BY ISAAC HAN

In print | Published March 19, 2009

Superhero movies are no longer just for kids. With “The Dark Knight” and now Zack Snyder’s adaptation of “Watchmen,” superhero movies have officially grown up, tackling deep, difficult questions about morality. Whether they successfully offer any insight into these questions, though, is another story.

The premise of “Watchmen” centers on a group of self-proclaimed superheroes, who, like us, have grown up with the phenomenon of the superhero comic and have decided to bring these stories of vigilantism into their real lives. The graphic novel, created in the heat of the Cold War, is fraught with nihilistic fatalism, and like “The Dark Knight,” “Watchmen” offers the flip side of most superheroes’ cheery vigilantism. At the core of the story is whether or not individuals such as the titular Watchmen have the right to judge humanity. These questions are best reflected in the film adaptation through the character of the Comedian.

The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is the key to the movie. What is fascinating about the Comedian is the irony with which he watches over the people he protects. The polar opposite of the morally upstanding superhero, the Comedian is unacceptably violent and subdues the masses, who he claims to protect, through brute force. His methods are a skewed version of the tough love cliché. Even the Comedian’s death at the start of the film is a punch line of sorts. The repeated image of a smiley face with a bloodstain is a stirring reminder of the central moral dilemma of “Watchmen.”

It’s the character study of the paradoxical Comedian that ultimately allows Snyder to successfully execute the plot of “Watchmen.” Nonetheless, the film has tons of flaws to weight it down. “Watchmen” is not a movie that faithfully follows a story line as much as it is movie whose scenes pantomime the semblance of a story line. There are many powerful set pieces and sequences, but, put together, they feel disconnected rather than being cleverly intertwined with one another.

For instance, the very long opening credit sequence, which introduces the audience to the characters of the Watchmen, slows down the plot rather than accelerating it. The audience is forced to place the murder of the Comedian that began the movie into the recess of their memory as the film makes us learn about each and every (boringly) flawed member of the Watchmen before allowing us to refocus on the mystery at hand.

I would liken Snyder’s method for adapting “Watchmen” to a film version of a collage. Although it may be satisfying for die-hard fans to see a thorough depiction of each of their favorite characters, on film it is more cumbersome than entertaining. The stories and intense character development that follow the opening sequence meticulously continue to elaborate on the complexities of the Watchmen.

By the time Snyder finally decides to resume the plot, somewhere around the hour-and-a-half mark, the audience has likely forgotten that there was a murder mystery story to begin with. The initially striking slow-mo sequences eventually get fetishized to the point of exhaustion. Luckily, the second half of the movie kicks into a more interesting discussion of morality than the first half. And the twisted ending that brings salvation to mankind at a huge moral price helps the audience to, for the most part, forgive the endless naval-gazing.

“Watchmen” serves its purpose in illustrating the nature of the Watchmen enough to set the ground for an intellectually stimulating discussion of the morality of using violence as a way to keep mankind in check. Nevertheless, the collage quality makes the movie seem cumbersome and long. Snyder may have intended to provide an equally thorough and flashy adaptation of “Watchmen” to appeal to both readers and non-readers of the graphic novel. And he succeeds in satisfying readers of the graphic novel, and helping non-readers, like me, to understand and appreciate the premise of Watchmen. But the way he executes the movie makes the film awkward and just way too long to be thoroughly engaging from beginning to end.

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