All you need to know about the Watchmen
REMEMBER the song Hero by M People, with the lyric: ‘You’ve got to search for the hero inside yourself...’?
Now, imagine a society full of superheroes all trying to change a world on the brink of Armageddon for the better.
But who are they? And what gives them the right to determine how things should be?
Weave in international Cold War politics, the sexes and lots of violence and where does that leave us?
In a better place... or still teetering on the brink of extinction?
All this and more is the bedrock of Watchmen, a DC comic strip turned graphic novel.
A publication so influential that it was the only graphic novel in Time magazine’s 2005 list of “the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present”. And which was considered to be so complex as to be unfilmable.
Fresh from his triumphant epic 300, director Zack Snyder has put 15 years of prior “development hell” to bed with this epic, 2hr 42min adaptation.
But, by remaining admirably faithful to the source material, he has still hit a brick wall.
While most fans will be surprised by Watchmen’s integrity on screen, a graphic novel is not the same thing as a movie. So the net result is a beautiful-looking film with a lot to say about modern society, yet one which fails to fully take off.
If there are some fantastic highlights in terms of stunts, costumes, special effects, sets and even dialogue, it’s also true that Watchmen lacks pace and momentum.
By trying to embrace so many plot complexities, theories and characters at the same time as having multiple flashbacks and as much narration as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Snyder comes dangerously close to over-egging the pudding.
And that’s at the expense of creating sufficient emotions to tug at your heartstrings or even an old-fashioned juggernaut that will have you clinging to your seats.
Watchmen has everything going for it, except the sort of simple excitement that Steven Spielberg found in his first major film, Duel.
Comic book and graphic novel fans will inevitably appreciate this film the most, but it’s not exclusively for them. Many “ordinary” cinemagoers who haven’t read the text, will be pleasantly surprised at the depths of ambition that a superhero movie can admirably sink to.
Meanwhile, there’s bad news for anyone hoping to see this on the giant IMAX screen in Birmingham. Hampered by the 18-rating, it has failed to reach an agreement with the distributors. Yet the running time has been kept to 162 minutes so that it could be IMAX friendly.
One compensation is that the DVD version could run to almost four hours.
The film’s production designer is Alex McDowell (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), with cinematographer Larry Fong and costume designer Michael Wilkinson both rejoining Snyder after 300.
Who are the Watchmen? > > >
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