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After the revelation of “ The Dark Knight ,” here is “Watchmen,” another bold exercise in the liberation of the superhero movie. It’s a compelling visceral film — sound, images and characters combined into a decidedly odd visual experience that evokes the feel of a graphic novel. It seems charged from within by its power as a fable; we sense it’s not interested in a plot so much as with the dilemma of functioning in a world losing hope.

That world is America in 1985, with Richard Nixon in the White House and many other strange details, although this America occupies a parallel universe in which superheroes and masked warriors operate. The film confronts a paradox that was always there in comic books: The heroes are only human. They can be in only one place at a time (with a possible exception to be noted later). Although a superhero is able to handle one dangerous situation, the world has countless dangerous situations, and the super resources are stretched too thin. Faced with law enforcement anarchy, Nixon has outlawed superhero activity, quite possibly a reasonable action. Now the murder of the enigmatic vigilante the Comedian ( Jeffrey Dean Morgan ) has brought the Watchmen together again. Who might be the next to die?

Dr. Manhattan ( Billy Crudup ), the only one with superpowers in the literal sense, lives outside ordinary time and space, the forces of the universe seeming to coil beneath his skin. Ozymandias ( Matthew Goode ) is the world’s smartest man. The Nite Owl ( Patrick Wilson ) is a man isolated from life by his mastery of technology. Rorshach ( Jackie Earle Haley ) is a man who finds meaning in patterns that may only exist in his mind. And Silk Spectre II ( Malin Akerman ) lives with one of the most familiar human challenges, living up to her parents, in this case the original Silk Spectre ( Carla Gugino ). Dr. Manhattan is both her lover and a distant father figure living in a world of his own.

These characters are garbed in traditional comic book wardrobes — capes, boots, gloves, belts, masks, props, anything to make them one of a kind. Rorshach’s cloth mask, with its endlessly shifting inkblots, is one of the most intriguing superhero masks ever, always in constant motion, like a mood ring of the id. Dr. Manhattan is contained in a towering, muscular, naked blue body; he was affected by one of those obligatory secret experiments gone wild. Never mind the details; what matters is that he possibly exists at a quantum level, at which particles seem exempt from the usual limitations of space and time. If it seems unlikely that quantum materials could assemble into a tangible physical body, not to worry. Everything is made of quantum particles, after all. There’s a lot we don’t know about them, including how they constitute Dr. Manhattan, so the movie is vague about his precise reality. I was going to say Silk Spectre II has no complaints, but actually she does.

The mystery of the Comedian’s death seems associated with a plot to destroy the world. The first step in the plot may be to annihilate the Watchmen, who are All That Stand Between, etc. It is hard to see how anyone would benefit from the utter destruction of the planet, but remember that in 1985 there was a nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union that threatened exactly that. Remember “Better Dead Than Red”? There were indeed cold warriors who preferred to be dead rather than red, reminding me of David Merrick ’s statement, “It’s not enough for me to win. My enemies must lose.”

In a cosmic sense it doesn’t really matter who pushed the Comedian through the window. In a cosmic sense, nothing really matters, but best not meditate on that too much. The Watchmen and their special gifts are all the better able to see how powerless they really are, and although all but Dr. Manhattan are human and back the home team, their powers are not limitless. Dr. Manhattan, existing outside time and space, is understandably remote from the fate of our tiny planet, although perhaps he still harbors some old emotions.

Those kinds of quandaries engage all the Watchmen, and are presented in a film experience of often fearsome beauty. It might seem improbable to take seriously a naked blue man, complete with discreet genitalia, but Billy Crudup brings a solemn detachment to Dr. Manhattan that is curiously affecting. Does he remember how it felt to be human? No, but hum a few bars. ... Crudup does the voice and the body language, which is transformed by software into a figure of considerable presence.

“Watchmen” focuses on the contradiction shared by most superheroes: They cannot live ordinary lives but are fated to help mankind. That they do this with trademarked names and appliances goes back to their origins in Greece, where Zeus had his thunderbolts, Hades his three-headed dog, and Hermes his winged feet. Could Zeus run fast? Did Hermes have a dog? No.

That level of symbolism is coiling away beneath all superheroes. What appeals with Batman is his humanity; despite his skills, he is not supernormal. “Watchmen” brings surprising conviction to these characters as flawed and minor gods, with Dr. Manhattan possessing access to godhead on a plane that detaches him from our daily concerns — indeed, from days themselves. In the film’s most spectacular scene, he is exiled to Mars, and in utter isolation reimagines himself as a human, and conjures (or discovers? I’m not sure) an incredible city seemingly made of crystal and mathematical concepts. This is his equivalent to 40 days in the desert, and he returns as a savior.

The film is rich enough to be seen more than once. I plan to see it again, this time on IMAX, and will have more to say about it. I’m not sure I understood all the nuances and implications, but I am sure I had a powerful experience. It’s not as entertaining as “The Dark Knight,” but like the “Matrix” films, LOTR and “The Dark Knight,” it’s going to inspire fevered analysis. I don’t want to see it twice for that reason, however, but mostly just to have the experience again.

Ebert's blog entry on "Watchmen" and the quantum existence of Dr. Manhattan:

http://tinyurl.com/aby7cp

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Watchmen (2009)

Rated R for strong graphic violence, sexuality, nudity and language

162 minutes

Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan/Jon Osterman

Matthew Goode as Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias

Carla Gugino as Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectre

Malin Akerman as Laurie Jupiter/Silk Spectre II

Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach

Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Edward Blake/Comedian

Patrick Wilson as Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl

Matt Frewer as Moloch the Mystic

Gary Houston as John McLaughlin

Directed by

• Zack Snyder
• David Hayter

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In a version of 1985 where superheroes exist, the murder of a colleague sends active vigilante Rorschach on the trail of a conspiracy that will change the course of history. In a version of 1985 where superheroes exist, the murder of a colleague sends active vigilante Rorschach on the trail of a conspiracy that will change the course of history. In a version of 1985 where superheroes exist, the murder of a colleague sends active vigilante Rorschach on the trail of a conspiracy that will change the course of history.

• Zack Snyder
• Dave Gibbons
• David Hayter
• Jackie Earle Haley
• Patrick Wilson
• Carla Gugino
• 1.5K User reviews
• 353 Critic reviews
• 56 Metascore
• 12 wins & 24 nominations

• Dan Dreiberg …

• Sally Jupiter …

• Laurie Jupiter …

• Dr. Manhattan …

• Adrian Veidt …

• Edward Blake …

• Hollis Mason

• Janey Slater

• Wally Weaver

• John McLaughlin

• Pat Buchanan
• (as James Micheal Connor)
• Eleanor Clift

• Richard Nixon

• Detective Fine

• Detective Gallagher
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Jackie Earle Haley was the only one of the main cast who was already familiar with the graphic novel. He actively campaigned for the part of Rorschach.
• Goofs (at around 1h 8 mins) Doctor Manhattan describes a "circulatory system" appearing on the grounds of a government base. However what is depicted is clearly the nervous system, as it features a brain and spinal cord, but no heart or lungs. (This error is repeated from the novel.)

Rorschach : I heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Life seems harsh, and cruel. Says he feels all alone in threatening world. Doctor says: "Treatment is simple. The great clown - Pagliacci - is in town. Go see him. That should pick you up." Man bursts into tears. "But doctor..." he says "I am Pagliacci." Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains.

• Crazy credits The opening credits themselves often cast shadows in the frame that correspond with the flashes from photographer's bulbs.
• Alternate versions In Thailand the genitals of Dr Manhattan are masked and where Rorschach attack with an ax the victim's head is heavily blurred.
• Connections Edited from Tales of the Black Freighter (2009)
• Soundtracks Unforgettable Written by Irving Gordon Performed by Nat 'King' Cole (as Nat King Cole) Courtesy of Capitol Records Under license from EMI Film & Television Music

User reviews 1.5K

• Jun 20, 2023
• How long is Watchmen? Powered by Alexa
• Is "Watchmen" based on a book?
• Does the film retain its 1985 setting?
• Why are there two Nite Owls and two Silk Spectres?
• March 6, 2009 (United States)
• United States
• Official Facebook
• Watchmen: The IMAX Experience
• Riverview Hospital, Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada
• Warner Bros.
• Paramount Pictures
• Legendary Entertainment
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $130,000,000 (estimated)
• $107,509,799
• $55,214,334
• Mar 8, 2009
• $185,382,813

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 42 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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The Movie Review: 'Watchmen'

I first read Alan Moore's seminal comic Watchmen when it was published in graphic-novel form in 1987, and it was a minor revelation. The audacity of Moore's grim story of costumed heroes plagued by psychosis and alcoholism and lust, teetering on the brink between justice-seeking and sadism, was exceeded only by the style and imagination with which he (and illustrator Dave Gibbons) told it: the meticulous, nine-panel format that lent structure to the madness, the Philip K. Dickian comic-within-a-comic read by a peripheral character, the lengthy excerpts from (fictional) autobiographies and journal articles scattered throughout. It's not without reason that Watchmen was long believed to be unfilmable.

Opinions will vary on whether self-announced "visionary" director Zack Snyder's $100 million-plus adaptation is proof or refutation of this belief, though count me among those who judge it the former. Watchmen is in some ways an impressive movie, but it is a drearily over-literal one, the sober, well-financed retelling of a hallucinatory fever dream.

Snyder's film opens sharply, tweaking the sequence of Moore's original. It's 1985, and Edward Blake (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), aging but still athlete-fit, watches television in his luxurious New York apartment. As a perfume ad set to Nat King Cole's "Unforgettable" comes on, a mysterious figure bursts in and begins taking Blake apart, hurling him into walls and furniture and, finally, through his wide plate glass window. It's a long way down to the street.

We soon learn that before his terminal fall Blake was a former crime-fighter named The Comedian, who'd more recently worked as a kind of paramilitary thug for the U.S. government. (With one notable exception, Moore's "heroes" are not super-powered.) To get us up to speed, Snyder offers a historical montage on the evolution of costumed crusaders from the 1940s on, the early glories and tragic endings: a Mothman who went cuckoo, a lesbian avenger murdered with her lover, the eventual outlawing of the mask-and-tights set. It's a nice sequence, although, in contrast to the sly appropriation of "Unforgettable," it's set ham-fistedly to "The Times They Are A'Changin." (From here on out, the film rarely misses a chance to have a musical cue tell us something we already know: "The Sounds of Silence" accompanies a funeral procession, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" plays as one character wrangles with the captains of global industry, "Flight of the Valkyries"--!--blares during a Vietnam battle scene.)

No one much bothers over the death of The Comedian, except for Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), a fellow vigilante and borderline sociopath who worries it may be the work of a "mask-killer" and sets himself the twin tasks of solving the crime and warning other former heroes of the threat: nice guy Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson), vinyl vixen Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman), corporate titan Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), and the omnipotent Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), a former physicist whom a nuclear accident rendered blue, bald, and (frequently) butt-naked.

These varied vigilantes bicker, bully, rehash the (mostly woeful) past, and, by fits, re-inspire one another to action. Snyder is loyal to his text to a fault, and such alterations as he dares--the tighter, more telegraphic opening, the replacement of a climax involving a giant, interdimensional psychic squid with something rather less goofy--are frequently improvements. But there are problems both with the tale, which was an awful lot more subversive 20 years ago than it is today, and the telling, which in contrast to Moore's radical experimentation is disappointingly staid and straightforward, imprisoned by its own legend.

In the 1980s, Watchmen was the definition of envelope-pushing, a bleak, violent subversion of a relatively innocent genre. But over the subsequent two decades the pop-cultural envelope has been stretched outward more or less continuously, by Tarantino and "24," by the dark inquiries of David Lynch and Neil LaBute and Todd Solondz, by the torture porn of Saw s and Hostel s, and on and on. The superhero genre in particular has been tweaked and twisted and turned inside-out in recent years: It's not merely The Dark Knight that has stolen some of Watchmen 's thunder, but to lesser degrees Hancock and The Incredibles and even Ang Lee's Hulk . At this point, we half-expect anyone in tights and cape to turn out to be a dangerous lunatic.

The absurdities and uglinesses of Moore's original work are also more evident because Snyder's film is incapable of the narrative gymnastics of the comic. Though he retains Moore's fractured chronology and frequent flashbacks--to The Comedian's attempted rape of Silk Spectre's superheroic mother, to the accident in which (apologies to "Arrested Development") Dr. Manhattan blue himself--he does not undertake the more literary ventures that gave the original such unexpected texture: the "Tale of the Black Freighter" mirror narrative, the "found" book excerpts, etc. As a result, Watchmen , which ought to highlight the strengths of its source material, too often reveals the weaknesses instead.

Snyder's cast runs the full spectrum from awful to awesome. Malin Akerman--who in 27 Dresses and the Farrelly remake of The Heartbreak Kid was cast in the role of beautiful woman who's nonetheless so irritating you desperately want her to go away--is no more tolerable in the (intended) sympathetic role of Silk Spectre. As Ozymandias, the "smartest man in the world," Matthew Goode has the wan whiff of puberty to him. Crudup, the most accomplished actor of the bunch, is largely wasted as Manhattan, his wry demeanor buried under so much CGI that the most memorable aspect of his portrayal is probably the glowing blue manhood with which Snyder equips him. Patrick Wilson is solid as paunchy sweetheart Nite Owl, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan is rather good as The "with heroes like you, who needs villains?" Comedian.

