About a year ago, AJB introduced me to a graphic novel he said changed his life. I felt that way about Sandman. We attended Comic-Con that year. There was a palpable fervor regarding the news that Watchmen was being made into a film. I attended the panel and was one of the first (2000) people to see the trailer. I didn’t know much about the characters or the plot at the time, but I was excited because everyone else was excited and frankly, it looked awesome.

AJB gave me a copy of the graphic novel and I made it through a few chapters before the motion comic made it’s timely way into cyber-space. I’m a slow reader, so the animated version was more my speed. It was, after all, the same thing, frame by frame, only moving and narrated by an actor. It was lovely. Over the next year, I’d catch up as best I could or as time permitted. 12 chapters in all.

As I became increasingly invested in the story, I began to anticipate what I’d heard was a brilliant adaptation of the graphic novel. However, the release date was creeping closer and I was still a few chapters behind. I wanted to know how it ended! I had to know. I couldn’t be the only nerd at the midnight showing who didn’t know how it ended! I crammed the final episodes in before the show and was awestruck. So this is why nerds everywhere hail this as the greatest graphic novel of all time! Everything about it was perfect.

Joined by a full house at the Paseo 14, I sat and watched as a beloved graphic novel was ripped to shreds.

Let me step back a bit. What do comic book lovers want out of movie adaptations of their favorite stories? They want it all, and by gum, they deserve it all. Years of disappointments like X-Men 3, Spiderman 3, The Incredible Hulk (not the Ed Norton one), Transformers, Constantine, Dick Tracy, and countless others have left a bad taste in our mouths. Knowing that adapting a comic book into a film is no easy task, we’ve held our breath in expectation that someone, somewhere, would do it right. Zach Synder, the director of Watchmen, in his undying dedication to the original story, had everyone feeling confident that this could be it. This could be the one. We’d heard that it would out-dark The Dark Knight and would stay true to the 1985 time period. We cheered. Synder convinced us that this would be his love-letter to the Watchmen. Sadly, the promises and hype outweighed the final result.

If you don’t already know the story, it doesn’t matter. Snyder stays true to a great deal of it, but so much has been left out. Granted, 12 chapters of a graphic novel might mean 8 hours of movie (something’s gotta give) but what he gave up was too important. AJB summed it up best when he left the theater and said, “There was no poetry“. Poetry is exactly what makes The Watchmen great: the way it flows, the beating heart of colored images on paper, a story that rang true in 1985 and continues to be poignant 24 years later. How did Synder miss the boat entirely?

Let’s start with the music. For a story that mostly takes place in the 80′s, there was a great deal of 60′s music: Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix. It felt wedged in; the sort of choices one might make if they were trying too hard to make an emotional impact – as if some collage student copied a “songs for movies” list from the net. For example, “The Sound of Silence” during The Comedian’s funeral. What? Why? It’s the sort of song that draws longing and desperation, but at this point in the story, we don’t know The Comedian, and we’re not sad that he’s dead…we just want to know why. Most of the music felt like a joke: “Ride of the Valkyries” during the Vietnam sequence was a nod to Apocalypse Now and 99 Red Balloons was your typical nod to the 80′s, even if it was misplaced during Laurie and Dan’s dinner date. None of it fit and it felt forced down our throats. The music editor should be horse whipped for cutting songs off mid-point. Ever hear of a fade out?

