Rating: 2.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – For years, fans of Alan Moore [2] and Dave Gibbon’s masterful and influential “Watchmen [15]” have been waiting for a filmmaker willing to faithfully and slavishly adapt their favorite graphic novel. Well, we got what we wanted in Zack Snyder [16]’s frame-copying vision of this legendary book, but as someone once said - You should be careful what you ask for because you just might get it.
Snyder’s take on “Watchmen” is like a karaoke singer who hits most of the notes but doesn’t understand the lyrics to the song. The filmmaker has recreated a majority of the panels from his source material, but he’s compiled them in such a way that makes for a brutal, disjointed, misguided experience.
Read Brian Tallerico’s full review of “Watchmen” in our reviews section. [17] |
There are enough good ideas in the original that people unfamiliar with it and still refusing to read it may have something to talk about after seeing “Watchmen” but those elements that work are in spite of the people who made this film, not because of them. Except for a few strong performances (balanced out by a few awful ones) and the strength of the ideas at the core of “Watchmen,” the film is a complete disaster, one of the biggest disappointments of the last several years.
The opening credits to “Watchmen” arguably make up the most effective sequence in the film. Set to “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” Snyder introduces us to his alternate universe, one in which masked crusaders have come and gone and Richard Nixon is still President in 1985. The world is on the edge of nuclear armageddon as the U.S. and U.S.S.R. have their nuclear weapons pointed at each other, held back from launching them by the existence of a God-like figure named Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup [4]).
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[2] http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/news/alan-moore
[3] http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/news/alex-tse
[4] http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/news/billy-crudup
[5] http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/news/brian-tallerico
[6] http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/news/carla-gugino
[7] http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/news/dave-gibbons
[8] http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/news/david-hayter
[9] http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/news/hollywoodchicagodotcom-content
[10] http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/news/jackie-earle-haley
[11] http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/news/jeffrey-dean-morgan
[12] http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/news/malin-akerman
[13] http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/news/matthew-goode
[14] http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/news/patrick-wilson
[15] http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/news/watchmen
[16] http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/news/zack-snyder
[17] http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/reviews/7128/zack-snyder-turns-watchmen-into-loud-disjointed-brutal-mess