Possibly the worst super hero film ever made

Rating: 2/10 (4 August 2009)

"The Watchmen" is a cover of Alan Moore's graphic novel from the 1980s. The story is set against an alternative time line in the United States where Richard Nixon is perennially re-elected, the United States wins the war in Vietnam, and the presence of super-heroes generates public controversy. The characters of the now long-forgotten Charlton Comics universe like the Blue Beetle (Night Owl) and the Question (Rorshach) among many others, are given new names and some extended play in Alan Moore's story.
The Watchmen's world is threatened by the nuclear terrors of the Cold War, and the main defense the United States has left is in the hands of super gladiators like the psychotic soldier of fortune, the Comedian, and the formerly human but now wholly reconstituted Dr. Manhattan, whose self-recreation through Hydrogen fusion makes him near God-like in essence. The streets of New York are guarded by a skeezy street executioner named Rorshach, who defies federal injunctions against vigilantes, and who is one of the more engaging characters in the story. The premise of the novel is pretty silly, and Alan Moore himself calls the work one of his early efforts to write the "last super hero story".
Zach Snyder is an ambitious young man, but ambition of the sort that makes movies out of graphic novels like "Watchmen" isn't necessarily the same as genius, which is about what it would take to put something as convoluted as "Watchmen" on the screen. The sub-narrative of the piece, the comic book within the comic book "Tales from the Black Freighter" is essential to "Watchmen", and without it, the storyline loses much of its satirical edge.
Worse yet, Snyder lacks all sense of the actual history and the bankruptcy of most mass culture that Moore satirizes so effectively in so much of his work. Nowhere is this clearer than in the ridiculous montage of establishing shots which Snyder created at the beginning of the film which are backed by an extended version of Bob Dylan's "The Times, they are a'changin'". As a film maker, Snyder seems obsessed and mystified by the violent excess in U.S. history, which is always a sign of someone who essentially has nothing new to say. Snyder attempts to make up for this shortcoming in his understanding by graphically depicting scenes of violence which are only alluded to in the storyline of Moore's novel itself. And it doesn't help, because, as Malcolm X once said, you can put kittens in the oven but that isn't going to turn them into biscuits.
Hence, what we've got here is three and a half hours of mediocre acting, people most of whom I'm sure are quite gifted in other settings leaping around in spandex costumes and delivering dialogue in a manner that makes the late Jack Webb look like Kenneth Branagh. Hell, as little as half an hour of this sort of thing can be exhausting, but it's funny if you know how, and William Dozier and Adam West proved that pretty conclusively 40 years ago with their farce "Batman". Unfortunately, the oh-so-serious Mr. Snyder chose to play it ultra-straight, and in that way lies disaster. Some comic books are better off staying comic books. In the words of Carlos Castaneda's fictional Yaqui Brujo Don Juan, why should a crow be anything but a crow?