'Watchmen' triumphs on silver screen

Toward the end of 1985, the world's Doomsday Clock reached 10 minutes to midnight, making the feared extinction of the human race, via the atomic bomb, more plausible than ever.

In the midst of an arms race and the Cold War, is the world inevitably doomed?

If you happen to be a masked hero, it's not.

The Watchmen, directed by Zach Snyder, tells the story of several powerless masked heroes, and a single one with powers, who stare down an advancing human expiration date and decide to push it into the future.

If the above sounds like a photocopy of every generic superhero movie Hollywood proclaims original, breathe easy. The Watchmen deviates from the usual hero formula.

The movie is heavily based on Alan Moore's 1987 cult-favorite graphic novel, The Watchmen, illustrated and lettered by Dave Gibbons.

In short, The Watchmen concerns the lives of heroes who, more or less, reflect an average human's life. It breaks away from the usual standard of a vigilante with all the power and luck of Superman, showing their problems, struggles and, sometimes, their destruction.

The opening credits punch the senses. Snyder gives a brief history lesson of the birth of the society of The Minutemen, the first group of masked vigilantes.

The muscled, usually nude, blue Dr. Manhattan, previously named Jon Osterman, is shown shaking hands with former President John F. Kennedy. Later, the Comedian, also known as Edward Blake, quietly assassinates JFK without detection. Silk Spectre, alias Sally Jupiter, is the pin-up girl painted on fighter planes.

As time yawns on, most of the original Minutemen either retire or get murdered. However, young citizens, inspired by the original vigilantes, decide to follow in their footsteps by donning a mask and fighting crime.

After a public outcry demeans the heroes, "Tricky Dick" Nixon, in the midst of his third presidential term, convinces Congress to pass the Keene Act, rendering the Watchmen's masked existence illegal.

The Watchmen's history mirrors the Minutemens', forcing the new heroes into retirement or serious concealment. That is, until the Comedian is thrown around his apartment like a rag doll and through his glass window to a blood-splattered death.

Rorschach, a hero who feels his mask is his true face, catches on to what he assumes to be a plot to kill the remaining Watchmen and destroy the world, leaving him and the rest of the characters to discover the masked murderer and attempt to pull the earth away from nuclear destruction.

Snyder, director and writer of 300, starts off the movie with the Comedian's death, grabbing the audience's attention like a good book's hook pulling in a reader.

With each limb broken, drop of blood shed and piece of glass shattered, Snyder took the time to pause the characters in motion for a miniscule moment in time, giving viewers a sense they're still looking at a comic book, frame to frame.

In general, Snyder stuck to the text, preserving the dialogue and plot whenever possible.

While the 160-minute film didn't include the side-comic "Tales of the Black Freighter," the explanations of Dr. Manhattan's powers or excerpts from "Under the Hood," their absence made sense in context. The intricately woven story line Moore wrote, volleying between characters and events, often simultaneously, would've been hard to relay on screen.

Obsessed fans, be forewarned: certain large events, including a part of the graphic novel's ending, were changed. However, what Snyder changed made sense and in the end, made the story easier to understand.

The well-scripted actors did a stunning job of capturing the characters' personalities and translating them onto the screen.

Billy Crudup (Almost Famous), playing Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan, relayed Jon's emotionally removed personality and double-timed vision of life.

Jeffrey (Denny) Dean Morgan, best known as the lovable character from Grey's Anatomy, made an impressive transformation to the belligerent, vulgar Edward Blake/The Comedian.

Due to the deafening cheers he received on the movie's opening night, it's fair to say Jackie Earle Haley (All the King's Men) brought the cynical, yet resilient, Walter Kovacs/Rorschach to life in all his inkblot-masked glory.

"'I'm not stuck in here with you," Rorschach growled, "You're stuck in here with me."

Thanks, Rorschach, the cheers in the audience said. We're glad to be here.e-mail: housesp@sbu.edu