20th Century Iconography

Rating: 9/10 (12 March 2009)

So, sitting in the theater there were a couple of guys behind me complaining about this movie. They had the same complaints as many commentators on this site. And before praising this wonderful adaption of a brilliant piece of pop literature, I have to admit that I absolutely sympathize with anybody who can't wrap his or her head around this film.
A few weeks ago I saw "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and while watching "Watchmen" I felt a certain kinship between these two films. Both stories depend on the willingness to accept a pretty far-out premise.
In the case of "Watchmen", which is ultimately a collage of 20th century American pop culture, the viewer is asked to confront the myths of superheroes as a jump-off point for a meditation on life and all it's physiological and psychological entanglements. Which is really something rather high-browish.
25 years ago, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons took (as Gibbons once stated) their love for superheroes to a human level. They saw the flaws in our actions as essential to our existence as our fortitude, which leaves the the reader or the audience with an array of questions to ponder.
From one Dylan song at the beginning to another one at the end, a visual firework and outfitted with a strong ensemble, director Zack Snyder takes a dense and very faithful adaption to those emotional levels that very few comic-adaptations are able to go to. Last years "The Dark Knight" widened the canvas of what a comic could be (something we nerds always knew), now "Watchmen" explodes it.
Back to the guys sitting behind me. One of them said that this would be the last comic-movie he would go see. Well, if there was never another comic-adaptation to be, this would be a perfect last addition.