the cinema becomes a complete work of art: a true spectacle.

I expected to love "Watchmen".  Adapted from the cult graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, published as a series from 1986 to 1987, the film had plenty of ingredients for success: an existing fan-base, an epic story, top actors, sexy costumes, special effects and a moment ripe for escapist fantasies. The novel's artwork is fantastic--bold, stylish and sinister. The bloody smiley face says it all.

Unfortunately the film is nothing more than an impressionistic sweep of the novel's intent. The book was powerful for the way it considered a different trajectory of history, one in which the Vietnam war was won, Richard Nixon enjoyed a third term as president, and tensions with the Soviet Union were high. The threat of nuclear warfare casts a shadow across the series. But efforts to recreate the novel's grim atmosphere on screen fall short, largely because Zack Snyder, the director, and David Hayter and Alex Tse, the authors of the screenplay, failed to capitalise on similarities between this bizarro 1986 and the present.

"Watchmen" could have been about the consequences of greed and rampant decadence in American culture. Our own messy moment affords plenty of material. But the film's only references to 2009 are some quips about "cowboy" presidents near the end. Synder and his team have missed the boat.

What made the novel more than just a cool comic book is completely lost in the film. We’re never able to get to know these characters because we’re given a cast of actors who cannot act. Malin Ackerman, the only female superhero in "Watchmen", might look eerily like Miss Jupiter, but she can barely speak her lines. Billy Crudup, the most talented actor on screen, is barely visible beneath mountains of unimpressive CGI. We can understand Jackie Earle Haley's Rorscharch, but not enough to really care. What should be the bread and butter of this film--the inner lives and efforts of these six superheroes--comes across as nothing more than lifeless acting on a rather impressive stage.

Superheroes do what we dream we could do with the same powers and glamorous anonymity--wish fulfilment, laced with ambivalence. But I left the theatre on Friday night with no feelings for these strangers onscreen, and no desire to be them. I was fed-up with this two-and-a-half-hour practical joke. My time would've been better spent re-reading the novel, or the news.

~ JESSICA FERRI

Picture Credit: And all that malarky (via Flickr)