But the film's best performance by far is Jackie Earle Haley's Rorschach. For the bulk of the movie, his face hidden by a mask on which ink-blot-like shapes form and re-form, he rasps with a cold fury that would have Christian Bale's Dark Knight cowering in the Batcave lavatory. But it is when he is unmasked and incarcerated for a time that the character--and the film--come most fully to life. Though the diminutive Haley is about the size of one of Mickey Rourke's steroidal biceps, he may offer the most compelling portrait of violent retribution since the latter's turn in Sin City . One of Snyder's shrewdest alterations was to take perhaps the best line in the comic, which appears in a psychiatrist's report, and place it back in Rorschach's mouth, a warning to his fellow prison inmates, many of whom he put there and all of whom want him dead: "None of you understand. I'm not locked up in here with you. You're locked up in here with me."

Such appeals to adolescent testosterone take one only so far, however, and not nearly the length of Watchmen 's 163-minute running time. Bit by bit, the convoluted plotting, sensualized ultraviolence, excruciating musical choices (did I mention an extended sex scene set to Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"?), and line readings in which Malin Akerman wrestles with the concept of character like a bunny with an anaconda overwhelm everything in their path. By the time a giant ball of energy is dropping down on Times Square toward the film's conclusion you may worry that New Year's 2010 is already upon us. Grant Snyder this much, though: It took balls to have the last line in his opus spoken by a major character be "Nothing ends. Nothing ever ends."

This post originally appeared at TNR.com.

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Not a superhero movie; a dark, gory, complex morality tale.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Dark, complex messages about issues like morality,

Unlike traditional superhero films, which draw cle

Several intense martial arts fight scenes with clo

A few long, intimate close-up sex scenes include p

Plenty of swearing, including "goddamn," "f--k," "

Tie-in to vast quantities of related merchandise.

Some characters smoke; one has a fondness for ciga

Parents need to know that this non-animated adaptation of the beloved cult graphic novel isn't just another superhero story and is absolutely not for kids. Even the director has said that he purposely made the movie intensely gory to make a point about the consequences of violent behavior. Sex is paired with graphic…

Positive Messages

Dark, complex messages about issues like morality, humankind's basic nature, and the specter of mass global destruction. There's not much here that falls into clearly "right" or "wrong" categories; it's all muddled and ambiguous.

Positive Role Models

Unlike traditional superhero films, which draw clear lines between the evil villains and the valiant heroes, the characters here are all very complex antisuperheroes , with complicated motivations and sometimes questionable ends. They all believe they're doing the right thing, though to accomplish their goals they may have to break the law, beat up a few people, or worse; the climax presents a huge moral dilemma, as one character concocts a heinous plot aimed at achieving a noble aim -- but at an enormous cost.

Violence & Scariness

Several intense martial arts fight scenes with close-up, slo-mo shots of limbs breaking, faces being smashed into walls and furniture, and people being stabbed, punched, and kicked across the room. The film opens with a man being beaten severely and then thrown from a high rise window to his death. A woman is savagely beaten and almost raped. One character seems to relish carnage, whether it's on the battlefield or during an urban riot, while another shows no emotions as he methodically attacks people in inventive and painful ways, including pouring boiling oil on one attacker, sawing off someone's hands and electrocuting him, and taking a meat cleaver to a child rapist. A young child's corpse is eaten by dogs, and the ashes of the rest of her remains are shown in a furnace.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A few long, intimate close-up sex scenes include partial male and female nudity. The only character who's computer enhanced wears no clothing at all and walks around with his penis visible (it's blue, but it's definitely a penis). A prostitute propositions customers on the sidewalk, graphically flashing her breasts. Porn magazine Hustler is visible on a coffee table.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Plenty of swearing, including "goddamn," "f--k," "s--t," "prick," "bastard," and other choice words.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Tie-in to vast quantities of related merchandise. Almost nothing except for a fleeting glance of Fuji Film (remember the non-digital camera days?).

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Some characters smoke; one has a fondness for cigars. Several scenes feature bars and drinking. One woman seems to have a drinking problem and is rarely seen without a drink in her hand.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this non-animated adaptation of the beloved cult graphic novel isn't just another superhero story and is absolutely not for kids. Even the director has said that he purposely made the movie intensely gory to make a point about the consequences of violent behavior. Sex is paired with graphic violence in a near-rape scene, and characters act in ways that seem highly amoral. They also swear constantly (including "f--k" and "s--t"), smoke, and drink. There's plenty of nudity, with some very graphic sex scenes and a computer-enhanced character who walks around nude (sure, he's blue, but he still has a normal male anatomy). Both the novel and the movie examine complex issues of morality, humankind's basic nature, and the specter of nuclear holocaust. Not light stuff, and certainly not for anyone who expects a simple good vs. evil story. If your teens can tackle heavy philosophical questions, they might be mature enough to make sense of the film's complicated plot. Finally, the movie clocks in at 2 hours 41 minutes most of which are chock full of in-your-face violence, darkness, and peril. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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• Parents say (84)
• Kids say (107)

Based on 84 parent reviews

What's the Story?

In an alternate version of 1985 -- Richard Nixon is still president, and Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union have never been hotter -- a surprisingly fit senior citizen is thrown from a high rise to his death. The victim turns out to be the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a gun-toting retired crime fighter known for his keen bloodlust. His former colleagues come out of hiding to find his killer, led by Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), a cloaked avenger with a blotchy, shifty mask. Rorschach thinks the murderer is working down a list of crusaders, and he and the rest of the crew -- including Nite Owl ( Patrick Wilson ), Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), and Silk Sceptre II ( Malin Akerman ) -- are on the hook. Even Dr. Manhattan ( Billy Crudup ), the only one among them who's truly gifted with superpowers, may be in danger. Who's watching the Watchmen?

Is It Any Good?

Purists, take heart: This big-screen adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' revered graphic novel hews fairly closely to the written page, right down to the darkly beautiful world it renders. But that may be its biggest downfall. For no matter how respectful it is to the novel (save for a tweak here and there, including a simplification of the ending), WATCHMEN is curiously unenergetic. Much of it is told in flashback, and the plot moves from one back story to the next. Plus, the dialogue falls flat -- lines like "Here I am, spilling my guts to my archenemy" are best left on the page -- and scenes meant to be climactic are decidedly not. That's not to say that director Zack Snyder didn't try. In fact, he amps up the fight sequences so much that they're martial arts-movie-worthy and even gratuitously violent. That's actually a departure: Watchmen is famously cerebral -- the action isn't the point, and by focusing on the superheroes' battle prowess, the film undercuts the novel's attempt to humanize them.

The cast is uneven. As Sceptre II, Akerman is wanting. She struggles to plumb depths and pales in scenes that pair her with the deeply serious (and, not surprisingly, first-rate) Crudup. But even he is outshined by Haley, whose continued success is heartening (it's good to see him cement the comeback he achieved with Little Children ). Haley's Little Children co-star, Wilson, is also fantastic, perhaps because he, too, has opted for a palpably realistic performance, instead of the stylized one that Goode unfortunately adopts. All of that said, Watchmen deserves to be watched. The special effects are impressive, the cinematography admirable. Just don't expect the same thrill that fans of the novel must have experienced when they first cracked open the book.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the movie's portrayal of human nature. Are people good? Bad? All of the above?

If your teens have read the book , ask them how the movie is different -- and what impact having real people in the roles has on the story.

According to director Zack Snyder in an interview with Entertainment Weekly , "I wanted to make sure everyone understood: This is not a kid movie. Violence has consequences. And doing that with a PG-13 just dilutes that message." Do you agree? Does the violence in this movie have more impact because it's not illustrated?

Movie Details

• In theaters : March 6, 2009
• On DVD or streaming : November 14, 2023
• Cast : Billy Crudup , Malin Akerman , Patrick Wilson
• Director : Zack Snyder
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Warner Bros.
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Run time : 163 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : strong graphic violence, sexuality, nudity and language
• Last updated : April 5, 2024

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'Watchmen' Review: HBO's Take On The Iconic Comic Is Destined To Be Your New TV Obsession

How do you solve a problem like  Watchmen ? The graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons remains iconic, but it's already been the subject of a questionable film adaptation that attempted to copy the panels and splash pages shot for shot, angle for angle, color for color, and yet failed to genuinely encapsulate what made the book so special.

Rather than attempt to re-adapt the seemingly unadaptable,  Damon Lindelof has instead opted for something altogether different: a sequel series. This could've backfired, yet Lindelof and his team have done the impossible – they've captured the superhero deconstruction elements that stood out in Moore and Gibbons' work while also expanding on their world-building. The end result is destined to be one of the year's most compelling shows.

It's been nearly 35 years since Adrian Veidt, also known as Ozymandius ( and  the World's Smartest Man), dropped a gargantuan "alien" squid onto Manhattan, killing millions and bringing about world peace in the process. Welcome to 2019 – a 2019 different than our own, yet eerily familiar. Smartphones and the Internet are unheard of, Robert Redford has been President of the United States for the last 30 years, guns are on lockdown, and superheroes are outlawed. But that doesn't mean the streets are free of masked crusaders.

In this world, it's the law enforcement that dons masks and costumes. Uniformed patrol cops cover their faces in bright yellow masks while detectives adopt full-blown superhero-like personas. Three years ago, a white supremacist group known as The Seventh Kalvary – a group fond of wearing masks that emulate the long-dead vigilante Rorschach –  staged a coordinated attack dubbed the White Night. The masked right-wing group descended upon 40 different police households in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with deadly results. The action leads to a full-blown resignation from almost all the surviving cops in Tulsa, and left a law enforcement vacuum.

The solution: Oklahoma Senator Keane ( James Wolk ) passed a law that enabled all cops to wear masks and hide their identities. Now it's against the rules for anyone to even admit they're a cop – they hide in the shadow and adopt secret identities. On the surface, this  might make sense. But as one character in  Watchmen says, "You know how you can tell the difference between a masked cop and a vigilante? Me, neither." A masked cop living in secret might be safer, but they're also freer to bend the law.

Watchmen unpacks all of this information gradually, and, most impressive of all, organically. There's no sudden rush of exposition; no on-screen title cards to fill in the blanks. Instead, show creator and writer Damon Lindelof and his team have managed to overload  Watchmen with intense world-building that comes naturally. This is no easy feat – just look at the dozens upon dozens of movies that attempt the same thing, with terrible results. Even if the narrative and the mysteries  Watchmen has to offer up ended up disappointing, the world-building elements alone might be enough to knock the series into the stratosphere.

Thankfully, the plotting is just as intriguing. The Seventh Kalvary has been dormant, and thought dead, for the last three years – but now they're suddenly back, and they're killing again. A murder of a high ranking police official catches the attention of  Detective Angela Abar ( Regina King ), who has adopted the persona of Sister Night – an ass-kicker in a sleek nun-like outfit. Angela tells everyone around her that she's retired from law enforcement to open a bakery, but it's all a front. Whenever trouble arises, she stalks off to her Batcave-like bakery to slip into her costume.

The more Angela looks into her case, the more the world of  Watchmen opens up, introducing us to its characters and its ever-growing world. There's the oddball detective known a Looking Glass ( Tim Blake Nelson ), who wears a mirrored mask and has a knack for giving people the creeps. A strange 100-year-old man ( Louis Gossett Jr. ) in a wheelchair seems to be keeping plenty of secrets. A lordly upper-class figure ( Jeremy Irons ) stalks about a vast castle, aided by a pair of slave-like servants ( Tom Mison and  Sara Vickers ). A trillionaire ( Hong Chau ) is in the midst of buying up land for a project. And former superhero Silk Specter, aka Laurie Blake ( Jean Smart ), who has become an FBI agent specializing in catching masked vigilantes. If that seems like a lot to take in, just wait until you see the show itself – we're only scratching the surface here.

A series so packed with colorful characters and an extensive fictional universe might strike one as overwhelming, but  Watchmen  remains surprisingly breezy. The pacing of the series is impeccable, never rushing or cramming the details in, with the on-screen events bolstered by a moody, thumping, haunting score courtesy of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross .

King is the anchor of the series, and she brings a raw, ferocious energy to the part – when she breaks down in rage at one point, we can  feel the pain echoing in her hoarse cries. But the character is also playful to an extent, and it's a treat to watch King's character unpacking an unfolding, confusing mystery. The cast around King is equally stellar, with Don Johnson stealing many of his scenes as Angela's Chief and Smart bringing a wonderfully droll, sarcastic sense of humor to her been there-done that character.

Watchmen deals with weighty issues – police brutality and racism being at the forefront. But like the other elements of the series, the script attacks these issues in organic ways. There's no preachy messaging here, and indeed, the storyline makes for complex viewing. Angela and her fellow cops are going up against white supremacists – characters we're in no way meant to sympathize with. Yet at the same time, the notion of law enforcement hiding their identities is a terrifying one, rife with corrupt possibilities. There are no easy answers here, just difficult questions that burn their way into your brain. The biggest question is one that harkens back to the original graphic novel, and rings out truer than ever these days: "Who watches the watchmen?"

Watchmen Review

01 Jan 2013

162 minutes

Recently quizzed on his expectations for the movie adaptation of his hallowed graphic novel Watchmen, Alan Moore — shaman, philosopher, citizen of Northampton and visionary comic-book auteur — was heard to sigh. “Do we need any more shitty films in this world?” he grumbled not-unreasonably. After all, a muddled V For Vendetta and the gigantic snafu that was The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen had led him to finally cut all ties (including financial) with the movie world. Let them do what they will, just don’t involve me. He concluded his diatribe with the simple remonstration that Watchmen, his masterwork, was “inherently unfilmable”.