I read a review that said Watchmen was “impeccably acted“. Which Watchmen were they watching? I have various complaints about Billy Crudup’s “Dr. Manhatan” as he missed the confusion and desperation of Manhattan’s internal struggle and his failing grasp on humanity. I have fewer complaints about Jackie Earle Haley’s “Rorschach”; who managed to convince me that he was a deranged vigilante who believed that compromise isn’t something you do, even in the face of Armageddon. However, Malin Akerman as “Silk Spectre II” was a whiny, little brat, who didn’t smoke, and didn’t come off as the articulate, but fucked up, lonely, and broken, daughter of an aging superstar super hero. Her performance was feeble – the caliber of acting one might find at local community theater. Her role as the vacuous sister in 27 Dresses was better suited to her abilities. Matthew Goode as “Veidt” missed the mark as a man who sees himself as the savior of humanity, but lets himself feel every death at his hand. I read another review that said if Goode is the smartest man in the world, then we’re really in trouble. I have to agree. Patrick Wilson as “Dan Driegberg” was a mild portrayal that failed to capture the loneliness and yearning of “Nite Owl II”, a man who hated his life and lived a life full of regret and nostalgia. Jeffrey Dean Morgan as “The Comedian” was on par with Haley’s competence as Rorschach, but lacking in conveyance that his character was a bona fide, card carrying asshole; the kind of man that could shoot a pregnant woman, mow down children in Vietnam, and rape Silk Spectre I, yet still find room in his heart to lament the dastardly deeds of Veidt.

Nope. Not a single one of them captured the essence of their characters and communicated the intricacies of The Watchmen. Where was the conflict? Where was the raw anger and the emotional WHY of the things they did? Where was the gut wrenching loneliness and torment?

Numerous imperative details were left from the script. Details small enough that to the idle fan, it won’t matter. Still, the small details form the bigger picture and molds the identity of the story, so why leave them out? Why shouldn’t Laurie smoke? Are you going to tell me that smoking is a worse habit than beating the shit out of someone? Laurie’s frustration with her life is avoided when Dr. Manhattan suggests she go out with Dan, rather than her doing so because she feels absolutely cooped up. The Keane Act is mentioned once. Veidt’s remaining servants: a dozen multi-ethnic scientists rather than 3 Asian lackeys. Nixon retreats to DefCon 1 instead of DefCon 2. The Owl ship comes off as a good place to bone in, but otherwise, The Enterprise gets more camera love in any given Star Trek movie. Furthermore, they must have blown their CG budget on set design and craft services. Veidt’s beloved pet, Bubastis, looked no more real than Snarf from The Thundercats. I could go on an on. I don’t understand. The constant changes (or Snyder-branding) serve no real purpose in omission or alteration.

These missing details were replaced with gratuitous sex and violence that were placed in the foreground. In an interview with Synder, he states that “…it’s the story about a group of retired super heroes, one of which gets murdered in retirement and the others come out of retirement to find out who’s doing that and why“. That’s only part of it. It’s about the state of the world in 1985, which strangely parallels the world we live in now. It’s about the end of the world and how these fucked up characters fit into it. It’s about finding your true self and shifting through the Grey areas of right and wrong. It’s no more about The Comedian’s death than than it is a political statement of the world during the Cold War era. It’s about those things, but it’s so much more. It’s this beautiful tapestry of color and warmth, the harsh realities of human nature, people finding each other in the haze, and how the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. It’s about those things and still, it’s so much more.

Alan Moore has said that The Watchmen is unfilmable. Sadly, I have to say he’s right. This is a fair attempt and there are indeed parts of it that pay off. However, it invariably falls short, missing the mark far too often. It comes off as a hodgepodge of 12 chapters crammed into one; supplemented with graphic sex, full frontal Manhattan, and ultra-violence that would make even Alex from A Clockwork Orange squirm. It’s an unnecessary detour from the original story that lacks vision, heart, and (as AJB said) poetry. Indeed, there are scenes taken directly from the frames of the graphic novel, which merely show us that Snyder knows how to cut and paste. It just doesn’t feel like The Watchmen.

In the end, this isn’t the one. There is so much wrong with it and not enough of the good stuff that it’s just so disappointing, to say the least. Granted, this was a challenge only the fool hearty would undertake. Zach Snyder is a fool who bit off more than he could chew, decimated a beloved graphic novel and churned it into a cheesy superhero whodunit. As if that weren’t enough, the ending is completely altered in such a way that it escapes the complexities of Dr. Manhattan – at the end, you just don’t feel sorry for him…and you should. In fact, you should feel sorry for everyone. In this case, I feel sorry for Zach Snyder, who took a once in a lifetime chance and shit on it.

For a far better adaptation of the film, stick to the motion comic or better yet, watch the Saturday Morning Watchmen: