Watchmen (2009)

Our Review

Zack Snyder films the unfilmable panel by panel, which turns out to be both the achievement and the indictment. The 2009 Watchmen is the most faithful comic adaptation of its decade and the least understanding of its source: every frame of the page reproduced (the smiley badge, the blood stained newsstand, the Veidt lair with its giant squid shaped hole) and none of the irony that held the graphic novel together.

The result is a gorgeous, violent, three hour mood board that mistakes loving the imagery for understanding it: Ozymandias’s plan plays as spectacle instead of indictment, Rorschach as hero instead of warning, and the soundtrack does more argument work than the script dares to. That said: Malin Akerman, the prison sequence scored to Hallelujah, the birth sequence, and the most discussed comic film of its year.

Watch the director’s cut, form your own argument about faithfulness, which is exactly the debate this film invented.

Our score: 6.5/10.