Few directors are as controversial as Zack Snyder. There are those who believe the hyper-stylized 300 counts among the greatest comic book adaptations of all time while others are of the school of thought that Snyder should never again be let behind the camera (though in the case of Sucker Punch they may have a point). Critical opinion is mixed surrounding the recent Man of Steel and arguably even more so with 2009’s Watchmen, his adaptation of Alan Moore‘s acclaimed graphic novel (the only one to appear to appear on TIME Magazine’s list of the top 100 books).
Some consider it The Godfather of superhero films while others, Alan Moore included, would prefer to pretend it never happened. While it’s far from perfect – occasionally airless and overly rigid, too slavishly faithful to its source material – here are eight scenes from Watchmen the naysayers should be made to (re)watch.
8. A Comedian Dies in New York…
Snyder’s Watchmen gets off to a good start in its depiction of the brutal murder of retired “superhero”, The Comedian. Hulking and grizzled, Jeffrey Dean Morgan constitutes the film’s first pitch perfect piece of casting. The weary contempt with which he surveys the idiot box to the twisted humor he shows in accepting his own demise – “It’s all a joke” goes a long way to establishing the character at the end of his life, if anything more nihilistic, more vulnerable certainty, than his appearances in flashbacks show him to be.
Every blow laid against him by the masked intruder impacts percussively, fleshy thuds and gristly crunches, as his luxurious apartment is demolished and The Comedian himself is effectively deconstructed by his superior foe. Snyder’s judicious use of slow motion, often a bugbear for his critics, only adds to the sense of futility; by the time the aged killer is beaten into submission and hurled out the window to his death, we feel a degree of sympathy for The Comedian, this man we already do not like – a copy of Hustler and a loaded firearm lying on his coffee table are more or less a character statement – but are beginning to understand.
That the whole thing is accompanied by the elegant tones of Nat King Cole serves to underscore the brutality of this death, this murder, that sets Watchmen‘s whole plot in motion.
7. Rorschach’s Journal
Of course, without Rorschach’s investigation into the death of his former colleague, the defenestration of Eddie Blake (AKA The Comedian) may have been put down to a home invasion, a tragic but ultimately meaningless, opportunistic act of violence. Rorschach’s paranoid yet self-aware, distinctly noirish voiceover guides us into the world of Watchmen, the seedy underbelly of New York City where the one remaining active member of the eponymous superhero team now operates.
Like The Comedian, we may not like Rorschach – with his black and white moral code, his aggression against any who cross his path – but he demands our respect. In an increasingly murky world, Rorschach takes a stand. Jackie Earle Haley‘s gruff, though occasionally hysterical take on the character is arguably the most memorable component of the whole film, enough so that it’s hard to think of anyone else who could have pulled it off, especially from behind that mask.
It doesn’t hurt that, amidst his right-wing rantings, he gets the most iconic line of dialogue in the whole piece: “All the whores and politicians will look up and shout, ‘Save us’, and I’ll whisper, ‘No’.”
6. The Birth of Doctor Manhattan
Perhaps the most ambitious element of Alan Moore‘s story (and Snyder’s retelling of it) is Doctor Manhattan, the godlike figure who provides the Americans with their presumption of supremacy in the Cold War. From behind layers of CGI, Billy Crudup‘s implacably calm, modulated presence provides the basis for a character who, at the start of Watchmen, is starting to come adrift in the world of man, a world he no longer feels any attachment to. It’s difficult to focus on even the biggest human picture when the whole of time and space plays out before in all its splendor and minute detail.
The victim of an unforeseeable accident, Manhattan – named for the project that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II – started life as Jon Osterman, a nuclear physicist and son of a watchmaker. Trapped in the test chamber of an intrinsic field generator, Osterman is disintegrated before the horrified gaze of his girlfriend, Janey Slater, and best friend, Wally Weaver. However, having been removed from the physical realm, he returns in the form of Manhattan, a naked, blue, physically perfect being; his return, as depicted in both the comic and film, is suitably awe-inspiring.
Appearing full force in the middle of a crowded cafeteria, Manhattan’s eerie, floating presence, if not quite enough to inspire the religious terror of which Weaver later speaks, it does make for an impressive (re)introduction to the being formerly known as Osterman. Unlike The Hulk, however, Manhattan’s conspicuously not wearing pants. Like, ever.
5. Assault on the Prison
One of Watchmen‘s relatively few straightforward action sequences is Nite Owl and Silk Specter’s attempt to break Rorschach out of the state pen just so happens to coincide with a full-on riot (admittedly also triggered by Rorschach’s presence). As all hell breaks loose, the duo are forced to throw down with a whole cell block worth of cons in order to reach their target… who’s too busy dispatching diminutive mob bosses in the prison toilet to effect an immediate escape.
For all the political subtext and character-driven niceties, it’s strangely enjoyable to just watch two out-of-practice vigilantes laying the smack-down on a bunch of generic baddies. There’s not much by way of jeopardy – Owl and Specter clearly outmatch any opponent they come across – or particularly notable take-downs – it’s very much kick, punch, throw, repeat – but it’s nevertheless satisfying to watch Dan Dreiberg and Laurie Juspeczyk burn off their remaining sexual tension.
It’s a stylish if unsubstantial reminder that, after all the pontificating, Zack Snyder, the man behind 300, still knows how to display an ass-kicking to maximum effect.
4. “Do It!” (Rorschach Meets his End)
Our reserve of sympathy for the indomitable Rorscharch is brought to the fore when, in the film’s climactic moments, he appeals to Dr. Manhattan to end his life. Constitutionally unable to keep his knowledge of Adrian Veidt’s genocide secret, yet aware that the revelation would render millions of deaths worthless, the man once known as Walter Kovacs ultimately adheres to his mantra: “Never compromise, even in the face of Armageddon”.
His destruction at the seemingly omnipotent hands of Manhattan is arguably Watchmen‘s crowning tragedy: for all the innocents who have just been killed by Ozymandias’ device, the wide majority of them were faceless, unknown individuals. Rorscharch, meanwhile, is one man, one more body amidst the foundations, a human life amidst the statistics. The removal of his mask just serves to remind us that, under the vengeful persona Kovac has adopted, there is a human being of flesh and blood. A human being that the outwardly apathetic Manhattan atomizes.
JLH, is, as I’ve said before, the film’s most valuable player. His tearful defiance in this scene, not wanting to die but knowing he can’t go on, his guttural howl of anguish, reveals to us the trauma that lies at the heart of Rorschach, the humanity. The tragedy that befalls him is Shakespearean in stature and the dramatic highpoint of the whole film.
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.