Which is not exactly encouraging for a director attempting their dream project. But Zack Snyder, hot from his stylised-if-juvenile adaptation of Frank Miller’s 300, is a determined man. Even if Moore had turned his back, Snyder was one of the faithful, Watchmen his Bible, and would treat it with a care unprecedented in the annals of Hollywood screw-ups. Every sinew of directorial effort has been bent on proving the author wrong.

Equal parts celebration, parody and exotic dissembling of an entire industry, the novel is dizzy with storytelling devices: not just comic-strips, but biographical chapters, diaries, newspaper reports, poetry quotations, medical files and a warped, ultra-violent story-within-a-story called Tales Of The Black Freighter (sensibly siphoned off by Snyder into an accompanying animated DVD release). It was less the Citizen Kane of graphic novels than the Ulysses — a vortex of astonishing ideas that could take you years to fully compute. Stick that into two hours of family entertainment then, Zack…

In this gloomy, alternative Nixonian America, an outcast superhero has been tossed out of his apartment window. Still, The Comedian, former member of the disbanded Watchmen, has some ugly secrets. Rorschach, a paranoid sleuth whose ink-blot mask eerily ebbs and flows with his moods, can smell conspiracy, but his fellow ex-Watchmen are hard to convince. Ultra-brain Ozymandias is locked away in his ivory tower solving the energy crisis, Nite Owl and Silk Spectre are fretting over freakish pasts, while Dr. Manhattan — the only genuine superhero, having been blasted in a freak atomic accident — has become detached from human emotion, capable of knowing his future and travelling to Mars on a whim.

It’s a whodunnit, although what exactly has been done is hard to say. It’s an action movie heavy on dialogue, although the movie styles up the punch-ups into slow-mo montages slickly edited to effective if anomalous tunes — a Snyder predilection that can lean towards the wearily hip. It’s an origin story, or rather five origin stories flashbacking through time. It’s a bleak, rangy tale of a planet beset with disorder, a parable about power, and a superhero soap that shuttles between multiple story arcs that almost divides the film into comic-book cells.

Greater reputations than Snyder’s have wrestled with the beast to no avail. Terry Gilliam, no stranger to whirling structures and otherworldliness, couldn’t figure it out. Paul Greengrass, no stranger to political subtexts and propulsive action, was abandoned by a sceptical studio. Amid the mud-hurling of the recent court case, the script was accused of being an “unintelligible piece of shit”.

That Snyder has gotten a version to the screen at all is a triumph. He has found a way — although this is 160 minutes of a dense, geek-orientated blockbuster for grown-ups. Inevitably, but hardly catastrophically, it fails to truly capture the cascade of ideas and bracing cynicism of Moore’s writing. Yet there is a challenging, visually stunning and memorable movie here, moored halfway towards achieving the impossible.

It will also inevitably be judged from two angles: what it means for those that have read the comic-book, and those who will enter the cinema unequipped, say, with the history of the Minutemen, predecessors of the Watchmen, or the nature of Bubastis, Ozymandias’ genetically mutated lynx. Snyder nearly manages a film for both, but errs to the former. While necessarily filleting down the vast story to something palatable for human bladders, he is slavish to the original text. In his desire to encompass the novel’s strands, storylines and their payoffs are short-changed, leaving the film emotionally subdued, more an intellectual mystery than natural thriller.

And there is no compromising for the junior dollar: arms are snapped, heads hatcheted, and Viet-Cong splattered like flies by Dr. Manhattan, while Silk Spectre keeps her kinky boots on during mid-flight coitus. The entire atmosphere, dunking the cleaner lines of the novel into a pungently vivid, rain-sloshed superhero noir, lacquered in blood stains and midnight shadows, is superbly realised, a true world-unto-itself far more stimulating than Iron Man’s Windowlened sparkle or even The Dark Knight’s shimmering, Michael Mann-ish nightscapes.

In boldly keeping the book’s (then contemporary) 1985 setting fraught with Cold War paranoia — the plot teeters on the brink of nuclear war — the film becomes a less urgent period-piece. The political spine is now cute, as America taunts the Soviets as it has Dr. Manhattan as the ultimate deterrent. A hairless blue man with it all hanging out, he comes care of a mo-capped Billy Crudup that’s about 70 per cent successful — much better in close-up than the distracting mid-shots dominated by his blurry-blue CG cock.

Of all the Watchmen, it is Rorschach and Nite Owl who are most successful. Jackie Earle Haley finds the leery, psychopathic heartbeart of the faceless Bogart, and you half-wish Snyder might have stuck with Rorschach as protagonist rather than spreading the net so wide. No doubt the purists would have wailed. Patrick Wilson, too, is just right as the tortured Owl, a hero bereft in his own identity. It is Mathew Goode as oddball Ozymandias, and Malin Ackerman as Silk Spectre who botch line-readings, ill-at-ease in latex that is part suit and part joke.

Which should tell you Snyder has caught the novel’s provocative mindset. Fundamentally, Moore was asking how a universe of costumed crime fighters might actually work. A quest borrowed by Nolan for his Batman rethink. Here, though, there is dark satire: Batman (now Nite Owl) can’t get it up, impotent without his suit on; Wonder Woman (now Silk Spectre) carries the mountain of her mother’s guilt (a previous Silk Spectre marooned in old age); Superman (now Dr. Manhattan) has taken on the unreachable guise of a god. Best of all, there is Philip Marlowe (now Rorschach), with his do-or-die morality and Taxi Driver voiceover, the most hideously human of the bunch. Holed up in the clink, the inmates try to dispose of the despised crime-fighter. Unmasked and dead-eyed, Earle Haley turns to his foe and, shortly before dousing him in boiling chip fat, chillingly delivers Moore’s deathly magic: “None of you understand. I’m not locked up in here with you. You’re locked up in here with… ME!” And he’s the hero.

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Scott Thill

Review: <cite>Watchmen</cite> Film Straddles Line Between Loyalty, Heresy

One could call bringing Watchmen to the big screen a thankless job. In finally adapting the greatest comic ever written, director Zack Snyder has triumphed under pressure where true visionaries like Darren Aronofsky and Terry Gilliam have failed. He has successfully turned Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' brilliant comics mini-series into a must-see movie for every Watchmen fanboy in the land.

See also: Watchmen Newbies Review

If only it were that simple.

As a devoted fan of the comic and its writer, it is hard for me to call Watchmen a great film. Caught between its loyalty to the source material and a desire to carve out its own legend, the R-rated epic is a bloody mess with its still-beating heart in the right place. But its head isn't in the game, unless that game is all about marketing blitzes, product tie-ins and raking in Dumpsters full of cash. If those are the stakes, then it's game over: Snyder has locked down the championship win.

Turning Watchmen into a fan-pleasing film was undeniably a daunting task. It could be argued that no one could make a movie that would live up to the comics' dense, metafictional, intertextual triumph, which effectively deconstructed the superhero genre through its tapestry of flawed characters and bold political themes.

( Spoiler alert: Details, plots points and arcane comic nerdfest ahead.)

Films are simply too small to do justice to Moore's detailed world of costumed crime-fighters, social unrest and Cold War paranoia. Characters like Dr. Manhattan (played by Billy Crudup , pictured), a blue superhuman who manipulates time and space at will, defy cinematic treatment.

When it comes to fan reaction, Watchmen disciples can be nurtured by loyalties to their sacred text, just as they can be angered by the slightest changes. Snyder's movie contains more than a few deviations from the beloved original, and the alterations and additions straitjacket the film's ostensible purpose -- to honor the comic -- and dumb it down for a modern movie-going audience that seems to have fallen in love with torture porn.

The first, and most obvious, change is the ending, which has been altered from a faked alien apocalypse to a faked Dr. Manhattan assault on Earth's power centers like New York, Moscow and so on. Fair enough: After the attacks of 9/11, it takes more than the devastation of New York to work up a 21st-century crowd. Even Watchmen 's author would probably concede this point. Moore said as much in a 2004 interview: "I've heard some people who were apparently in New York during 9/11 say that it felt like the last episode of Watchmen , that they were expecting some giant alien jellyfish to turn up in the middle of it all. Because it all felt staged somehow."

Much has been made of the movie's missing squid , but Snyder's changes in less spectacular scenes do more damage than the altered ending. Rorschach ( Jackie Earle Haley , pictured), the hard-edged detective with the shape-shifting mask, suffers the worst.

Jared Keller

Reece Rogers

Brian Barrett

Lauren Goode

His psychiatric evaluations with the doomed Dr. Malcolm Long fly by like lightning, and leave as much of a trace. Whereas Snyder gives The Comedian's ( Jeffrey Dean Morgan ) back story plenty of screen time, replicating the comic and its panels almost literally in many scenes, Rorschach's origin story is glossed over all too quickly or, worse, invented. Instead of having Rorschach handcuff 6-year-old Blair Roche's murderer to the scene of his crime before torching the place, a pivotal moment in the character's transition, Snyder has him dispatch the killer in a horrifically violent way. The show-off misses the point of Rorschach, and dehumanizes the character beyond what Moore exhibited in the comic.

Conversely, Snyder gives Rorschach too much humanity in other scenes. During his psych evaluation, he breaks into a half-smile or a sneer when painful memories arise. In the comics, the shrink notes that Rorschach's dispassionate stare creeps him out most: Without his mask, what Rorschach calls his "face," the vigilante is an emotionless void. That should have remained.

Instead, Rorschach is turned by the film's momentum into a monster, a move that somewhat negates the unjust bloodlust of The Comedian (pictured), which is explored earlier in the film. A paid political assassin who shoots a woman pregnant with his child, The Comedian emerges from Snyder's Watchmen an accidental human compared to Rorschach.

Further deviations ripple through the film, diluting its impact. Rorschach's abusive mother gets mere seconds of flashback, although perhaps that is because Snyder cast his own son Eli as a young Walter Kovacs. (Man, that could leave a mark.)

Ozymandias is transformed from the comics' adored paragon of humanity to the movie's defiant whistleblower. In an extraneous, added scene, captains of the fossil-fuel industry heckle Ozymandias about his hopes for an oil-free future, before a faked attempt on his life. (And it is not his secretary who takes a bullet for him in the movie, but famed auto executive Lee Iaccoca .)

Such minor tweaks have a tendency to annoy as much as tickle. A post-catastrophe scene featuring a plug-in vehicle is a nod to the comic's mention of an electrified future, but it narrows the scope of the graphic novel's sociopolitical nuclear dystopia, which is what inspired Ozymandias to fry Earth in the first place.

Same goes for the character in general, who is lamely photographed in front of Studio 54 with Keith Richards and Mick Jagger in the film's opening sequence. From that opener to the revelations of what he calls his "master stroke" of destruction, the film's Ozymandias (played by Matthew Goode , pictured) is, literally and metaphorically, too thin to pull off the comic's more statuesque vision of the scheming superhero.

Snyder peppers his film with cultural allusions just as Moore did his comic. Some are great and some are just too convenient. The McLaughlin Group's moronic roundtable on nuclear war is hilarous, as is Nixon's war room, which is directly lifted from Stanley Kubrick's immortal Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb . The insertion of Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are a-Changin'" and The Road Warrior are similarly fun, but instigate much easier Easter egg hunts than the ones Moore and Gibbons created.

It is obvious that Synder reveres the comic; if he didn't, Dr. Manhattan's blue penis wouldn't be visible for much of his time on screen. (That takes, literally, balls to pull off.) Manhattan himself is a triumph of CGI and compassion, easily the most sympathetic character of the bunch in the film, just as in the comic. While his alienation on Mars is shorter in Snyder's hands, it is still, as in the comic, a wonderful respite from the total mess of humanity.

But humanity is what Snyder's Watchmen needs. Moore had many ways to infuse his characters and story with it, from metafictional biography excerpts from Hollis Mason's Under the Hood to subnarratives like Tales From the Black Freighter (the pirate story that was utterly excised from the movie but will show up as a stand-alone DVD and possibly be spliced into a director's cut).

Snyder pushes, ironically enough, in the opposite direction in his R-rated movie, leaning heavily on gore and excess in ways that Moore and Gibbons did not. In the process, the film too easily becomes a horror spectacle rather than a social text, more Dawn of the Dead than Dr. Strangelove .

The Watchmen film is shot through with deviations that seem calculated to connect with an audience of diminished intelligence, whether those viewers have read the comic or not. Perhaps we are dumber than we were when Moore and Gibbons first created Watchmen , and deserve such a fate.

To be fair, Snyder has, with his ambitious version of Watchmen , laid waste to every previous film built upon Moore's work: From the rancid The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to the too-pretty V for Vendetta and the underwhelming From Hell , the comics writer should be able to sue Hollywood for dumbing down his brilliant stories. No matter how much venom he feels like spitting on Snyder's Watchmen , it would be fair to say that he probably shouldn't. Snyder did the best job that he could.

That does not make Snyder a visionary, as trumpeted by the movie's marketing , but rather the right guy in the right place at the right time. Where Aronofsky and Gilliam have failed, he has brought to the screen an adaptation that overreaches, often violently, as much as it honors its source material. For that, he should be congratulated.

Sure, Watchmen is two-and-a-half hours of homage that too often lapses into camp and whose main theses are lost in gory translation, and time likely will not treat the movie as well as it has the comic. But if it brings more people to Moore and Gibbons' original, then mission accomplished.

