Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

Rating: 9/10 (8 April 2009)

And the fanboys whine like bitches. The "unfilmable" graphic novel, WATCHMEN - has been filmed! Cry the beloved comicbook and let slip the dogs of nihilism.
WATCHMEN is epic and sexy and bloody; sensual and visceral and brutal; more than a comicbook, more than a messianic cry of madness; flamboyant costumed heroes, a plot that shakes the world and Dr. Manhattan in full frontal ectoplasm.
WATCHMEN is a triumph! ...Unless you're a fanboy.
The Rorschach Test: One Fan's Classic is Another Fan's Bubastis.
And the writer of the graphic novel, Alan Moore (V FOR VENDETTA, 2005) has once again spat the dummy and insisted his name be removed from the WATCHMEN movie, leaving only mediocre artist, Dave Gibbons, credited as "co-creator." There's perfectionist - and there's bitchboy. Alan Moore is the latter.
Directed by Zack Snyder like the graphic novel panels are emblazoned on the insides of his eyelids, WATCHMEN the movie - like VENDETTA - is ardently true to the spirit of the source material and reverently recreates the world of an alternate 1985, where Nixon has been in office continually since the Viet Nam victory (!), where costumed heroes are part of the crimefighting landscape, where colors scream and morals bend and we hit the ground running in thigh-high boots that are not removed for mile-high sex.
The opening montage, showing how the world assimilated these heroes into its culture, is crafted with such care and creativity (with source music from Dylan to Hendrix), I shed a tear at watching the pages of Watchmen come alive. And this was only the opening!
Under the Hood: Battle not with Monsters, Lest ye become a Monster...
WATCHMEN (written by mad prophet bitchboy Alan Moore, drawn by Dave Gibbons, published in 1986 by DC Comics as a limited 12-issue series) is a "celebrated graphic novel" because the fantasy world it presents train-wrecks into our reality so closely it hurts our Gotham nerve.
BATMAN BEGINS (2005) portended this trend of superhero films being no longer the provenance of teens vicariously living out fantasies with towels tied around necks; THE DARK KNIGHT (2008) continued this journey; now WATCHMEN takes it beyond the Bubastis, raising the bar into dark adulthood, where every sin is a necessity, every moral an ambiguity.
None of the heroes have supernatural powers; except for the atomic anomaly, Dr. Manhattan (victim of an "intrinsic field chamber" accident and able to manipulate molecules at will, and perceive future time streams), they are all versions of Batman and Captain America, well-trained and well-educated athletes with a penchant for vigilantism.
And vigilantism - as in this real world - is only tolerated so long. Nixon outlaws "masks" (as costumed heroes come to be called) - after they help him win Viet Nam, mind you! - and we are thrust into this roaring, breathing work of art during the second generation of masks after they are disbanded.
When one of the Watchmen, the abrasive, cynical Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, love-child of Robert Downey Jnr. and Mickey Rourke) is killed mysteriously, the last Watchman on active duty, Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), goes on a solitary manhunt to find the killer.
He warns fellow ex-Watchman, Dan aka Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson), "An attack on one is an attack on all of us!" Rorschach is the nihilistic conscience of WATCHMEN, a sociopath with principles, wearing a mask that shifts its Rorschach ink-blot patterns continually. He considers this shifting palette his "true face" - mirroring the ineffable, morally relativistic face of the New York he holds no love for... "The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout 'Save us!'... and I'll whisper 'No.'"
As each Watchman entered the equation, I recognized them immediately - the last such perfect casting being X-MEN (2000). There was, of course, Rorschach's wondrous ever-changing mask; the worrisome dweeb with the weak Chevy Chase lips had to be Dan Dreiber aka Nite Owl II (the faux-Batman guy); the bumblebee hooker with the Pert hair and bad bangs must be Laurie aka Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman); the Bowie-thin Brit is Adrian Veidt aka Ozymandias (Matthew Goode) and lemme take a guess that the shimmering blue, hung, naked buff is Jon Osterman aka Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup).
And my own chiseled six-pack hardened with delight when I saw Ozymandias's exotic, mutated lynx, Bubastis! WATCHMEN is a wet dream waterfall.
The key to WATCHMEN, the grand concept that elevates it above the jungle of super-beings who bust bank-robbers and petty thieves (which are merely the outlying strands of a much larger sociological problem) is Ozymandias saying, "I fought only the symptoms, leaving the disease unchecked." Now, as Nixon and the Soviets edge toward nuclear war, Ozymandias, "the world's smartest man" with unlimited resources, takes it upon himself to attack the disease. To save humankind from itself.
Hero? Villain? Spandex-wearing looney? When Spock said "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few," he was regarded as noble because he was sacrificing himself. Ozymandias plots to destroy life as part of a bigger plot to save life. The Comedian's death was a small cog in this world-shaking coup. And the moral dilemma falls to the other Watchmen to either stop him, or stop the truth being told.
Though Dr. Manhattan is acclaimed as, "God exists - and he's American," Ozymandias's plan to kill millions to save billions is nothing short of godlike. ("...lest ye become a monster.") Superman saving kittens just wouldn't get it.
Thus the graphic novel's slogan: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes (Who is going to guard the guards themselves?), or simply, Who watches the Watchmen?
--Review by Poffy The Cucumber.