Right. So first of all, I think it’s important to say that I read the comic book before the movie, and was a huge fan of it. This instantly brings up the debate about whether filmed versions of popular (pseudo-) written works should be considered adaptations, with all the word’s artistic connotations, or homages of the original.

Clearly, Zack Snyder, the director most famous for recreating Frank Miller’s graphic novel 300 almost panel by panel, feels that the latter is true. While I disagree with him, I completely understand his tendency. Snyder is a real fanboy, and a guy who probably took up filmmaking in his youth in the first place specifically with the aim of bringing these works to life, staying as true to them as he could. It makes perfect sense; after all, we do it all the time in our minds while reading. Sometimes we even think, ‘wouldn’t this make a great film?’

Unfortunately, the answer to that question isn’t always an unequivocal yes. In fact, I think films based on written material should always be approached as adaptations, mainly because I view film as an art form in and of itself, one that has tools and techniques unique to its craft that need to be utilized by the film artist for the work to be successful, in the same way that the graphic novel is a unique art form, with tools and techniques unique to its craft.

That’s what I’ve never understood about Snyder’s work: for a man who so clearly reveres the graphic novel, he seems to have little concept of the details and specifics that make a graphic novel successful as an art form as opposed to, say, I don’t know, a film. This is, of course, my main problem with, and I finally say it at the 275th word, Watchmen.

I suppose one of those ‘hack’ reviewers would have started by saying whether or not they liked the film itself, but me, I start by getting bogged down in theory. Regardless, let me now make this broad, qualifying statement about the work itself: I thought it was immensely enjoyable and completely unique. It relates the story and overall idea of the novel very well, including Alan Moore’s bleak outlook on humanity. I will see it again (and maybe again), and I will recommend it to anyone in a heartbeat.

That said, it’s not a particularly successful film. I’ll start with the overall theme and then drill down into specifics. I loved the slower pacing of the film, the Kubrick-esque use of music, and the spot-on visuals. But generally speaking, the film didn’t, in my view, succeed in capturing the nail-biting suspense and drama of the comic book as the two powers become closer and closer to war. Yes, the whole thing is well color adjusted to be grey and bleak, and yes, there are a few cliches thrown in like Dreiberg’s obvious “Why not? It’s the end of the world.” But I mean, other than that, we’re barely even aware that the world is on the brink of collapse save for a few almost comical scenes with Nixon and Kissinger in the war room.

What’s missing for me is any kind of emotional connection or sense that some real person we care about could die were a missile strike to be launched. In fact, this is because that element from the comic book is, well, missing. Snyder all but completely cut the side narrative with the boy and newspaper vendor to save on time, but as a result, much of the suspense and drama and Cold War tone doesn’t come through in the film. Why? Because, as Alan Moore so obviously understood, when you live in a world of brave and intrepid (even if they’re flawed in other ways) super heros, you need “real people” to communicate the everyday, on-the-ground anxiety spreading with every news clipping on the Soviet advance. Without that tone, much of the film doesn’t really work, especially the conclusion. After all, how could we ever feel conflicted about Adrian’s actions if we never really felt the danger of all out war in the first place?

Moreover, to add to the complete anticlimax, Snyder decided not to show us any of the piles of corpses after Adrian’s attack that are present in the novel, despite showering the audience in blood and guts throughout the rest of the film. So even if the film had properly related the extent of Adrian’s deep moral paradox, it would have been nearly impossible to get a sense of just how horrible his action was.

Even though Mathew Goode’s performance of Adrian Veidt’s extreme rationalization at the end was just fine, it wasn’t quite enough. None of the actors were terrible, but none of them, besides maybe Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, were great. I think the explanation for this is pretty simple: Rorschach is a sociopath, which was probably easier for Haley to interpret and portray than some of the other, more complex characters. Unfortunately, I don’t think anyone else had much help.

Again, I have a big problem here with the way Snyder approached the project. Yes, he isn’t really known as an actor’s director, and that’s fine. But again, you’d think that a fanboy would realize that a novel praised for its psychologically realistic characters would require a little more attention paid to the actors themselves than usual. Instead, Snyder’s characters seem (especially as explained in some of his online interviews) to be pretty one-dimensional psychological disorder archetypes. It’s pretty easy to go through and list exactly the notes Snyder had for each one. Rorshach: moral sociopath, Ozymandias: God complex, Dreiberg: hides behind a mask, Juspeczyk: mommy (and daddy, as it turns out) issues, Jupiter: fears aging, Comedian: product of American capitalism, etc. Of course, the characters in the book were these things, but they were also a lot deeper, communicated especially through some of the written documents at the end of each chapter that no film could include. That said, Snyder should have done a lot more to establish the characters for his actors, and the fact that he didn’t really shows, especially in scenes with Dreiberg and Juspeczyk.

Now, as someone pointed out to me the other day, the Nite Owl II/Silk Specter II romance is one of the weaker parts of the story. Having sexual issues because you’re a dork out of the costume is one of Moore’s more intriguing superhero psychological profiles, but Moore doesn’t really develop the actual relationship that much in the book, because he’s more concerned with war and peace and human nature and all that. Regardless, the relationship in the film seems really forced until the pair are in the prison, taking down baddies while exchanging flirtatious sidelong glances. Before that point, there doesn’t seem to be much of a connection between them at all, either because of the way the actors handled their previous action scenes together or because breaking Rorschach seems to be their biggest bonding moment.

Snyder could have done wonders by directing the actors to show a little more of a connection in those previous fight scenes or possibly, gasp, rearranging the story a tiny bit to have the sex scene occur after the prison scene, even though it seems like it would be difficult to work that in once Rorschach joins them. And as an aside, throwing the Hallelujah Chorus over the slow-motion overlong sex scene seems to indicate that not even Snyder takes the relationship seriously, which doesn’t help anyone connect with the two characters.

Then there’s the tweaked ending. I actually thought this was an improvement on the original alien attack plot, because it was grounded in the story itself rather than in a few whispers about crazy science on an island here and there. Plus, Dr. Manhattan’s decision to leave earth for another galaxy now comes naturally from the story’s main action, given that earthlings now hate him, rather than being driven solely by a character quirk.

That said, it made no sense to me to give the ‘nothing ever ends’ line to Juspeczyk rather than keeping it in the original conversation between Adrian and Dr. Manhattan. The result is that we hear Adrian say that he has “felt the pain of every innocent person” he’s murdered, but we get the sense that he’s not even the slightest bit unsure of himself, despite having just killed millions of people. Why couldn’t you have him slip into a back room and ask Manhattan if what he did will work out in the end, like in the comic book? It would have added one more layer of depth, something the film badly needed. Instead, Juspeczyk just pulls the line out of who knows where at the end, and worse, places it in Manhattans mouth (“I know Jon would say…”), making for one hell of a muddled and disjointed ending.

Overall though, I left the theater with the same lack of trust in humanity that I felt when I finished the comic book. Plus, the visuals were the usual pristine Snyder stuff and the tweak he made to the ending worked out very well. So in a big way, the movie succeeds; maybe not as a film on its own merits, but certainly as a faithful version of the comic book and as one hell of an exciting spectacle.

In the end, however, this is a film that, had Snyder been willing to shake off his own demons and bad habits to create, could have been something so much more important and fulfilling, especially in a tense time with so many parallels to the apocalyptic vision it presents. Moore’s vision, with its brilliant story, deep characters and resonant tone, transcends the genre and is truly one of the best pieces of literature to come out of the Cold War. Unfortunately, the film version is just a good comic book.