Wired: Mostly faithful adaptation, Nixonian time line, breathtaking action, Dr. Manhattan's junk

Tired: Bad musical additions (Nena?), not enough Rorschach, too many non- Watchmen Easter eggs

Read Underwire's movie ratings guide.

Photos courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

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‘Watchmen’ Review: A Dazzling Reinvention of a Landmark Comic

By Alan Sepinwall

Alan Sepinwall

Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen landed on comic book fans in the fall of 1986 with the force of a thunderbolt, if not that of a giant psychic interdimensional squid. (You kind of had to be there .) The series was, among other things, a murder mystery, an alternate history commenting on that particular era of Cold War pre-apocalyptic paranoia, an extremely R-rated superhero story, and, oh yeah, a ruthless deconstruction of superhero comic books. Across 12 issues, Moore and Gibbons dismantled, harshly examined, then garishly reassembled every structural and thematic device the medium had been using all the way back to the birth of Batman and Superman. What kind of person, the book asked, would put on colorful tights and a mask to go beat people up in public? How different would our world be if people with godlike powers existed? Watchmen interrogated everything, down to the way individual panels were traditionally laid out. It was a comic book for adults, not just because of the sex, the language, and the excessively graphic violence, but because of its themes and the way it questioned the very nature and purpose of stories like it.

Watchmen , along with Frank Miller’s Batman story The Dark Knight Returns , utterly transformed the image and aspirations of the comics industry. They birthed the perpetual cycle of “Zap! Bam! POW! Comics Aren’t Just For Kids Anymore!” headlines, and inspired other creators to tackle more mature content. But most of Watchmen ‘s creative descendants only skimmed along the surface of what made it so radical. They adopted the sex, the violence, and the sense of self-loathing about superheroes themselves, in a desperate cry to be taken seriously, but lacked Moore and Gibbons’ deeper ambitions. At the same time, Watchmen itself began to gather a reputation as unfilmable, with directors as varied as Terry Gilliam, Darren Aronofsky, and Paul Greengrass trying and failing to make a movie out of it. Eventually, Zack Snyder succeeded with his 2009 movie version. Snyder’s take has its moments (particularly an opening credits montage inserting superheroes into iconic American images across four decades), but in faithfully adapting the comic’s pulpy plot, it missed all the conceptual daring that was the important part. Characters who were meant to illustrate the absurd arrested development of superheroics were instead badasses having fights with bullet-time effects. It was like someone proving they could trace over a Picasso painting, without understanding what the original artist was doing with his strange rendering of the human anatomy.

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Even the Snyder film’s most ardent supporters admitted the source material would have been better served as a premium cable series, which would have room for both the story and its many weird flourishes, and for the larger questions the comic raised. A decade after Snyder, Watchmen has finally landed at the screen home where it probably always belonged, HBO, but in an unexpected fashion. Damon Lindelof , the inspired, divisive mind behind Lost and The Leftovers — two shows with a generous helping of Watchmen DNA already — is in charge. Rather than simply retell the comic story at greater length, Lindelof has taken an enormous swing. He’s sidestepped adaptation altogether and created a sequel set in the same universe as the comic, that is faithful to the events of that story but only features a few characters from it. The setting — present-day Tulsa, Oklahoma — is completely different. So is the show’s central theme of white supremacy.

Where Snyder’s focus on following the letter of the law with Watchmen caused him to utterly miss the spirit of the thing, Lindelof’s disruptive approach comes far closer than you might expect at first, given how many departures he’s taken from where the comic book left off. Not all of it works, but it’s a fascinating — and frequently thrilling — attempt to rebottle some of the same lightning that Moore and Gibbons unleashed back in the Eighties.

Lindelof’s take isn’t a deconstruction of superhero shows, nor of TV dramas in general, in the way that the comic picked apart other comics. Television has been deconstructing itself plenty in the post- Sopranos era, and even some comic book dramas have done it, whether through the psychedelic imagery of Legion or the self-aware goofiness of Legends of Tomorrow . But he’s successfully taken the comic’s larger sociological questions and extrapolated them out to the terrifying world we live in now. In Ronald Reagan’s America, for instance, the thing that seemed on the verge of destroying us was nuclear war, and much of the comic’s story was fueled by fear of everyone dying under a mushroom cloud. In Donald Trump’s America, the existential threat is white nationalist extremism — and, beyond that, more casual but pervasive forms of racism — which Lindelof turns into the Seventh Kalvary, a KKK-style movement whose members wear masks inspired by Watchmen vigilante Rorschach. The Kalvary’s terrorist actions in turn have forced police officers to assume costumed identities, like Regina King’s Tulsa cop Angela Abar, who patrols the streets in a fetish nun outfit, calling herself Sister Night.

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Cops dressing like superheroes is an inversion of a plot device from the comics, where masked vigilantes were legally banned in the Seventies. But it also feels unnervingly applicable to our world, where events like Botham Jean’s murder (and its violent aftermath) can create the impression — particularly in minority communities — that the police are already a team of untouchable vigilantes. That Angela herself is black is a complication the series examines early and often, with Lindelof again taking advantage of the fiery brilliance of King, who was briefly part of The Leftovers ensemble.

The story deftly toggles between our own history and the alternative one Moore and Gibbons crafted. We open decades before any event from the comic, with a horrifying depiction of the real-life 1921 massacre in the Greenwood section of Tulsa, which at the time was known, to the displeasure of local Klan members, as “Black Wall Street.” And then we land in a version of 2019 where Robert Redford has been president for a quarter century, and where Angela and her boss, Judd Crawford (Don Johnson) are at open war with the Seventh Kalvary. The series takes its time explaining how our past is connected to its present, particularly via an inscrutable man in a wheelchair played by Louis Gossett Jr. It’s also in no hurry to reveal how figures from the comic book — including Jean Smart as an older, hard-bitten version of Laurie Blake, who once fought crime as the scantily-clad Silk Spectre; and Jeremy Irons savoring every bit of scenery he can chew as an enigmatic exile who sure seems to be smartest man in the world Adrian “Ozymandias” Veidt — figure into this new story. There are parts that may be impenetrable to viewers who don’t know the original story (or even the movie’s slightly modified version of it), but the eventual explanations — and particularly the link from the Greenwood prologue to the present day — prove incredibly effective.

Along the way, Lindelof and his collaborators (including fellow Leftovers alum Nicole Kassell as lead director) continue to ask how the world would be different — both better and worse — if it had superheroes in it. The series as a whole isn’t a takedown of Peak TV, but there’s a great running gag involving show-within-the-show American Hero Story , a stylized anthology that’s Zack Snyder crossbred with Ryan Murphy. And through the use of this more cynical Laurie Blake — played with delightful and very necessary wry humor at all times by the great Jean Smart — the show nimbly continues the work of analyzing why someone would put on a mask to get what they want, whether they’re a would-be hero or a racist villain.

At times, Watchmen falls into some of the same traps that could make the first season of Leftovers so difficult to get through. The tone can be dour, the show’s visual palette frequently more muted than the material seems to demand. (The hypnotic synth score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is more up to the challenge than many of the photography choices are.) But then we’ll cut to whatever ridiculousness Jeremy Irons is up to, or alien squid will rain out of the sky (again, you kind of have to be there), and Watchmen will come to dazzling life in the same jaw-dropping manner in which Lindelof’s two previous series so often did. The sixth episode, a largely black-and-white trip back to New York in the late Thirties, unlocks the show’s secrets and themes so smartly and audaciously, it left me feeling the same visceral, disbelieving thrill I haven’t experienced since Kevin Garvey sang karaoke to escape The Leftovers ‘ afterlife, if not since we found out that Lost ‘s John Locke was in a wheelchair before the plane crash. It’s the best kind of magic trick, where you can’t stop wondering how they pulled it off, even as you keep applauding the end result.

Alan Moore has famously disavowed any filmed adaptations of his work, and anyone else working with Watchmen in particular. It’s hard to imagine him even watching this show, let alone approving of all the deviations between his work and Lindelof’s. But I’d like to imagine an alternate version of history where Moore hasn’t been burned too often in the past by others playing with his toys. In that timeline, he sits down to watch what Lindelof has done with his signature work. He’s baffled at first by how little resemblance it bares to what he and Gibbons once did. But gradually, he lets the tiniest of smiles peek out from under his signature Old Testament beard as he sees how much this Watchmen can feel like his Watchmen , even if they look nothing alike.

Watchmen debuts October 20th on HBO. I’ve seen six of the nine episodes.

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Watchmen review – the perfect superhero story for our tattered times

Set in an alternative America where white supremacists are on the rampage, this HBO adaptation of Alan Moore’s classic graphic novel is both thrilling and uncomfortably resonant

I f we get the heroes we deserve, I hope we get Rachel, the woman whose 45-second vox pop articulated one side of the Brexit debate with the eloquence so conspicuous by its absence among our semi-elected political leaders. Until then, we must settle for our broadcasting platforms delivering us superheroes that at least reflect our frayed and ragged times.

At one end of the quality scale there is Amazon’s trashy, schlocky The Boys – the tale of a band of superpowered humans who are effectively owned by a soulless corporation and who, when the cameras turn away after recording their latest heroic deeds, are as corrupt and venal as any mere mortal. The best you can hope for, and better than nothing, seems to be their and the programme’s creed. Pessimists like me find it quite bracing. Optimists – well, I don’t know how you manage even at the best of times, and if there is anything I can do to help you now please do let me know.

At the other end there is HBO’s new series Watchmen (Sky Atlantic), a nine-part remix of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ 1986 comic-book creations. It accepts what happened in those dozen issues – but not the 2009 film adaptation – as canonical, but sets its own story 30 years after those events. So we are in a recognisable but alternative United States, in which the intervention of the Watchmen – Ozymandias, Nite Owl, The Comedian, Dr Manhattan, Silk Spectre and Rorschach – have changed history as we know it (Vietnam is still the 51 st state of America after losing the war, for example), but the Watchmen themselves barely appear, though they are the subject of a popular TV show called American Hero Story, which is advertised everywhere. This is one of many confident flourishes with which showrunner Damon Lindelof demonstrates his joy in and mastery of his own material and its origins.

Watchmen opens in 1921 in Tulsa, during the attack on “Black Wall Street” by the Ku Klux Klan, which apparently orphans a young black boy and a baby girl. We then cut to 2019 – the present, if not our present – and find ourselves in a US in which police wear masks, tell no one what they do for a living and face a growing threat from a group of white supremacists known as the Seventh Cavalry, whose own masks ape that of original Watchmen protagonist Rorschach.

Whether their popularity and power is increasing despite or because of the progressive president – Robert Redford, in power since 1992 and instigator of “Redfordations” to compensate victims of the Tulsa massacre and their descendants – is one of many issues the show juggles as it replaces the original’s central concern about the cold war with the biggest contemporary questions: the resurgence of fascism, the refusal of racism to die and the endless erosion of trust between those who are supposed to protect and to serve and those who should be able to rely on them. “After three years of peace,” one officer notes as evidence of Seventh Cavalry activity piles up around them, “we convinced ourselves they were gone.” It is a line that cannot help but resonate at a time when international complacency is falling away in slabs and we are all looking at each other and wondering how much each face can be said to be a mask.

The main story revolves round Angela Abar (Regina King), bakery owner by day, hooded avenger Sister Night by … well, you get the idea. Don Johnson plays her friend and colleague Judd Crawford. They are both survivors of an attack on the police that killed many other friends and forced her to invent her alter ego for protection. His murder is the catalyst for war between the police and the nationalists, opening up a plot expansive enough to remind you that Lindelof was the prime mover behind Lost, but controlled enough – praise be – to assure you that his adaptation of Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers was the result of learning from experience, not a fluke.

It is a bravura series that interrogates power, storytelling and the former embedded in the latter. It has a (still unusually) diverse cast, writing team and cohort of directors in terms of both sex and class, and, even as it strays from Moore and Gibbons’ original content, it honours their underlying ambition: to deconstruct our legends and our myths, ask where they come from, what purpose they serve; and to make us think and think again about who tells us what, why – and why they are the ones who get to do so.

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• In 1986, Watchmen skewered the way we love superheroes. It’s still as relevant as ever.

Why we keep coming back to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen .

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Watchmen was never meant to be a regular superhero comic book, and it made its intentions clear right from the jump.

Average readers might not notice what makes Watchmen so different. But superhero comic book covers tend to be superheroes striking poses fighting evil or supervillains striking poses fighting good, with a certain strategy to their art: According to the 2017 annotated version of Watchmen , because of the way comic books are displayed in an overlapping pattern in comic book stores, the trick is to push titles toward the center and keep the imagery to the center and right of the cover page.

The covers for all 12 issues of Watchmen — released just over 30 years ago, from 1986 to 1987 — balk at this. The title, written in all caps, traces up vertically on the left, near the spine. No characters appear on the covers, nor are there any fight scenes or scintillating imagery to lure the reader in, a break in ranks for superhero comic books.

No gimmicks, no tricks — no tradition. Watchmen hinted that it wouldn’t be anything like the superhero comics status quo before a reader even started leafing through an issue.

What happens in the book bears this out. Writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons begin with what seems like an everyday superhero story: a murder mystery, a band of heroes coming together, an all-powerful blue-skinned being, and humanity’s existence hanging in the balance.

But slowly, Watchmen unfurls into something much darker and keener: a story that, while rife with ostentatious characters like mad genius Ozymandias and all-powerful Doctor Manhattan, is much more grounded in showing us what it’s like to be powerless.

We’ve heard over and over from other beloved comic book heroes that “with great power comes great responsibility.” Instead, Watchmen presents an uncomfortable scenario, a too-real reflection of how personal responsibility tends to evaporate in the presence of that great power.

Despite how much Watchmen bucked comic book trends at the time, it had the weight of one of the medium’s biggest names behind it. After a start in underground comics, writer Alan Moore created the acclaimed series Marvelman and V for Vendetta (both in 1982) before moving onto DC Comics. There, he was tasked with revitalizing Swamp Thing and creating the character comics fans have come to know as John Constantine. Even if you’re not familiar with those specific works, most of Moore’s creations (and others he would go on to write, like The Killing Joke ) would transcend comics and be adapted into television, movies, or inspire other comics and pieces of pop culture.

But Moore’s bonafides and DC Comics’ publishing power (as the home of Batman and Superman, among others) did not ensure Watchmen ’s success. The book was still an ambitious bet for what it was: a superhero story that went against the grain of superhero stories that people loved.

Watchmen turned out to be a commercial and critical success . Although sales figures for the period are warped by comic books sold at both newsstands and stores versus comic book stores alone ( Watchmen was the latter), and some distributors at the time did not record their sales figures, Watchmen ’s first issue was among the top five bestselling comic books upon its initial release, according to ComicChron ; the following 11 issues also placed within the top 20 of the comic book sales charts.

And in 1988, when the comics’ run had wrapped, Watchmen won a Hugo Award , a major accolade for science fiction and fantasy fiction, one of only nine graphic novels to ever win the award.

The series continues to be regularly reprinted in a collected edition, and it sells in large numbers. In 2008, ahead of a 2009 Watchmen film adaptation, DC printed 900,000 additional paperback copies of the novel, up from the 100,000 sold the year before, the New York Times reported . Both were huge numbers for the publisher and showed the interest that the series continued to command decades after its debut.

Thirty-three years after the first issue of Watchmen arrived in 1986, it remains clear that the bet is one that Moore, Gibbons, and DC made good on. There is no Western comic book or graphic novel more revered or more discussed than Watchmen . Watchmen is considered “ the moment comics books grew up ,” routinely makes lists like “ the comic books you need to read before you die,” and has been called the “ Citizen Kane of comics books.”

It’s also the only graphic novel to appear on Time’s list of the 100 best novels released since the publication began in 1923, with critic Lev Grossman writing in 2010, “Told with ruthless psychological realism, in frugal, overlapping plotlines and gorgeous, cinematic panels rich with repeating motifs, Watchmen is a heart-pounding, heartbreaking read and a watershed in the evolution of a young medium.”

In 2009, Watchmen was adapted into a movie, which was decidedly less praised than its comics counterpart. But starting Sunday, October 20, Watchmen is getting a new life as an HBO show — already hailed as one of the best television shows of the year — helmed by Damon Lindelof, the mastermind who gave us Lost and The Leftovers .

Accompanying the show is the reassurance that one doesn’t have to be familiar with the source material to enjoy it. Having seen five episodes, I can vouch for that. But there’s a reason Watchmen has become an immortal piece of pop culture (though it should be noted that Moore isn’t a fan of adaptations of his work).

Watchmen takes the simple idea of a superhero and forces us to examine why we’re so drawn to that fantasy. Moore and Gibbons close the distance between fiction and reality to unearth something a little more disturbing (or reassuring, depending on how you read it) about our place among, and obsession with, superheroes, villains, and justice. And it’s somewhere in that space that we can find a little more understanding about the world we live in.

Who watches the Watchmen?

The central theme of Watchmen is the question of “Who watches the Watchmen?” — a variant translation of the Roman poet and satirist Juvenal ’s “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” or “Who guards the guards themselves?”

Originally, Juvenal posed the question in the context of Roman women and wives. Juvenal was concerned about the purity of Roman women and questioned who would make sure everyone’s wives stayed pure and innocent if wives could just seduce whoever was watching them.

It takes on a little different context nowadays, as Juvenal’s sexist observation is instead applied to things like police or national security or anyone with any power.

Watchmen is primarily concerned with who keeps the people with the most power in check. And Moore and Gibbons, through their immersive saga, show that the most powerful will do everything they can to stay that way.

Watchmen takes place in a similar but alternate 1985 where Richard Nixon is still president and superheroes, except for ones employed by the government, are outlawed. That leaves some heroes, once adulated and admired, now on the outs. One of the government-regulated heroes, The Comedian, is found murdered, which spurs Rorschach, a law-breaking vigilante detective, to reconnect with his fellow former superheroes, because he believes there’s a plot to kill all ex-superheroes.

Here is a very abridged and condensed summary:

Over the series’ 12 issues, the intricate plot hangs on another ex-hero, Adrian Veidt a.k.a. Ozymandias, who sees a worldwide nuclear conflict brewing between the United States and Russia and other superpowers. His idea is that if the countries unite, they won’t blow each other apart, inspiring him to create a fake enemy to bring world peace.

Rorschach, after breaking a few fingers along the way, figures this out and is appalled. But by the time this plan has been fully revealed and partially executed (mass killings in New York have ensued), the other former heroes are then given the choice to go along with the coverup.

The “heroes,” including the almighty Doctor Manhattan (you know, the naked blue one), reluctantly go with Veidt’s plan. Despite their supposed heroism, they kept the secret to ensure a future where people, fearing an inter-dimensional war, trust their heroes more and become more obedient.

Rorschach is the only hero who doesn’t go along with the idea, which prompts Doctor Manhattan to kill him to ensure that no one ever finds out who was behind all the chaos.

Essentially, the most powerful and good people of this world are capable of the most dastardly things. Then why do we trust them? Where are our own personal responsibilities in this?

And do these heroes especially care about us the way we care about them? Absolutely not.

Like other superhero stories, Watchmen spins out allegories for our real-world ills. It isn’t difficult to trace a line from the themes in Watchmen to Moore’s abhorrence of Reaganite politics and policies — the arms race, the Cold War, the way we mythologize authority figures — at the time.

But even today, Watchmen ’s critiques feel relevant. It can read like a takedown of the superficial way we fantasize ideas of superheroes courtesy of Marvel’s billion dollar moviemaking machine. Or it could be about the rise of American authoritarianism and how xenophobia and racism are just as powerful as an interdimensional alien threat at spurring people to throw away their own rights.

Moore and Gibbons don’t simply explain the pitfalls of trusting superheroes and how power corrupts, but rather seek to show how power and its relationship with fear make superheroes or powerful people so alluring to you and me.

Watchmen is packed with deliberate intent but it isn’t always interpreted that way

One of my favorite things about Watchmen is the amount of detail that’s poured into each panel. For example, one of the recurring symbols in the book is the classic smiley face smeared with a trail of crimson blood, embedded into panels with masterful subtlety:

As the annotated version points out, Gibbons and Moore used the smiley face because of a research experiment they’d heard had been done on babies, in which babies will respond to the most basic depiction of a smiling face.

“A yellow circle with two black dots for eyes and a black smile drawn in was the simplest design that will elicit a response from a newborn baby,” the first annotation in the book reads , gleaned from an interview Moore did with George Khoury, the author of The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore .

Smearing blood on the face that is “the simplest design that will elicit a response from a newborn” was their way of really driving home the loss of innocence. Moore and Gibbons also wanted to draw a line between the idea of a newborn’s positive reaction to the smiley face and the teen and adult reaction to superheroes: The very basic idea of a superhero, a caped crusader, elicits a basic response of nostalgic reverence or awe from many of us.

What happens when that gets bloodied and corrupted?

With all the painstaking detail that Moore and Gibbons paid to the comic, it’s almost comedic that Moore and Gibbons’s work has been interpreted to mean the inverse of what they set out to do and is seen by some fans as a justification of heroism and vigilantism.

In 2015, headed into the fight to become the Republican presidential nominee, Senator Ted Cruz did a series of interviews about pop culture. One of the topics broached was his favorite comic book superheroes. One of his favorites , he said, was Watchmen ’s Rorschach.

Giving Cruz the benefit of the doubt, this list could easily have been the work of assistants and his PR firm to pick heroes that would make Cruz seem cool and well-read; superhero stalwarts like Iron Man and Spider-Man were also on the list. But Rorschach in Watchmen is a repugnant, egotistical nihilist, a hateful, paranoid vigilante who constantly puts himself above the law.

Moore has said Rorschach is an homage of sorts to highly regarded comics artist Steve Ditko and his right-wing ideologies, drawn from writer Ayn Rand’s polarizing theory of objectivism that Moore vehemently disagreed with.

“[Y]es, Steve Ditko did have a very right-wing agenda (which of course, he’s completely entitled to), but at the time, it was quite interesting, and that probably led to me portraying [ Watchmen character] Rorschach as an extremely right-wing character,” Moore said in a 2000 interview with Comic Book Artist magazine .

“I have to say I found Ayn Rand’s philosophy laughable,” Moore added. “It was a ‘white supremacist dreams of the master race,’ burnt in an early 20th century form. Her ideas didn’t really appeal to me, but they seemed to be the kind of ideas that people would espouse, people who might secretly believe themselves to be part of the elite and not part of the excluded majority. I would basically disagree with all of Ditko’s ideas, but he has to be given credit for expressing these political ideas.”

Given how Moore felt about Rand and Ditko and how he created Rorschach to be a vessel for these views, interpreting Rorschach to be a hero worth emulating becomes antithetical. Though you could argue that with how xenophobic and racist President Donald Trump turned out to be, maybe idolizing a Rorschach was, at the time, a clever ploy from Cruz to appeal to a like-minded, at-times-extremist voter base.

“The first time I read Watchmen I immediately embraced this uncompromising character who, when the going got tough, put his head down and refused to let the government tell him to stop doing the right thing,” Susana Polo, comics editor at Polygon, wrote in 2015 of Cruz’s affection for Rorschach, explaining how it’s easy to see the character as a hero.

“This early alliance with Rorschach’s point of view made later parts of the comic pretty disturbing for me, as Rorschach’s extraordinarily negative opinion of women and the poor and the LGBTQ community is made known, as his intrusive behavior towards his friends arises, as he terrorizes a reformed and terminally ill supervillain for taking unprescribed painkillers, and as he brutally kills animals for their owner’s crimes,” she added.

Just as off base was Zack Snyder’s 2009 cinematic interpretation of Watchmen , which received a bevy of mixed reviews . A recurring criticism within the negative reviews was that Snyder, who has a cinematic track record of eroticizing masculinity and violence and has been criticized for dabbling in racism in his movie 300 , kind of missed the point of all the violence and the critical eye against superheroism that Moore and Gibbons baked into their comic.

“[M]ore disturbing than the soulless copycat feel of the film’s narrative was the overwhelmingly fetishized violence of Snyder’s visual style,” Esquire’s Dom Nero wrote in a 2018 retrospective on the film. “The brutality of Watchmen is meant to be seen from a lens of empathy, not aggression.”

The way Cruz and Snyder think about Watchmen brings up the classic conflict of an author’s intent versus an audience’s interpretations. But dismissing their views as “wrong,” while tidier, isn’t nearly as fascinating as figuring out why their interpretations are so off from what Moore and Gibbons intended.

“For a long while, I’ve thought that what Moore and I had created was itself like a Rorschach blot: a sprawling, eccentric design of words and pictures that readers could interpret and add emphasis to in their own minds,” Gibbons wrote in his foreword to the 2017 annotated version of the graphic novel. “I’ve now come around to thinking that the twelve issues of Watchmen are actually less like a Rorschach test for the reader and more akin to ... a blizzard of words and pictures much like the seething broadcast information from which Ozymandias himself attempts to distill meaning.”

If Gibbons’s first hunch about how readers would interpret the work was correct, then it seems Cruz and Snyder and like-minded fans find something in Watchmen that stokes their fantasies about justice, violence, and law handed down — missing Moore and Gibbons’s signals about how this world isn’t built for objectivism.

In that same vein, there’s a sentiment that Damon Lindelof’s HBO series is going to help us forget the maligned 2009 adaption. It’s not a straight adaptation, but rather a sequel set in a 2019 version of the world that Moore and Gibbons built. HBO’s Watchmen gives comic book fans hope that Lindelof and HBO do Moore and Gibbons right, that this timeless story speaks to their souls in a way that other pieces of pop culture don’t.

No doubt, we’re all allowed to feel any which way about Watchmen. But the way we feel about Watchmen, any adaptation of Watchmen , and the rich world of comic books like it, are feelings sparked by our own personal values, perceived hypocrisies and injustices, and barometers of heroism. And the magic of this book is that it allows us to tap into those feelings by losing ourselves in its story.

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Movie Review: Watchmen (2009)

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• --> March 21, 2009

In Zack Snyder’s brilliant film version of Watchmen , it isn’t business as usual for a group of rag-tag costumed do-gooders living, working, and laying low in the alternate world of a Nixon-era 1985, a time when masked crime fighters have been outlawed. In much the same way as Chris Nolan did for Batman in the The Dark Knight , Snyder (who also directed 300 ) moves the crime fighters away from the cartoon landscape – the natural habitat of super heroes – and puts them into a neo-noirish, angst ridden world poised at the breaking point.

No comic book action film, however lofty, would be complete without all the requisite accouterments. Fans of Watchmen and similar work will be happy to know that Synder serves up pulse-pounding, intricately choreographed action sequences and astonishing visual and special effects. His set design is that of a world in trouble, deep in the shadows — part 80’s corporate greed, part 40’s film noir; a Bladerunner world reinvented.

