Watching Watchmen

"Who is watching the Watchmen?"

The answer this weekend is lots of people. A much anticipated film adaptation of this now legendary graphic novel premiered in thousands of theaters Friday. Hotly debated in the entertainment press even before the first trailers appeared, the film was declared a sure failure by purists (called fanboys), disowned by its author and doubted by critics who consider the novel's dense, flashback-laden, multilayered story-within-a-story structure and fantastic imagery unfilmable. Indeed, the film's director, Zack Taylor, had been preceded by many who attempted then abandoned Watchmen film projects.

An unashamed fanboy himself, Taylor spent much time during the film's post-production period explaining and defending his vision of the book as film, reassuring fans that he would be faithful to the original. People went to the theater either in fearful anticipation, hoping for the best, or out of morbid curiosity, unwilling to pass up the chance to discuss a good train wreck over a latte.

How I came to be among the legion of Watchmen watchers Friday night and write this review deserves some explanation. Let me first say that I come late to the party. Until this past Christmas, I had never heard of Watchmen and had only the sketchiest notion of what a graphic novel was (a glorified comic book, right?). But I had determined to get my younger son, who requested only video games for gifts this year, at least one book. At the local book store, the yellow cover and its blood-spattered "happy face" badge caught my eye, and I just had to look. I didn't buy it right then, but did do some research. Turns out I had had in my hands what more than one reviewer called "the most celebrated graphic novel of all time," one that no less than Time magazine had named to its list of 100 Greatest Novels written in the past century. Well. So ... I took a chance.

Written by semi-reclusive Alan Moore, a self-described anarchist and comic book industry demi-god, Watchmen is considered his and that industry's masterpiece. In it, Moore, a Briton, creates a parallel universe version of the U.S. in 1985, in which Richard Nixon was not dethroned by Watergate, we won the Vietnam War, the comic book heroes have character flaws of the sort usually reported in supermarket tabloids, the still-raging Cold War is threatening to get nuclear hot, and a government experiment gone wrong has created a neon-blue superhuman who sees the future and could save the world or destroy it.

Moore envisions America gone mad for crime, sex and drugs after the second generation of a vigilante crime-fighting group formed in the 1940s to clean up America is forced to disband in the 1970s. His unmasked and decaped crew includes the Nite Owl (who still visits his underground lair in an abandoned subway tunnel, where his hovercraft and armored hero suit gather dust; Silk Specter (the daughter of the 1940's original); the embittered Comedian, who embarks on a second career doing government dirty work; and the regal, aloof Ozymandias, reputedly the world's smartest man and one of its richest, as well, having written a tell-all book and reaped the rewards of merchandising his former identity. As the story opens, the sinister Rorshach, an outcast, even among his fellow hero has-beens, and a suspected psychotic, investigates the Comedian's murder. From there, Moore's ingeniously conceived dark plot and complex, chilling characterizations coupled with famed illustrator Dave Gibbons' no-pen-stroke-wasted illustrations draw you into a can't-put-it-down encounter with a creative imagination way ahead of its time. Sometimes cynical, other times sympathetic, Moore's enigmatic commentary on the human condition has earned its high place in the pantheon of popular literature. He asks the question with which I began this review, and leaves us to comtemplate its implications.

So far, however, this is a book review. And I am among those who, having read the book first, rarely think the movie version compares well. But director Taylor's effort proved to be an admirable exception, despite some probably inevitable shortcomings. Visually, the film is startling and stunningly faithful to Gibbon's vision. Gibbon, in fact, was on hand to help Taylor and a small army of CG technicians recreate Moore's dark world and his masked characters with the kind of obsessive faithfulness to detail that was simply not available to film makers of previous generations. And the script writers managed to include in their screenplay much of the story's interwoven fabric, by deftly rearranging and carefully abbreviating lengthier flashbacks and dialogue taken from the book. Nevertheless, several of the book's more inventive devices are missing. The saddest omission is that of a parallel terror tale involving a doomed pirate that illuminates Moore's main narrative. (Ironically, its told in a comic book read by a bit character who haunts a local newstand.) Despite a number of missing elements, the movie is long by Hollywood standards (2 hrs, 43 min), but as I told my son on the way home in the car, I'd have sat through four hours to get more of the book on film.

That said, the film is faithful, at least in spirit, to the story original and, fanboy critic protestations notwithstanding, it delivers. It made me laugh, recoil in horror and relate in all the right places, and think about bigger things, as Moore intended. And it moved me to tears twice — something the book did not do. Taylor's excision of the "aliens" element at the end (can't say more without a spoiler alert) is, in my opinion, an improvement not a problem. Whether its a winner at the box office or not (early returns favor the former), it'll certainly collect my $26.95 for the deluxe two-disc boxed set when it comes out on DVD.

Bottomline? I suspect that Watchmen will narrowly miss the cut as great art when my son's son's kids look back. And its dark vision, violence and nudity (the movie is rated "R") will put some people off. Let me also make clear that I do not necessarily agree with Moore's cataclysmic vision of life on earth nor do I subscribe to the remedy the story's unlikely hero/villian ultimately implements for its troubles. (In the ironic final scene, Moore suggests his own ambivalence.) But the book and the film are an important window into the philosophical universe inhabited by this generation — a generation that has confronted, recoiled from and begun to accept its shadow side earlier than most, yet still believes that truth — even dark truth — is worth fighting for and a dying world of broken people is worth saving.