3. Glass Fortress on Mars
Between the drama and the heroics, it’s the mark of a considered superhero film that there is also room for beauty. Doctor Manhattan’s travails on our third rock from the sun come to an abrupt end when he is confronted with (fraudulent) proof of his role in the death and debilitation of various of his old friends and colleagues. Unable to withstand the sudden burst of emotion, Manhattan departs for Mars, where he can be alone and conduct his experiments.
His construction of the floating glass palace epitomizes Manhattan’s detachment from mankind; that, even as the world falls under threat of nuclear war, he is more concerned with the fusing of sand into silicon, his own creation. Manhattan has, in other words, a literal God complex: unable to relate to our tiny, insignificant lives, he chooses to focus on geometry, physics, the fundamental laws of the universe that he can manipulate.
It takes Sally Jupiter to force Manhattan to reconnect with the miracle of humanity, but the sterile beauty of the red planet provides a welcome diversion from the fear and futility of human endeavor. Manhattan builds a castle in the air and Snyder, recreating Dave Gibbons‘ superlative artwork, manifests it. Man of Steel, eat your heart out.
2. S.Q.U.I.D. (not Squid)
As much as I love Alan Moore’s original story, there were some things that would just never work on film. Case and point: the giant, psychic squid that Veidt uses to stage an attack on New York. While in graphic novel form it makes for an interesting B-movie concept – the idea of mankind coming under threat from a creature beyond the stars – it’s believable that on-screen, such a development would have come across as cheap and pulpy, ludicrous even. As such, blasphemous though this may seem, David Hayter and Alexander Tse‘s screenplay is arguably an improvement in this regard.
While the squid’s creation required an elaborate and improbable backstory involving writers, artists, and the brain of a deceased psychic, the invention of S.Q.U.I.D., the Sub Quantum Unified Intrinsic Field Device, could be backgrounded within the current plot: we witness Manhattan’s help in assembling it as part of a program for free unlimited energy during Rorschach’s visit to his lab. In a film with enough digressions as is, this helps to focus the plot.
It also allows Veidt to pin the blame for the destruction on Doctor Manhattan, a preexisting character, as opposed to some nebulous alien threat. In the comic, Veidt might claim not to be a comic book villain, but his plan, as Moore writes it, is exactly that. The image of disparate New Yorkers clinging together as the blast hits is a redemptive one, validating Manhattan’s newfound belief in us as a species; the irony of his unwilling involvement in the incident pulls more weight, dramatically speaking, than a genetically-engineered sea monster ever did.
1. The Title Sequence
For all its political/social/historical undertones and general seriousness, Watchmen picks up after the murder of The Comedian with a title sequence that is, at the very least, a whole lot of fun. With its reinvention of famous events – Watchman (Watchwoman?) The Silhouette beats out an unlucky sailor with a lesbian take on the iconic V-J Day kiss – and insights into the lives of The Watchmen and Minutemen – such as The Comedian’s grassy knoll perpetration of JFK’s assassination – it sets up an alternate history for the film that is immediately recognizable and engagingly different.
A series of tableaux set to Bob Dylan‘s definitive civil rights anthem, “The Times They Are a-Changin'”, this opening sequence manages to display more inventiveness and originality in four and a half odd minutes than most superhero films manage in their whole run-time. It sets up the scope and ambition of Watchmen straight from the off, as well as the milieu. There’s also, if you’re looking carefully, a number of cute little comic book shout-outs, such as Nite Owl’s rescue of Thomas and Martha Wayne on their way out of the opera (no room for another rodent-obsessed hero in this continuity).
The title sequence encapsulates everything that Watchmen is about that, that Watchmen sought to emulate. While it may not have been fully successful, but this showed that Snyder was going to give it a damn good go.
In my opinion, for all its detractions, Watchmen is a minor miracle of filmmaking. It’s quality may dip below and very occasionally rise above its source material, but its sense of pageantry and character is flawless. If you haven’t seen the Director’s Cut, do so: at 186 minutes long, I think there’s a case to be made for it as the definitive superhero film.
What do you think of Watchmen? Was the film a triumph of the genre, or should the story only be enjoyed in a comfy chair with a nice mug of tea, as Alan Moore originally intended?  Sound off in the comments section or send them our way on Twitter.
Who is this “we”….I tend to strongly dislike Alan Moore…of course everyone dislikes him…but when he tries to deconstruct, he can create some very likable characters. like the Comedian, and to a lesser extent Rorschach. I bet Moore himself hated them..