Yet at the heart of the movie are such philosophical concerns as, is humanity worth saving? Is the price for peace too high if to achieve it, one must kill millions to save billions? Saving the world and watching over humanity is the job of the Watchmen — as Adrien Veidt says, “We can do so much more. We can save this world . . . with the right leadership.” But in the tradition of great drama/tragedy, there’s always a “rub”:

The Comedian: . . . It’s like you always say, we’re society’s only protection. Night Owl II: From what? The Comedian: You kidding me? From themselves.

It’s the ultimate irony. The big joke.

News anchors report that the United States and the Soviet Union are dancing perilously close to the edge of the abyss (nuclear war), which is represented symbolically by The Doomsday Clock, now set at 5 minutes to midnight. That same night, an intruder bursts into the home of former crime fighter The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and kills him. Does one thing have anything to do with the other? Investigating his death is the vigilante Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) who concludes that someone is out to discredit and kill off costumed superheroes. But why? Rorschach seeks out his old comrades to help him unravel the mystery surrounding the The Comedian’s murder — Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman), Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), Night Owl II (Patrick Wilson), and Adrien Veidt (Matthew Goode). What they discover together turns out to be a profound betrayal of all their beliefs.

Snyder establishes a tone that is appropriately dark, somber and brooding, though one could wish for a little light — and humor — to penetrate the veil and relieve some of the darkness as the has-been heroes dig for answers. Watchmen isn’t light comic action entertainment. It is heavy all the way around, from its tone, to the visuals, and through the thematic content.

Watchmen also presents a different take on super heroes — here we get to see them functioning in the real world. These are not squeaky clean individuals or other-worldly beings — they are ordinary people with extraordinary powers. They are susceptible to the gamut of human failings — alcoholism, abuse, insanity — and that vulnerability is what makes them so fascinating.

This immersion also helps the 162 minute running time pass effortlessly. Scenes may at first seem a little disjointed or confusing, but Synder’s technique to expand on the narrative through flashbacks to create the back story not only answer the questions that inevitably arise (and in a way is consistent with detective work) but also fleshes out the characters into complex, individuals rather than one-dimensional cartoon cut-outs. In particular, I applaud Synder’s imaginatively conceived expository title sequence which provides history as well as context.

The cast is undeniably attractive, but merely competent in the acting department with the exception of Jackie Earle Haley who shines in his role as the cynical, tortured, yet strangely likeable Rorschach. He’s a bit grubby without the mellifluous ink-blot mask, but he breathes life into a character who comes off as creepy and nihilistic, but in truth possesses great character and compassion for a society he claims he despises.

Watchmen is an exceptional achievement for Snyder who pushes beyond the boundaries of established comic book action films, surprising us with a film both real and thought-provoking, energetic yet measured, edgy yet profound — the thinking person’s comic action film.

I've been a fanatical movie buff since I was a little girl, thanks to my parents who encouraged my brother and I to watch anything and everything we wanted, even the stuff deemed inappropriate for minors. I work, write, and reside in San Francisco the city where I was born and bred.

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'Movie Review: Watchmen (2009)' have 2 comments

March 26, 2009 @ 6:54 am Cristine Alvero

I love this movie! And by the way great review, I really appreciate it!

Log in to Reply

August 1, 2009 @ 11:27 pm Michelle

I didn’t like this movie at all. It was distasteful. Just another movie trying to cover up poor acting and directing with sex and nudity. It should have been named “hang out with my wang out”. Some things are best left to our imagination. Another book ruined on film.

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Movie Review

It’s 1985.

But it’s a 1985 you’d be utterly unfamiliar with. Richard Nixon is serving his fifth term. Costumed vigilantes—superheroes, some call them—have been outlawed. And, from the window of a New York penthouse, a man plunges to his death.

So begins Watchmen , a movie adapted from the lauded graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. It took more than 20 years to push Watchmen to the screen: Many considered the book unadaptable. Moore—no fan of Hollywood—wanted it that way.

Watchmen , with its myriad subplots, characters, allusions and time shifts, certainly doesn’t lend itself to a popcorn muncher. Neither does it lend itself to written synopses. About the best I can do is say that at its most simplistic it’s a mystery story—one that Agatha Christie would want no part of.

The dead man turns out to be a guy called The Comedian, a costumed crime fighter who, because he works for Nixon’s government, was one of the few superheroes allowed to keep his gig. Then he’s thrown through a thick plate glass window after being beaten senseless—a cold-blooded killing without a punch line, only questions.

Rorschach, a rogue vigilante who takes his name from his ever-mutating mask of blotches, is determined to ferret out answers.

“Maybe someone’s picking off costumed heroes,” he growls to Dan Dreiberg, a one-time superhero who decided to retire his alter ego—Nite Owl—when the government made costumed crime fighting illegal. Nite Owl doubts Rorschach’s conspiracy theory at first, but he quickly realizes something’s up. Dr. Manhattan, the only superhero with actual superhuman powers, has exiled himself to Mars because he believes his strange abilities cause cancer in others. A gunman nearly kills Adrian Veidt, a wicked-smart businessman who once adventured under the name Ozymandias (and still markets his own line of action figures). And Rorschach gets framed for the murder of one-time villain Moloch the Mystic.

Positive Elements

Much of what was once considered revolutionary about the book Watchmen feels, well, a bit old now. These superheroes are (mostly) human, filled with very human frailty and failings. While Batman and Spider-Man may have issues, some Watchmen are just plain bad . A couple are downright pathological. Still, they harbor kernels of goodness inside their dark, dark shells: Rorschach’s uncompromising adherence to his own code of right and wrong. Dr. Manhattan’s evolving belief that humanity is a real miracle—”like turning air into gold.” Ozymandias’ desire to lead humanity into a new age of hope and peace.

Right and wrong, hope and peace, miracles. That’s all good, right?

Spiritual Elements

Philosopher Voltaire once said that “if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” So it’s fitting that, in the essentially godless world of Watchmen (most characters seem to believe that God is absent or, at best, too distant to care), we meet Dr. Manhattan.

Run-of-the-mill superheroes serve as lowercase-g gods—capricious beings who both protect and judge the populace, and whose failings harkens back to ancient mythology. To underline the connection, the film showcases a hero-filled dinner party, with the participants aping Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.”

But far above them all looms Dr. Manhattan, a one-time scientist named Jon Osterman who was radically transformed during a lab mishap. Now he’s big and blue (and generally naked) and has the ability to manipulate matter, see into the future and zap from place to place faster than Rorschach can say “hurm.”

When America’s industrial/military complex first unveiled Manhattan to the world, one of his friends allegedly said, “The superman exists, and he is American.” Turns out, the guy was misquoted.

“What I said was, ‘God exists and he’s American,'” he says.

Manhattan denies this: “I don’t think there is a god,” he says. “And if there is, I’m nothing like him.” But because his abilities are so far above those of the average human, Manhattan becomes a godlike avatar: When he’s sent by the U.S. government to fight in Vietnam, surrendering Viet Cong bow to him. People say things like, “Even Dr. Manhattan can’t be everywhere at once.” And Manhattan takes on a uniquely Old Testament-style aura at the end of the film, when humanity (mistakenly) thinks he’s killed millions of people. Apparently fearing more “divine” retribution, the world makes peace with itself and, when superhero Silk Spectre asks Nite Owl whether peace can possibly last, Nite Owl says, “As long as people think Jon’s watching us, we’ll be all right.” Manhattan even says he now loves life again—and that he’s going to a different galaxy to create some.

Much of the book, and subsequent film, seems to ruminate on naturalist William Paley’s famous 1802 “watchmaker” argument—that the universe is so complex it supposes a designer, or watchmaker. It’s interesting to note that Manhattan’s father was himself a watchmaker, teaching his son the trade. Manhattan, after his transformation, ponders a universe where “nothing is made—a clock without a craftsman.” Clocks and watches show up repeatedly. For instance, Manhattan sets his watch on top of a Bible. And the very name Watchmen takes on a suggestive tone when these ideas come to mind.

Characters occasionally quote from scripture. Rorschach muses over ancient Egyptian concepts of the afterlife.

Sexual Content

Dr. Manhattan spends most of the film in the big, blue buff, and audiences see him every which way: back, side and front. He sends nude duplicates of himself to pleasure girlfriend Silk Spectre—resulting in a bizarre foursome. (They’re interrupted during foreplay.)

Later, Silk Spectre becomes Nite Owl’s main squeeze, and the two engage in a graphic sex scene, complete with nudity (her breasts and both of their backsides), much movement and a climax—all while Leonard Cohen’s song “Hallelujah” plays in the background. Another physical tryst, where the two strip and writhe around on a couch, ends when Nite Owl finds himself to be impotent without first doing superhero-type work. Nite Owl also has a dream in which he and Silk Spectre, both nude, meet in the middle of a barren landscape and “strip” their nudity, revealing superhero outfits underneath. They then kiss before being obliterated by a nuclear explosion.

Dr. Manhattan, pre-transformation, has sex with his girlfriend; she later leaves him after he develops an interest—and passionately kisses—Silk Spectre (who’s 16 at the time).

Silk Spectre’s mom, Sally (who also was a costumed adventurer named Silk Spectre), is sexually assaulted by The Comedian. We’re asked to watch as he attacks her. (He unzips his pants during the assault. She’s in a state of partial undress.) We learn later that he and she also have a consensual encounter.

Elsewhere: Silk Spectre’s outfits are slinky and provocative. Rorschach’s mother was apparently a prostitute. Another prostitute flashes her breasts at a passing superhero. Audiences catch glimpses of pornographic magazines and movies. A naked man is seen frolicking during a party.

An old-school female superhero kisses another woman. …

Violent Content

The two are later found dead in bed together, the words “lesbian whores” scrawled in blood across the walls. A male superhero is a sadist. A villain is said to be a masochist who follows superheroes around, begging to be beaten.

That’s the tame stuff. Watchmen put the “graphic” in “graphic novel” when it was released piecemeal in 1986 and ’87. It’s as bloody a comic book as you’ll likely see, and it, as Slate reports, “helped kick off a decadent death spiral that would see adolescent violence peddled as adult content full of rape, murder and corpse-burning.”

But the book looks positively demure compared to the film’s butchery.

In the book, Rorschach dispatches a pedophile killer by chaining him inside his house and then burning it to the ground, with readers only seeing Rorschach walking slowly out the door. In the movie, Rorschach chains the pedophile up—then buries a meat cleaver in the evildoer’s skull. Repeatedly.

In the book, Dr. Manhattan blows up a criminal’s head, a cloud covering the carnage. In the movie, Manhattan blows up several criminals simultaneously: Blood coats bystanders; gore hangs from the ceiling.

“Nobody over 25 could take any joy from the savagery that is fleshed out onscreen, just as nobody under 18 should be allowed to witness it,” writes Anthony Lane in The New Yorker . “You want to see the attempted rape of a superwoman, her bright latex costume cast aside and her head banged against the baize of a pool table? The assault is there in Moore’s book, one panel of which homes in on the blood that leaps from her punched mouth, but the pool table is [film director Zack] Snyder’s own embroidery.”

When people get shot, we see skin separate like a burst balloon. When people have their arms broken, we see the bones stab through the flesh. Arms are cut off with buzz saws. Dogs fight over the leg bone of a murdered little girl—foot and shoe still attached. Dr. Manhattan has his body stripped into oblivion, layer by layer … twice. The Comedian shoots and kills a pregnant woman (he fathered the child) after the woman slices his face with a broken bottle. Rorschach, as a child, rips off someone’s ear with his teeth.

Superheroes punch, kick, shoot, stab, poison, immolate, harpoon and vaporize legions of people. And that’s not counting the 15 million folks who get obliterated by explosions at film’s end. Clearly, Watchmen shares far more with Saw than Spider-Man .

Crude or Profane Language

Twenty-plus uses of the f-word and at least a half-dozen s-words. God’s name is abused 25 or so times. (It’s paired with “d–n” more than a dozen times.) Jesus’ name is callously interjected at least another six. A wide variety of vulgarities and crudities—”b–ch,” “b–tard,” “h—” and so on—are heard throughout.

Drug and Alcohol Content

The Comedian smokes cigars and drinks to excess. Sally also appears to be a heavy drinker: She offers a margarita to her daughter in the early afternoon. Ozymandias poisons champagne, killing dozens of scientists. Nite Owl and Silk Spectre share some wine over dinner. Manhattan’s first girlfriend buys him a beer. Nite Owl drinks the stuff, too. Moloch, in an effort to treat cancer, takes medication made from apricot pits—which has been declared illegal.

Other Negative Elements

Silk Spectre throws up. Rorschach makes several height- and weight-related jokes. Rorschach’s mother tells him she wishes she had had an abortion. Most of the characters break the law by fighting crime in costume, and some assault law officers.

Watchmen , the book, is a brutal, bleak and bitter tour de force. Named by Time magazine as one of history’s 100 best novels, it explores philosophy, politics, theology and human nature. It culminates in a literally monstrous act of heroism: In order to “save the world,” one of the protagonists unleashes a made-up monster on the streets of New York—the mere appearance of which kills millions of people. Our “hero” feels bad about the loss of life—but he figures that their unknowing, unwilling sacrifice saved the human race. And, while Moore obliquely suggests that the man’s gone mad, he eventually leaves it up to the reader to decide: Did he do the right thing?

Watchmen , the movie, retains that cruel sense of despair. At times, its adherence to the source material feels almost slavish. Yet it’s a bit pastiche, too, layering in extra—gratuitous—sex, blood and gore just for raw, big screen shock value.

