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The graphic novel titled Watchmen might be one of the greatest graphic novels ever written. Creators Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created a true masterpiece that many have tried to adapt over the years. When Zack Snyder brought Watchmen to the big screen, at first it was seen as the most accurate adaptation of it's source material. Though upon further inspection, Zack Snyder's Watchmen may suffer from almost being too faithful. Coming off the back of his hit adaptation of 300, it seemed Zack Snyder was truly the one that could bring Watchmen to the big screen faithfully, but did his commitment to the direct translation end up hurting the film overall?
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Zack Snyder has made four superhero films
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starting with Watchmen and climaxing in his version of Justice League. It's safe to say he's definitely left his fingerprints
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on these beloved characters. While his last might be the subject of the most discussion
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it's his first film in that quadrilogy that is the most important, both for what it got right
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and what it got wrong. You know, for a guy who calls himself the comedian
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I can never tell when you're joking. Watchmen, that's a real joke
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Released in 2009, Zack Snyder's Watchmen tells the story of a real-world 1980s that looks very different from our past
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One populated by spandex-clad superheroes and omnipotent demigods, at the center of the film is a murder mystery that asks a simple question
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Who killed the comedian? This simple premise had a nearly two-decades-long path to the silver screen
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The graphic novel the film is based on, created by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and John Higgins
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is considered one of the greatest works the comic book medium ever produced
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Filmmakers as disparate as Jill Silver, Darren Aronofsky, and even Terry Gilliam
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all failed to bring the epic superhero mystery to life. Gilliam even went so far as to call the project unfilmable
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But that didn't stop Zack Snyder from trying to bring the film to cinemas after the runaway success of his adaptation of Frank Miller's 300
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which pulled in close to $456 million worldwide. It didn't occur to me to think it was unfilmable probably until about halfway through
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And then, of course, it was too late. Snyder's take on the material was absolutely devoted to the source material
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So much so that there are three distinct cuts of the film. The theatrical cut, a director's cut, and an extended cut
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which added animated adaptations of the in-world comic strip called The Black Freighter
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Snyder's Watchmen has a very distinct goal. It wants to be the most faithful adaptation of the material that has ever existed
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Does it succeed in that goal? That's another topic altogether. But you can tell that Snyder and company really wanted to make a translation of the book
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that would be close to the original product as possible even if Alan Moore didn want them to Some people might even argue that the movie is so faithful it a bit detrimental Many of the scenes from the book are recreated within the film
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and are often shown shot for shot as the existing comic book pages. But here's the key difference
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The expressed point of the Watchmen movie and the book are decidedly different
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Published in 1986, Watchmen was intended to be a deconstruction of the superhero genre
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It recontextualized all of the tropes of the medium at large, but also specifically drew inspiration from the Charlton Comics characters
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which has recently been sold to DC. It placed emphasis on failure, frailty, and human mistake
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It was the opposite of a power fantasy. It was an indictment. The book was written as a postmodern critique of the aspirations
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that the medium had been selling generations of young readers. The movie didn't really have the opportunity to function
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as the same kind of deconstruction for the currently raging superhero industrial complex
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because back in 2009, it was just ramping up. There was no DCEU or MCU to critique
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Zack Snyder's Watchmen seems to completely miss the notion that Watchmen as a story is supposed to lampoon how power fantasies work
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In the book, Dan Dryberg, aka Night Owl, is a lonely, overweight, depressed man who wears literal spandex
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The design of his costume is dorky and awkward, and that is the point. Seeing these things in the real world would be strange and otherworldly
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and more often than not, goofy. In Snyder's world, Night Owl is covered in gleaming metal and Michael Keaton Batman-esque rubber
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He's just a superhero. All of that weakness and goofiness is gone. The way he looks, acts, and the amount of power he possesses changes the underlying meaning
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of the story. I can't believe we did that. Probably lock us up with Rorschach
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Who cares? World War III could start tomorrow. This divergence from the original intention of the book, while recreating the events of
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the book laboriously, is at the heart of the Watchmen movie. Just look at the sequence where Silk Spectre and Night Owl get into a fight with a gang of street thugs
