There is the America whose history you’ve lived through, and then there is the America guarded by the Watchmen, founded in 1940 as the Minutemen. In this parallel nation, in the Times Square revelry on V-J day, a nurse was kissed by the slinky superheroine Silhouette. J.F.K. greeted Dr. Manhattan, the preternatural, irradiated blue man, at the White House and was gunned down by the splenetic, cigar-chomping Comedian. A U.S. astronaut walked on the moon and found Dr. M. waiting for him. In 1971, President Richard Nixon sent Manhattan and the Comedian to Vietnam; the war was over within a week, and Nixon was elected to a third term. The Watchmen were feted everywhere, until Nixon turned on his old abettors and outlawed the whole crew. By 1985, America was an open sewer of drugs and porn, and the Comedian was defeated, defenestrated, dead. (See pictures of Watchmen.)
All this, set to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” is revealed in an opening-credits salvo that’s among the zippiest, most thrilling assemblages in modern movies. The rest of Watchmen–which Zack Snyder, of 300 fame, directed from the wildly admired comic-book serial written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons–can’t match this Mach 2 ride through alternative history. Nor is the movie likely to live up to the hype it and its source novel have generated. Derisive laughter was heard at a critics’ screening, and a Hollywood Reporter review predicted that the film–budgeted at $100 million and the object of a rights wrangle between Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox–would be the “first real flop of 2009.” (TIME’s Lev Grossman offers a fan’s review of the movie. Download the podcast)
Yet amid the splatter of crushed limbs, the chatter of Strangelovean science fiction and the sludge of traditional romance–and despite way too much tone-deaf acting–Watchmen has splashes of greatness. It proves again that the action movie is where the best young Hollywood brains have gone to bring flesh to their fantasies.
At its heart, this is a detective story: Who killed Eddie Blake (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a.k.a. the Comedian? The main sleuth is Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), whose shifting-inkblot mask ill conceals a violent temper and a questing spirit. Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) is not much help, preoccupied as he is with helping another superhero, Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), in a secret experiment that may save the world or put a big hole in it. Dr. M. has also paid scant heed to his girlfriend Laurie (Malin Akerman), a.k.a. Silk Spectre II, who’s ready to fall into the arms of nerdy Dan Dreiberg (Patrick Wilson), a.k.a. Nite Owl II–some new Watchmen have moved up as older ones have retired. Meanwhile, still President Nixon (Robert Wisden) and other U.S. officials are poised to avert a nuclear strike by the U.S.S.R.
Moore’s story, which was published by DC Comics in 12 monthly installments in 1986, was conceived back when Ronald Reagan and the Russkies were still swapping dark threats, and few imagined the Soviet Union could collapse under its own deadweight. This was the pre-Internet age (Moore pounded out his scripts on a manual typewriter), when most comics had an afterlife only in the back-issue bins. But Watchmen soon attained the status of legend and literature; in 2005, TIME cited it as one of the 100 best novels since 1923. (See page 54 for our book critic’s take on the film adaptation.) And it continues to expand its base. Last fall Gibbons put out the latte-table book Watching the Watchmen. The story is also available on DVD in “moving comic” form–very limited animation of the drawings, with a narrator reading the text–that runs about twice the length of the 2-hr. 40-min. Snyder version. (Read an interview with Watchmen creator Dave Gibbons.)
As with the other films made from his stuff (From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Constantine, V for Vendetta), Moore has declined screen credit on the Watchmen movie. But whatever his thoughts on the corruptive properties of cinema, he could have found no more devoted Watch-man than Snyder, who willed the project into screen reality after Terry Gilliam and others failed. The ultimate fetishist auteur, Snyder takes hallowed pulp artifacts–the ’70s horror movie Dawn of the Dead, the Frank Miller graphic novel 300 and now this–and films them with the near fanatic fidelity of someone constructing an Eiffel Tower replica out of matchsticks. To Watchmen, he brings a reverence for the text that equals Mel Gibson’s in The Passion of the Christ and comes close to Gus Van Sant’s shot-by-shot remake of Hitchcock’s Psycho.
Should a real Watchmen fan see the movie? TIME has the answer
Yet this is a real movie, vigorously visualized from Gibbons’ template, and screenwriters David Hayter and Alex Tse have brought coherence to a plot that often lurches into flashbacks within flashbacks. The section showing the mutation of mild-mannered scientist Jon Osterman (Billy Crudup) into Dr. Manhattan is a gem of lucid storytelling. Shuffling the sequence of tenses, the film shows Jon as a young man in love, a fellow scarred by a nuclear accident, a boy watching his watchmaker dad, a superhero who can change size and location at will, a middle-aged stud letting his old love slip away as he finds someone younger, and finally, a sad sack of blue mourning the ordinary life he lost. Again, all is conveyed in a few minutes–a few quick, deft strokes. (See pictures of animated movies.)
The movie also has more than its share of long, clumsy scrawls. The budding romance between Dan and Laurie is tepidly drawn and wanly performed; those who’ve seen 300 know Snyder is in no way an actor’s director. (The two self-starters are Haley, who does right by his grizzled role, and Morgan, a Robert Downey Jr. knockoff who chews the scenery and his stogie with equal aplomb.) And while the climax is unusual in a comic-book movie–bad guy does very bad thing, then escapes his comeuppance by persuading folks that what he’s done is really kind of a good thing–it lacks the kick of apocalyptic retribution the mass audience expects and deserves.
Maybe Watchmen is one of those cult films that don’t expand beyond the true believers. It probably won’t make even alternative-movie history. Containing its own popcorn breaks–hit the concession stand whenever Dan and Laurie start their mooning–this ambitious picture is a thing of bits and pieces. But oh, those beautiful bits. And wow, those magnificent pieces.
Should a real Watchmen fan see the movie? TIME has the answer
More Must-Reads from TIME
- Inside Elon Musk’s War on Washington
- Why Do More Young Adults Have Cancer?
- Colman Domingo Leads With Radical Love
- 11 New Books to Read in February
- How to Get Better at Doing Things Alone
- Cecily Strong on Goober the Clown
- Column: The Rise of America’s Broligarchy
- Introducing the 2025 Closers
Contact us at letters@time.com