As a book, Watchmen is messy. As a movie, Watchmen is a mess. In fact, I’ll go so far as to call it dispirited, depressing schlock—both as a work of art and as a mode of message. Fanboys may be enthralled, but I’d imagine the uninitiated will walk away appalled, confused and even strangely bored. At the advance screening I attended, where folks generally stay glued to their seats, I saw a number of people leave the theater. Some never came back. This isn’t a movie as much as an assault.

“Who watches the Watchmen?” one graffiti artist paints in both the movie and book. If I had my druthers, I know what my answer would be:

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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The 10 Best TV Shows Critics Loved But Audiences Hated, Ranked

Fans were NOT loving She-Hulk.

One of the coolest things about television is that, like all art forms, it's entirely subjective. As such, different people might have different opinions on any given series. Most often, critics' and audiences' opinions on most television shows somewhat align, especially those that run for years—how else would they remain successful for multiple seasons? On a few noteworthy occasions, critics fall in love with a show that audiences just can't seem to get into.

Whether this divide between critical and public reception is the product of an online culture war, as was the case with shows like The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power , or more sincere, less mean-spirited criticism, like with the recent The Curse , it's always interesting to look at why critics and audiences disagree. Through this analysis, in multiple instances, one might find that the shows critics loved, and audiences hated are actually pretty solid. These are the best shows that critics embraced but audiences shunned , worthy efforts that still couldn't click with viewers at home.

10 'Riverdale' (2017 - 2023)

Created by roberto aguirre-sacasa.

Based on the iconic characters of Archie Comics and created by their chief creative officer, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa , Riverdale needs no introduction. Loved by just about as many people who deride it, it's perhaps one of the most divisive TV shows in recent television history. The story follows Archie, a former high school football player who becomes entangled in a series of dark mysteries with his gang.

The show has an admirable 81% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, which looks even better next to the 47% audience score. Riverdale definitely has a considerable and loyal fanbase who love the fun characters and the absurd situations they get themselves into. A guilty pleasure? Sure, but a pleasure nonetheless. However, most viewers felt that as the seasons kept coming, the plot kept getting sillier and more exaggerated. By the time its ending was near, Riverdale was using every single episode as an excuse to jump the shark a few times.

*Availability in US

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9 'Dear White People' (2017 - 2021)

Created by justin simien.

Dear White People is a high-concept comedy about a group of black students trying to navigate a predominantly white Ivy League college, often coming across various forms of discrimination. It's not exactly one of the best comedy shows of the 21st century , but its smart writing and lack of fear of making audiences uncomfortable kept it fresh throughout its four-season run.

A big reason why many fans fell out of love with the show was the bold decision to make season four a full-on musical . Those willing to get past that admittedly divisive shift will find plenty of things to love about Dear White People . Mixing a witty sense of humor with smart and poignant drama, it's a compelling portrayal of not just the experiences of Black people in America but of themes that all those who have ever felt out of place will empathize with.

Dear White People

8 'doctor who' (2023 - present), showrunner: russell t. davies.

Airing its first episode in 1963, the BBC icon Doctor Who is the longest-running sci-fi TV show currently on air and nothing less than a British institution. The story centers on an alien who travels through time and space with an array of companions. It has seen multiple significant changes throughout its run, including a hiatus between the end of the original show in 1989 and the beginning of the revival in 2005. In 2023, Russell T. Davies began a soft reboot of the series with a magnetic Ncuti Gatwa in the lead.

This new era of Doctor Who still hasn't even taken its first steps, but opinions have already come peeking around the corner. On the one hand, critics love this new version of the show thanks to Gatwa's dashing portrayal and Davies's interesting stylistic and tonal updates. On the other hand, fans appear less than impressed, criticizing the childish tone and dumbed-down writing that they think Davies is going for. Whatever the case, the future looks intriguing for this perennial series , which is still as goofy and fun as it was back in the day.

7 'She-Hulk: Attorney at Law' (2022)

Created by jessica gao.

Based on one of Marvel Comics' most iconic green characters, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is a legal comedy about Jennifer Walters, a successful lawyer and Bruce Banner's cousin. One day, after an accident, she acquires the powers of the Hulk and will have to learn to steer her life in a new direction with her newfound abilities.

The poor audience reception that She-Hulk got was mostly a product of the online culture war that surged around it shortly after its trailer dropped. While it's certainly no MCU masterpiece, it's a much more entertaining and clever show than many fans gave it credit for, something critics noticed. They praised Tatiana Maslany 's enchanting performance in the title role and the story's fresh, laid-back tone. Perhaps the franchise needs more She-Hulk so fans can finally warm up to her.

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law

Watch on Disney+

6 'The Witcher' (2019 - Present)

Created by lauren schmidt hissrich.

Controversy has surrounded Netflix's adaptation of The Witcher since its first season. Though it was mostly considered a solid fantasy series from the get-go, purists of the famous video games and Andrzej Sapkowski 's books, both of which the show is based on, disliked some of the changes the adaptation made. Nevertheless, the future looked bright for this show about the exploits of a solitary monster hunter.

It was The Witcher 's second season when things started to crumble . By the time the third season dropped, the show had lost the support of many fans, even those who hadn't even read the books or played the games. Henry Cavill 's departure from the lead role was the last nail in the coffin for many. In spite of the show's lackluster current state, The Witcher deserves more of the love it got when it first came out . It remains an incredibly fun experience for fans of the genre, and with better writing, it should be able to get back on track with ease.

The Witcher

5 'star trek: discovery' (2017 - 2024), created by bryan fuller and alex kurtzman.

The Star Trek franchise is one of the most prolific sci-fi IPs in the entirety of modern media, producing multiple TV shows that are usually an awful lot of fun. One of the most recent ones is Star Trek: Discovery , about a ship and its crew discovering new worlds and species as they try to understand the far reaches of the universe.

With a Tomatometer score of 85% , Discovery is one of the highest-rated Star Trek shows on Rotten Tomatoes . This stands in stark contrast to its sad 33% audience score, which stems from viewers claiming that the series consistently suffered from poor writing and later seasons that really dropped the ball. There is, however, a lot more to love about this show than the most negative viewers would have newcomers believe. Visually striking and surprisingly nuanced, it's pure Star Trek goodness for all those who like the franchise.

Star Trek: Discovery

4 'castlevania: nocturne' (2023 - present), created by clive bradley.

Based on the popular video games of the same title, the original Netflix show Castlevania took the world by storm in 2017 and cemented itself as one of the best adult animated series . There was a lot of weight on the shoulders of its spin-off, Castlevania: Nocturne , about a vampire hunter fighting to uphold his family's legacy during the French Revolution. At least as far as critics were concerned, the show delivered.

Critics, surprised by how layered, sexy, and stylishly violent Nocturne was, thought that it was a worthy successor to the original show. Fans disagreed. Many felt that the series failed to pay proper respect to the source material, while others were simply unimpressed by the writing and character development. Still, anyone who wouldn't call themselves a Castlevania purist is pretty much guaranteed to like Nocturne . Complex and beautifully animated, it's everything that a vampire-hunting adult animation should be.

Castlevania: Nocturne

Watch on Netflix

3 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power' (2022 - Present)

Created by patrick mccay and john d. payne.

Saying that there was much controversy surrounding The Rings of Power , a collection of stories set during the Second Age of J.R.R. Tolkien 's Middle-earth, would be the understatement of the century. Largely a product of the good ol' Internet culture war, the backlash against Amazon's fantasy epic reared its ugly head well before the show even dropped. Once it did, the divide between audiences and critics didn't take long to grow.

Those willing to look past the opinions of Internet trolls will find in Rings of Power lots of juicy talking points . While certainly far from a perfect show, it's an impressively grand and unique adaptation of Tolkien's work, which Middle-earth fans are sure to enjoy and appreciate. Many characters have interesting arcs, a few action set pieces are all-timers through and through, and the finale sets up a second season that's bound to be interesting at the very least.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

2 'the curse' (2023), created by nathan fielder and benny safdie.

One of the most wonderfully weird TV shows of recent years (and very proud of it, too), Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie 's The Curse follows a newlywed couple struggling to make their vision for eco-living a reality in a small New Mexico town. Starring Fielder, Safdie, and two-time Oscar winner Emma Stone at the top of her game, this is a thriller dramedy that's definitely not suited for all tastes.

The Curse 's challenging approach is pretty evident in how audiences responded to it. While critics loved its mixture of humor and cringe, viewers were mostly confused by it . Indeed, those looking for a traditionally simple and funny comedy might drop The Curse after its very first episode. However, those who want meatier character dynamics and themes than most modern comedies are able to offer will love this Showtime-A24 collaboration.

1 'Watchmen' (2019)

Created by damon lindelof.

Alan Moore 's Watchmen may very well be the most influential and acclaimed comic book series of all time. As such, fans were expecting a lot out of an HBO adaptation created by Damon Lindelof from Lost and The Leftovers . Set in an alternate history where masked vigilantes are treated like outlaws, the show follows a detective investigating the re-emergence of a dangerous terrorist group.

While paying loving homage to its source material, the Watchmen show is also unafraid—eager, even—to try fresh twists of its own . Most critics responded to this, while many viewers did not. The series has a 57% approval rating from Rotten Tomatoes audiences, many of whom disliked the new things that Lindelof tried with the narrative and characters. Frankly, the critics were the ones that got this one right. Watchmen is one of the best drama series in HBO's history , anchored by a thought-provoking story, gripping themes, and exceptional technical qualities . With eleven Emmy Awards under its belt, Watchmen is elite television from start to finish.

NEXT: TV Shows Critics Hated, But Audiences Loved

Screen Rant

"they're 12 issues of she-hulk stapled together": why watchmen's alan moore hates the term 'graphic novel'.

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"It Was So Easy to Have an Effect": Alan Moore Perfectly Explained Why Watchmen Permanently Changed Superhero Fiction

"back from death itself": immortan joe's nickname origin proves he's mad max's best villain, darth vader learned a vital sith ability just before return of the jedi.

• In a 2014 interview, Alan Moore criticized the term "graphic novel" as misleading, suggesting that he believes it allows comic fans, and the industry as a whole, an excuse not to " grow up ."
• Moore argued that trade paperback collections are usually neither " graphic, " nor are they " novels ," suggesting that this rebranding effort obscures the true nature of these collected editions.
• Watchmen creator views graphic novels as nothing more than "big expensive comics," reflecting his overall disdain for the comic book industry, which he left behind to pursue a career as a prose author.

To say that Alan Moore is one of the most important figures in the comic book industry wouldn't do justice to the influence that his stories continue to have on the medium – yet he has turned into one of the industry's fiercest critics. He has savaged comic book publishers at every possible turn , including with his critique of "graphic novels."

In an interview from Film4 Frightfest 2014 , Moore offered his take on graphic novels, noting that he considers the term to be a misnomer, one that intentionally misleads paying audiences into thinking they are getting something they are not.

Expressing opinions that reflect his famously anti-superhero sentiment , he opined on his assessment of the type of reader who refers to comics as graphic novels. While some of his points are reasonable, his perspective is a mixed bag of personal bias, unfiltered opinions, and disdain for a genre and industry that he left behind.

In a BBC interview, Watchmen creator Alan Moore explained why it was "so easy" for the book to cause a seismic shift in superhero storytelling.

Alan Moore's Takedown Of The Term "Graphic Novel"

He characterizes the name as misleading.

Moore explained his contempt for the notion that comics had "grown up," something often attributed to the writer himself. However, he disputes this perception of the overall industry.

Addressing the term "graphic novel," Alan Moore surmised that it was little more than part of the comic industry's coordinated attempt to rebrand for a more adult-oriented readership. This began in the 1980s, as a generation of comic fans matured and started to gravitate away from the medium. According to Moore, the term "" granted a license to a lot of people not to actually have to grow up ." As Moore noted:

[Graphic novel] was a term that I hated because they're not particularly graphic, and they're certainly not novels. Usually they're twelve issues of She-Hulk stapled together .

His comments on comic book publishers and readers aside, Moore's issue with the use of the word "novel" is particularly interesting, considering his own move into prose.

Further, Moore explained his contempt for the notion that comics had "grown up," something often attributed to the writer himself. However, he disputes this perception of the overall industry, opining:

They hadn't. There were about three or four halfway decent comics. And the rest of it was still the same juvenile rubbish that had been produced for the last forty or fifty years .

The author's disdain for 'juvenile' comics is one of his more famous opinions since, as he himself has stated, the point behind The Killing Joke was to alienate adult Batman readers. In all, Moore's comments at Film4 Fright Fest 2014 are another potent example of his lacerating perspective on superhero comics as a whole .

According To Watchmen's Creator, Graphic Novel Means "Big Expensive Comic"

Rather than something special.

Moore's perception that graphic novel simply means "big expensive comic" isn't completely off the mark...though it certainly can be said to come with an extra dose of animus towards the industry.

In Alan Moore's defense, the term "graphic novel" has never had any particular meaning. Where some use the term to refer to trade paperbacks, others use it to describe squarebound one-shots or over-sized miniseries. Moore's particular issue appears to be with readers he views as being in denial of the juvenile nature of their hobby. It isn't uncommon for some comic book readers to make a point of distinguishing their mature tastes in books like Preacher, from the more all-ages comics like Superman . In the Watchmen creator's eyes , these readers can't accept their own emotional immaturity.

