WatchmenRelease Date: 6 March 2009

Certificate:

18

Running time:162 min | 186 min (Director's Cut) | 215 min (Ultimate Cut)

Director: 23.02.18 Arturs Komarovs

Zack Snyder

Movie:

In alternate universe where super heroes exist, the murder of former super hero sends Rorschach to find out who is the murder that taking out the super heroes. But the bigger event takes place as the cold war between USA and USSR getting stronger, and the clocks start ticking. The only super hero who can save everyone is Dr. Manhattan, but it looks like he is not interested any more in humans lives

The movie sets in alternate universe in 1985 where super heroes exists, Nixon is the president and it is the middle of the cold war between USA and USSR. The movie is very dark and noir. You can feel how the surroundings is aggressive to you. The city of New York is dark and grim. It takes a lot of courage to film one of the most appreciated and epic graphic novel. You have to squeeze this enormous story into 2 hours and do not forget to put all the details into the movie to not to disappoint the fans. There are a lot of main characters in movie that have their own role and meaning but not in the movie. Zack Snyder tries to make everything the same as in comic book but with limited amount of time he puts parts that you can handle without and takes away some of the important scenes and events. Because of this, the characters are not so interesting. Also, interesting that most of main characters are based on the characters from Charlton comics. But that’s not the Zack Snyder’s achievement. As the most part of the movie. He transformed all these complex characters and grounded, realistic action into a gory movie with big amount of slow Mo.

The movie may not have all the events but it is still nice to look at. It does have some interesting scenes that have great camera work and good use of spec effects. For example, my favourite scene is the Comedian fall from the window and the fight scene before it. The fight happens in dark room and this immediately shows that movie will be noir and dark. As comedian were thrown into the window he breaks it with his back and pieces of glass are falling in his direction making the feeling that this character is tossed out of movie. But it has a lot of slow motion in it that I think is not necessary.

The soundtrack in movie is actually very good and sound effects are too. Movie has some popular songs and compositions like :"Desolation Row" by My Chemical Romance, "Desolation Row" and "All Along The Watchtower" by Bob Dylan, "The Sound of Silence" by Simon & Garfunkel. But my favourite is "The Times They Are a-Changin'" by Bob Dylan. It starts at opening scene that basically shows us everything that happened before the plot in movie. It really suits the scene and I think it is one of the greatest scenes in movie and it is made by Zac Snyder and not copied from graphic novel.

Movie also have good colour scheme. Especially in scenes with Dr Manhattan, because he is glowing with bright blue colour. So all the scenes with him needs to have some other colour around him like: orange or yellow. You can see it scene in Vietnam. Where behind Dr Manhattan is orange sky.

Cast consist of : Malin Akerman

Billy Crudup Billy Crudup,

Matthew Goode,

Jackie Earle Haley,

Jeffrey Dean Morgan,

Patrick Wilson,

Carla Gugino.

I very liked the Watchmen, but after reading the graphic novel I decided to re watch the movie and I realised that it isn’t so good as people thinks. I think that Zac Snyder doesn’t understand the material that he has. Movie has lost everything that made the original a masterpiece. The greatness of graphic novel was hero’s deprivation of mythical base. Turning them into psychos, sadists and lonely individuals that uses heroism as way of removal of their

inside problems. Novel did everything to show that characters are not heroes, at least what we thing heroes are. That was the whole point of the novel. The movie uses that information only in cosmetic way. Snyder shows heroes with sublimely and pathos. But the point of characters is absolutely different. Characters may look grimly but they are still superheroes in traditional understanding of this word. While Alan Moore was interested in getting out everything from graphic novels for the narrative, for interesting story. Zac Snyder was interested in getting out all that numbers from computer for cool fights in slow motion and spec effects.

As the separate movie it can be good but a bit long. If you compare it to the graphic novel, then it doesn’t worth watching as the most important part of story are missing.