![]() Manhattan to take on the Soviets, but the rest of the Watchmen have been outlawed. Manhattan, rendered Übermensch in a lab accident, they have no superpowers, just a jones to fight in drag. Plot point coming: Since 1977, masked heroes have been banned from doing their thing. Snyder sums it up in a yowsa opening that merges Vietnam, moonwalks, you name it, into a visionary time capsule. As the story moves from New York to Mars, the time is still 1985, Cold War tensions simmer, and Nixon - in his fifth term as president - hovers over a Doomsday Clock that ticks ever closer to atomic midnight. He and screenwriters David Hayter and Alex Tse admirably resist updating to the here-and-now War on Terror. Snyder goes easier on the computer this time and strains to stay faithful to what’s on the page. ![]() ![]() Snyder, a director of TV ads (yikes!) who made his feature debut with a rockin’ 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, took an ass-kicking from comic purists for getting too computer-flashy with his 2007 smash, 300, from Frank Miller’s graphic novel about the 480 B.C. But there are also flashes of visual brilliance and performances, especially from Haley and Crudup, that drill deep into the novel’s haunted soul. Moore recalled his four years of toil on the 12-issue DC Comics series as “slam-dancing with a bunch of rhinos.” That description also fits watching the movie, which stumbles and sometimes falls on its top-heavy ambitions. What’s the truth? A little of both, I’m afraid. Or glom onto Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), the vigilante in a white mask who shows a face of ever-changing ink blots, and you’ll think a popcorn night at the movies has morphed into a Rorschach test administered by a lethally sadistic shrink. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), standing 200 feet, glowing with blue light and flashing a few yards of giant blue wiener, and you’ll think you’re in for the colossus of campfests. Get a grip.Ĭaught between the rock of fanboy adulation and the hard place of newbie indifference, the R-rated, nearly-three-hour movie version of Watchmen is a cinematic piñata getting whacked from every side. Whether the movie soars or tanks, it won’t make the comic book extinct. In the process, he has inadvertently inspired a band of rabid loyalists ready to shoot Snyder on sight. Moore, soured by the Hollywood mangling of From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and V for Vendetta, has removed his good name from the credits. Even if you don’t see Snyder’s version, which has its problems, it won’t kill you to peek at the comic book that Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof called “the greatest piece of popular fiction ever produced.”Īs for you Watchmen junkies, enough with tearing down the movie before you even see it. The film, directed by 300 wild man Zack Snyder, arrives after years of false starts from the creative likes of Brazil‘s Terry Gilliam, Bourne‘s Paul Greengrass and The Wrestler‘s Darren Aronofsky. ![]() politicians heading for nuclear disaster, Watchmen took comic books to the next level as literature. With its alternate universe of vigilante superheroes and power-crazed U.S. I don’t care if you know squat about the orgasmically received 1987 graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons: It’s time to bust your cherry. ![]()
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