Moore's perception that graphic novel simply means "big expensive comic" isn't completely off the mark. Publishers often use the term to separate out their weekly releases from their collected editions. The writer has been open about his distaste for adult comic book readers, as well as the superhero genre, for years – and it long predates his clash with DC over the Watchmen rights . Alan Moore makes some good points about graphic novels, though it certainly can be said to come with an extra dose of animus towards the industry.

Source: RCN TV, Film4 Frightfest 2014 coverage

Watchmen is considered one of the best graphic novels in history and has won the Hugo award for the chronicle of falling from grace. You will sincerely love this groundbreaking series that was written by the same author who wrote V for Vendetta. The images are high-quality and recolored that will make them more intensely gratifying.

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Critic’s notebook

‘The Sympathizer’ Opens a Counteroffensive on Vietnam War Movies

HBO’s series is not just a good story. It’s a sharp piece of film criticism.

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By James Poniewozik

HBO has long defined itself in contrast to mainstream television — “It’s not TV,” as the slogan goes — but in many ways its history is one of revising and responding to the movies. “The Sopranos” updated the mafia movie (and its characters quoted, and were influenced by, films like “The Godfather”). “Game of Thrones” dirtied up the high-fantasy genre; “Deadwood” the Western; “Watchmen” the superhero story.

But the network has never given us its longform version of, or rebuttal to, one Hollywood staple: the Vietnam War movie (unless one counts the alternative history aspects of “Watchmen”). Until now, with “The Sympathizer,” Park Chan-wook’s kinetic and darkly hilarious adaptation (with the co-showrunner Don McKellar) of the novel by the Vietnamese American author Viet Thanh Nguyen.

The seven-episode series is many things. It’s an exploration of dual identity: The protagonist, known only as the Captain ( Hoa Xuande ), is a half-French, half-Vietnamese communist double agent planted as an aide to the General (Toan Le), a leader of the South Vietnamese secret police. It’s a spy thriller, a satire of colonialism and its many faces — many of them Robert Downey Jr.’s — and an exploration of the complications of love and memory.

But it’s also an intense dialogue and argument with the movies. It is simultaneously its own Vietnam War movie, bold, inventive and sometimes bloody, as well as a pointed, detailed work of movie criticism.

In “The Sympathizer,” which began airing in April, the movies are a continuation of war by other means. Its fixation on film begins early. Retelling his story in a postwar re-education camp — the framing device for the series — the Captain recalls watching the vicious interrogation of a communist agent on the stage of a movie theater, where the marquee sign for “Emmanuelle” is coming down, and the one for Charles Bronson’s “Death Wish” is hoisted into place. Even in Hollywood’s dream vision, beauty gives way to an American pointing an oversized gun.

“Hollywood” is a metonym for America in “The Sympathizer”; it is the country’s front door, its export and its weapon. The Captain’s C.I.A. contact, Claude (Downey), lectures his “protégé” (who he is unaware is a communist) about American pop culture, expounding to him about the Isley Brothers and the Herbie Hancock score for “Death Wish.” Later, Claude tells him about the C.I.A.’s interest in keeping tabs on film directors: “As long as we can keep them within the nebulous bounds of humanism but with no actionable political ideology, they’re completely harmless.”

For Nguyen, who came to the United States with his family in 1975, the movies were potent and personal. “I grew up when America was fighting its war in Vietnam all over again, this time onscreen,” he recalled in a 2022 commencement speech. “Vietnam was our country and this was our war, and yet our only place in American movies was to be killed, raped, threatened or rescued.”

The adaptation of his novel dramatizes this in its centerpiece fourth episode, which premiered Sunday. The Captain, sent to America after the war to keep an eye on the General in exile, is hired as a consultant for “The Hamlet,” an “Apocalypse Now”–like film by a blowhard American auteur, Nikos, again played by Downey. (Downey also plays an academic peddling theories about the “Oriental” mind-set and a right-wing politician who displays a photo of himself with John Wayne, whose “The Green Berets” tried to rouse support for the war.)

The filming takes the Captain into 1970s Hollywood’s heart of dimness. Nikos proclaims that he’s making “The Hamlet” to give voice to the Vietnamese people’s pain, but he neglects to give his Vietnamese characters any dialogue. When he agrees to add lines for them, he runs into the small problem that none of the extras hired to play the villagers are Vietnamese or speak the language.

(The multiple casting of Downey, by the way, is arguably a visual riff on this history of the movies treating Asians in general, and Vietnamese in particular, as interchangeable: Every aspect of imperialism, it conveys, is the same face in different makeup. But in a series that’s meant to foreground the Vietnamese in their own story, the device is showy and distracting because … well, it’s a whole lot of Robert Downey Jrs.)

The Captain volunteers to solve the problem, rounding up a group of Vietnamese expats to fill the extra roles, including his friend Bon (Fred Nguyen Khan), who proves to have a talent for getting killed, repeatedly, in a variety of costumes and makeup.

But the Captain’s solution introduces its own complications. His refugee extras, who fled the communists, don’t want to play Viet Cong onscreen. “Why do we make art,” the Captain pleads with them, “if not to explore the full complexity of life?” His speech doesn’t persuade anyone, but an offer of an extra $10 in pay does.

Park, the director of the relentless and sanguinary “Oldboy,” is an apt fit for this story, able to both render the thrill of actual action and satirize the absurdity of action moviemaking. (Park and McKellar wrote the fourth episode, which is directed by Fernando Meirelles.) On set, the Captain meets a Korean American actor (played by John Cho), whose résumé includes characters of multiple Asian ethnicities who have been beaten to death by Robert Mitchum, stabbed by Ernest Borgnine and shot by Frank Sinatra. An overbearing method actor (David Duchovny) plays his role as a war criminal with disturbing fidelity.

The episode builds to the movie-within-a-show’s climax, the rape of a village woman whom Nikos has named for the Captain’s mother. Though Nikos considers it a “tribute,” the Captain is appalled. (“You should be thanking me!” Nikos complains.) It’s too much for the Captain, whom Xuande plays as a man expert at mastering his emotions and his affect. He is fired and breaks up the scene’s shooting, and while leaving the set, he’s injured in a pyrotechnic blast meant to simulate an airstrike against the Vietnamese hamlet.

The Captain survives the devastation of his country only to be blown up by the simulacrum of the war he escaped. But Nikos gets the explosions he needs, and “The Hamlet” is released into the world.

“This movie is trash,” a Vietnamese character later says philosophically, “but that’s only from our perspective. He’s an American, and from an American perspective, it’s pretty progressive.”

This theme — perspectives and the lenses that express and determine them — is what makes “The Sympathizer” both an ingenious critique of war movies and an inventive war story of its own. The series opens with a statement displayed onscreen: “All wars are fought twice / The first time on the battlefield / the second time in memory.” Sly and passionate, “The Sympathizer” joins this battle on a third front: in the pictures.

James Poniewozik is the chief TV critic for The Times. He writes reviews and essays with an emphasis on television as it reflects a changing culture and politics. More about James Poniewozik

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Glenn close, jeremy irons join retirement home comedy ‘encore’.

Don Johnson and Henry Winkler are set to co-star in Simon Curtis' best-agers comedy about former Broadway stars at a retirement home who decide to put on a show.

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More than 30 years after Reversal of Fortune , Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close are ready for their Encore .

The pair, who faced off as Claus and Sunny von Bülow in the 1990 Oscar-winning thriller, is set to reteam in the upcoming best-agers comedy from British director Simon Curtis ( My Week With Marilyn , Downton Abbey: A New Era ).

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Henry Winkler ( Barry , Arrested Development ) and Don Johnson ( Knives Out ) are attached to co-star.

Curtis will direct from a script by Oscar-nominated writer Robert Nelson Jacobs ( Chocolat ). Wyck Godfrey, Marty Bowen and Isaac Klausner will produce the film for Temple Hill Entertainment, the company behind the Twilight and Maze Runner franchises. Still in preproduction, Encore will be presented as a package to international buyers at the Cannes film market next month. Protagonist Pictures is handling international sales with UTA Independent Film Group and CAA Media Finance sharing domestic duties.

Alongside My Week With Marilyn , which earned star Michelle Williams an Oscar nomination, and the hit Downton Abbey sequel, Curtis’ filmography includes Woman in Gold , starring Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds; Goodbye Christopher Robin , with Margot Robbie and Domhnall Gleeson; and The Art of Racing in the Rain , starring Amanda Seyfried and Milo Ventimiglia.

Eight-time Academy Award nominee Close, who won acclaim, as well as BAFTA and Oscar nominations, for her turn in 2017’s The Wife , and plays Nova Prime in the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, has more recently enjoyed run of films on streamers, including Netflix’s Hillbilly Ellegy (2020) and Heart of Stone (2023), and Swan Song on AppleTV+.

Happy Days legend Winkler has become known to a new generation of TV fans through his comedic turns in Arrested Development and HBO’s Barry , while Johnson, a TV vet ( Miami Vice , Nash Bridges ) who also co-starred in Watchmen , is enjoying a late-career movie bump, thanks to roles in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained and Rian Johnson’s Knives Out .

Close, Irons, Winkler and Johnson are repped by CAA. Close is also repped by MGMT Entertainment and Loeb & Loeb, Winkler by Management 360, and Johnson by Edelstein, Laird & Sobel.

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EXCLUSIVE: Bleiberg Entertainment has picked up worldwide rights to Degenerate , a crime pic starring Emile Hirsch ( Once Upon a Time in Hollywood ) and Rory Culkin  ( Signs, Scream 4 ). 

The film’s cast is rounded out by India Eisley ( Curse of Sleeping Beauty ), Peter Facinelli ( The Twilight Saga ), David Keith (An Officer and Gentleman ), and Jackie Earle Haley ( Watchmen, Little Children, Friday the 13th) .

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Directed by Luc Walpoth, the pic tells the story of Andy ( Hirsch) who has two loves in his life: His girlfriend Chloe (India Eisley) and professional poker. When he gets caught in the crossfire of a botched scheme to rob a home poker game, Andy impulsively steals back the money from the criminals and slips away undetected. The criminals, led by the ruthless schemer Jack (David Keith) and his violent sidekick (Jackie Earle Haley) track Andy down and reveal they have kidnapped Chloe and are holding her for ransom. Now in order to save her, Andy must win their money back in the most important high-stakes poker game of his life.

Walpoth has directed two other features: Peripheric Love (2023) and Baby Money (2021). The film is written by Josh Wilcox. Producers are Seth Michaels and Sara Sometti Michaels for Benacus Entertainment in association with RNF Productions. 

“We’re thrilled to be representing this stylish film that features such a tremendous cast and gripping, high-tension storytelling,” said Ariel Bleiberg, Head of Acquisitions and Development at Bleiberg.

Negotiations for Benacus Entertainment and RNF Productions were handled by Tiffany Boyle and Sean Pope of Ramo Law and by Nicholas Bennett, EVP of Sales for Bleiberg Entertainment.

Michaels added: “We have a very exciting film with an amazing cast who were a delight to work with, Bleiberg representing this special project to the world in Cannes is a dream come true for all of us at Benacus Ent and RNF productions.”

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Paul Walter Hauser to Play U.S. Game Show Winner Michael Larson in ‘Press Your Luck,’ Walton Goggins, Johnny Knoxville Among Cast as Protagonist Launches Sales

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Paul Walter Hauser has added another project to a packed upcoming slate.

The Emmy and Golden Globe winner, who in the last few weeks alone has been tapped to play Chris Farley in Josh Gad’s biopic and has joined the cast of both “Fantastic Four” and the “Naked Gun” reboot, is to lead “Press Your Luck,” a drama-thriller based on the true story of Michael Larson. Protagonist Pictures has unveiled the drama-thriller — from Plenty Good in co-production with Fabula — alongside a first look image and will handle international sales, while CAA Media Finance represents North American rights.

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Samir Oliveros directs from a screenplay co-written with Maggie Briggs (“Joyland”), and the film is produced by Plenty Good (“Chronicles Of A Wandering Saint”), and co-produced by Fabula (“El Conde”). “Press Your Luck” is now in post-production.

“I kept having this recurring dream with a white-bearded man. I couldn’t make any sense of it until I stumbled upon his face on a VHS tape I found at a thrift shop. That’s how I learned of Michael’s story,” said Oliveros. “During our next encounter he said if we made the film in time for the 40th anniversary of his feat, he would guide us in the right direction. I’m glad we could make it happen with the support of such incredible partners.”

“Samir has crafted a unique and stylish telling of the incredible true story of a down on his luck everyman gaming the system,” said Protagonist Pictures’ CEO, Dave Bishop. “We couldn’t be happier to be working with the very talented Samir and our friends at Fabula and Plenty Good.” 

Added Freedman, founding partner of Plenty Good: “We’re drawn to films that don’t behave. Whether it’s an unruly character, an unconventional structure, or irreverent style, our movies challenge what’s expected. Michael’s bold behavior inspired us, and we hope it inspires you.”

Hauser is repped by CAA, Artists First, and Schreck Rose Dapello Adams Berlin & Dunham LLP.; Goggins is repped by CAA, and Darris Hatch Management; Strathairn is repped by CAA and Ryan Entertainment; Williams is repped by WME, Ocean Avenue, and Jackoway Austen Tyerman Wertheimer Mandelbaum Morris Bernstein Trattner Auerbach Hynick Jaime LeVine Sample & Klein; Bennet is repped by WME, and Brecheen Feldman Breimer Silver Thompson; and Knoxville is repped by CAA, and Sloane Offer Weber & Dern.

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