Review for Watchmen

Introduction

The multiplex has trained me well. If I don’t see at least a couple new superhero comic book movies each year, I start to feel antsy. And I can’t recall now when it wasn’t thus. And 2024 has been a quiet year for what is now the mainstay of summer blockbusters. Marvel has been off the boil for quite some time now, while DC is on a kind of hiatus, as the franchise passes from the hands of Zack Snyder to James Gunn. Speaking of Zack Snyder, I realised that I had never really given his first superhero movie the attention it deserves. The DCEU movies he directed, Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and Justice League never really delivered on what they promised, although the director’s cut of Justice League did go some way to redeeming that particular movie. Before all that, there was another DC movie, Watchmen, adapted from the Alan Moore graphic novel. And while I’ve caught bits and pieces on TV, I’ve never really given the movie my full attention.


The problem is that it needs a lot of attention. There’s not just the theatrical cut, coming in at 2 hours and 42 minutes, but there is a director’s cut which passes the 3 hour mark, and an Ultimate Cut that’s pushing past 3 and a half hours. And all of them got separate Blu-ray releases, the first two of which are deleted. I don’t know which the best version is, and had I bought them when released, it would have set me back a fair amount of change. But at this point, 15 years down the line, I managed to pick up all three versions of Watchmen, the first two second hand, and the Ultimate in a bargain bucket, for less than the price of a new release title. Let’s try watching the Theatrical Version first, and this is so old now that it comes with a digital copy, on a disc.


In an alternate 1985, where the US won the Vietnam War, where Richard Nixon is still president, where costumed heroes were a thing for forty years, and where Dr Manhattan became the world’s first super-human following an atomic accident, the world teeters on the brink of nuclear war between the superpowers. When the Comedian is murdered, it falls to Rorschach to investigate, and bring the disbanded Watchmen back together. In the process, he uncovers a dark conspiracy...

The Disc

Watchmen gets a 2.40:1 widescreen transfer on this disc, with the choice between Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround English, and DD 5.1 Surround French, German, Italian, Spanish, and English Audio Descriptive, with subtitles in these languages and Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Portuguese and Swedish. With the feature film getting a disc all to itself, issues like compression aren’t a problem here. The image is clear and sharp, detail levels are excellent, and colours are consistent. The contrast is well balanced in a predominantly dark film, and the film’s aesthetic is enhanced by the colour grading. The audio is excellent too, nice and immersive, making the most of the action while keeping the dialogue clear, although you’ll have the nudge the volume up a tad more than usual. The film also befits from an eclectic pop music soundtrack.

The images in this review are taken from the Director’s Cut; The Theatrical Cut disc refused to spin up in my BD-ROM drive.

Extras

You get 3 discs in a BD Amaray case, two on a centrally hinged panel. The film gets its own disc, the extras are on a bonus disc, and the third disc is a DVD which holds a digital copy for transfer to iTunes and Windows, with a code on a paper insert. The discs boot to static menus, and the following extras are on the bonus disc.


Extras

Mechanics: Technologies of a Fantastic World (16:49)
The Phenomenon: The Comic That Changed Comics (28:48)
Real Superheroes: Real Vigilantes (26:19)
Desolation Row Music Video by My Chemical Romance (3:17)


Video Journals

The Minutemen (3:35)
Sets & Sensibility (3:57)
Dressing for Success (3:05)
The Ship Has Eyes (4:22)
Dave Gibbons (3:23)
Burn Baby Burn (2:14)
Shoot to Thrill (3:16)
Blue Monday (3:01)
Attention to Detail (2:55)
Girls Kick Ass (3:06)
Rorschach’s Mask (3:47)


Viral Video

NBS Nightly News (3:03)

Conclusion

Watchmen is Zack Snyder’s best superhero comic book movie adaptation, although given the alternatives, some might describe this as damning with faint praise. I did enjoy the Theatrical version of the film though. This is an instance where the strength of the film is its narrative. The story in Watchmen is engrossing and thought-provoking, and holds the attention for the runtime, which at 20 minutes shy of 3 hours could have the potential to numb butts and induce clock-watching. Not here though. This is definitely a film worth your time.


It has issues though. It feels like a film obsessed with bringing the comic book to life. I get the sense that it was made with an eye to recreating certain comic book panels in live action form, demanding that you press pause and print out a tableau to compare and contrast. It’s a bit of indulgence that can detract from the story. Also the characters can feel a little thin at times. It’s that sense that some films give; the great ones make you feel as if the characters have lives when they step off the screen, the lesser films make you feel as if the characters cease to exist when they exit a scene; Watchmen is one of the latter. They don’t have lives outside of the story.


As mentioned, the story is what makes Watchmen so appealing; a comic book murder mystery in a parallel world of masked vigilantes and fantastic powers. It’s only Doctor Manhattan that actually has powers in this story, the result of a nuclear accident. The rest of the protagonists are wholly human, flawed and damaged, who hide their identities behind masks, but whose only “superpowers” are the ability to deal out physical violence with wince-inducing ruthlessness.


It seems that Watchmen has unfortunately only become more relevant since its original release. Back in 2009, when this film was released, the Cold War era offered at best warm nostalgia, the idea of imminent nuclear Armageddon something of the distant past. But watching the film fifteen years later, it seems worryingly more appropriate. We live in a time of extremism, of populism, where we’re gaslit by our leaders as a matter of course, and where brutality and nastiness are considered virtues rather than fatal character flaws. Watchmen comes into its own when watched through contemporary eyes. The Director’s Cut is some 20 minutes longer than this, and hopefully that addresses some of the character weaknesses in the film. The Ultimate Cut is half an hour longer even than that, but that’s because it adds a story within a story rather than fleshing anything out even more. But those are matters for other reviews.