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In the book, it's a clumsy and shuffling fist fight. It awkward and when the violence does happen it not something that makes you fist pump out of excitement It just angry people punching each other Whereas in the film the violence is glorified
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and filmed as though we should be cheering for our heroes. The camera revels in the broken bones and stabbings
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Snyder uses slow motion and wire work to make Night Owl and Silk Spectre hyper-capable combat machines
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The lens focuses on the violence, as opposed to being repulsed by the fact
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that these two civilians are ostensibly committing murder. The aesthetic choices that Moore and Gibbons make in the book just seem to go over Snyder's head
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Now, that's not to say violence doesn't play a role in Moore and Gibbons' Watchmen
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It absolutely does. From comedians' homicidal impulses to Dr. Manhattan working for the U.S. government during the Vietnam War
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to Rorschach's Last Stand, violence is inherent in the superhero genre. Therefore, it's examined from multiple angles in the book
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But it's never positioned as something positive or exciting. It's a tool to underscore that these powerful beings are to be feared
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Snyder can be a brilliant director. He's extremely gifted at creating stunning visuals and cinematic moments
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but he's just not that great at understanding what those moments symbolize
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in the context of a broader narrative. And that idea dovetails directly into the biggest change that movie made to the book
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In the finale of the book, issue 12 titled A Stronger, Loving World
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we learn that the character of Ozymandias has killed numerous people in New York
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and faked an alien invasion. By doing this, he's going to unite the world in a fear of the unknown-style gambit
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and usher in a new age of human prosperity. One global government, a de-escalation of the Cold War
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and an averting of nuclear Armageddon, all from the sacrifice of just a few human lives
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In the film, this is altered to be Ozymandias framing Dr. Manhattan for mass casualties by
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rigging atomic reactors to explode, killing 15 million people. Manhattan, quickly deducing what
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has just happened, teleports to Ozymandias' base, only to be shown the fact that the world's common
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fear of his power is uniting the globe. You just talking about the end you know the idea that God you know could become the other to hate I find that sort of philosophically satisfying This ending is a very polarizing topic Some fans feel that using Manhattan to be the thing that unites the globe is a brilliant idea It thematically ties together many of the
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underpinnings of power and scientific progress that exist in the story, while others think that
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the world needs to unite over something outside of our own creation, a true fear of the other
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This ending works better than some of the naysayers want to trumpet. It feels like a unique
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and interesting spin, and is still in line with the core themes of what the story needed to work
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No! You haven't idealized mankind, but you've deformed it. You've mutilated it
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That's your legacy. The movie probably would have been more of an accurate adaptation if it focused on actually
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using narrative mechanics like this, things that were thematically true to the source
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but not literally true. Snyder spends so much of the runtime of the film recreating Dave Gibbons
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artwork instead of taking the core idea that's being depicted and evolving that into filmable
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sequences just look at what is absolutely the best thing about the film the opening credit sequence
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everything that is being depicted there is pulled from the book's ancillary materials
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and extended ephemera but it's been recontextualized into new scenes and sequences
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that aren't in the book at all it's exciting it's got energy and it feels alive in a way that almost
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nothing else in the film does in many ways watchmen is the key to understanding snyder's
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time working in the DCEU. He's a visual stylist and has boundless enthusiasm and a love for the
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characters. However, that love tends to lean in a very specific direction, and with a very specific
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tone that doesn't always understand the core of these long-running icons. He's obsessed with the
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surface-level representation of the characters and the stories, not necessarily the underlying
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themes and motifs or emotional importance of them. The book Watchmen is a towering achievement
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It reshaped the public's perception of what comic books could be. The movie? Not so much
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It's a fun superhero movie that maybe takes itself a little too seriously sometimes
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and if it had branched out a bit and tried to reinvent the book as opposed to recreating it
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maybe it too could have been a towering achievement