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SPOILER ALERT: If you don’t want to know anything about “Watchmen” before you go see it next March, don’t read this post.

I saw about 20 minutes of footage from the “unfilmable” film on Wednesday and I’m very happy to report that Zack Snyder has a found a way to make “Watchmen” truly watchable.

The most pressing question in all of the fanboy universe right now is whether Snyder’s adaptation of the landmark 1986 comics epic “Watchmen” will deliver a classic finally realized or a merely bad idea pursued too long. Alan Moore, who wrote the original graphic novel, has been steadfast in mocking the basic notion of making a movie out of his sprawling, layered and uniquely structured tale and, to be sure, the story uses many devices (such as a secondary story presented as a book-within-a-book) that defy translation in any mainstream film, but does that mean that the core story of the graphic novel itself cannot be taken to the screen in an artistically and commercially viable film?

The true answer to that question will come in March with the release of the film. But I can tell you that, judging by the footage I saw on Wednesday, Snyder has approached the source material so deftly and with such acute understanding, that this adaptation is absolutely a worthwhile endeavor.

Snyder, who as a public speaker is enthusiastic and charmingly scattered, chatted a bit before the screening and in the small room of journalists, Hollywood types and selected fan press, you could sense a real surge of excitement when the lights dimmed.

For so many people (myself included), the first “Watchmen” reading experience all those years ago was a pivot-point in our pop-culture lives and, for better or worse, seeing it come to life on a screen is a stirring occasion.

The movie begins (as the graphic novel does) with a closer-than-close view of a yellow smiley-face button and begins to zoom out. The button is on the shabby bathrobe of the “hero,” called the Comedian, who looks scruffy and bleary as he makes a cup of instant coffee in the kitchen of his high-rise apartment. The television is on and the talking heads (all actors doing spot-on versions of John McLaughlin and Eleanor Clift as well as a less recognizable Pat Buchanan) are debating the menace presented by the Soviet Union. Their chatter also informs the audience about Dr. Manhattan, the blue-skinned creature who was once a man but now, with his god-like powers, is a walking deterrent to America’s enemies. The Comedian, taking it all in through jaundiced eyes, changes the channel and watches President Nixon giving a speech and then, after flipping again, he chuckles and daydreams as he watches a perfume commercial for a scent called Veidt. Then a mysterious figure kicks in his door and a bloody confrontation begins…

It was difficult to keep notes as I was watching everything — Snyder has jam-packed the screen with details that every “Watchmen” fan will recognize if they catch them as they fly past. After the out-the-window murder of the Comedian (played by a grizzled Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the camera soars down to the bloody sidewalk below and goes “back into the button,” zooming into the yellow of the smiley-face lapel pin that is now speckled with blood (again, just like the graphic novel). Some Bob Dylan music plays (Snyder said there are three Dylan songs planned for the movie, “because it just feels right, appropriate to the tone”) as the film turns to a somewhat dizzying montage for the title sequence that delivers a major history lesson of this alternate Earth. Some of it made the audience chuckle (is that a good thing?), such as when the iconic imagery of the JFK assassination is shown but with the added conclusion of the Comedian holding the smoking gun or the shot of Ozymandias outside Studio 54 with Mick Jagger and David Bowie look-a-likes (who, on reflection, appear almost as outlandish as the costumed hero). There’s a lot of this and it feels sort of “Forrest Gump”-ish at some point and (along with the goofy rubber nose worn by the Nixon character) I felt a flash of anxiety. Was this too many jagged images delivered in a row? How could anyone who didn’t read the graphic novel make sense of it? And that one fleeting image of a dour young boy watching as smirking men walk into his prostitute mother’s bedroom — how on earth could any uninformed viewer be expected to connect that with the character that would become Rorschach?

Read the rest on the link below

– Geoff Boucher LA Times

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