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The arguably greatest graphic novel of all time is finally being released on the big screen.  Ever since Alan Moore's legendary "Watchmen" was released in 1986, there have been innumerable failed attempts to adapt the story to film: writers such as Sam Hamm and Charles McKeown penned scripts that would never come to be, directors such as Darren Aronofsky, Terry Gilliam, and Paul Greengrass have begun, and subsequently abandoned the project, claiming it "unfilmable," and actors such as Tom Cruise, Hillary Swank, and Daniel Craig all either expressed interest in, or were offered parts that would never come to fruition.  For decades it seemed that the literal question of, "who watches the Watchmen?" would always be answered with, "no one."  Yet here in 2009, after years of speculation and months of behind the scenes legal battles, Watchmen the film is finally being released to the world.  To some fans of Moore's work, they have eagerly anticipated Friday, March 6, 2009 as though it were their cinematic Christmas.  To others, the day has been heralded as an imminent evil, like prom or the first day of a real job. 

Admittedly a fanboy of the source material, Zack Snyder vowed to do everything he possibly could to be faithful to Moore's work and avoid the past mistakes made with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, From Hell, V for Vendetta and Constantine.  With a theatrical running time of 163 minutes and an eventual director's cut well over 3 hours, it seems like Snyder and co-writers David Hayter and Alex Tse have bent over backwards to make a film they hope Moore may actually consider seeing someday.  Though ticket pre-sales reached record-breaking numbers, the ultimate success of the film will lie in not only the response from fans of the comic, but also from moviegoers ignorant of the source material.  While it now certainly seems like everybody will be watching Watchmen, the question becomes who will enjoy it: fanboys, moviegoers, or both?  Unfortunately for Snyder, the answer may very well be none of the above as the film comes off as too cumbersome and meandering for the casual fan and too pared down and sterile for the fanboys.

The year is 1985, but it's not the 1985 we know.  In this 1985, Richard Nixon has been elected to a third term as president, the Vietnam was won (by the good guys), and the Doomsday Clock - the countdown to nuclear war with Russia - is constantly at 5 minutes to midnight.  In this 1985, superheroes do exist, or at least, they did exist before being banned in 1977, and they were just regular people like you and I, only they wore masks and took it upon themselves to clean up the streets.  The only being on earth with super powers is former physicist Johnathan Osterman (Billy Crudup), nicknamed Dr. Manhattan.  Currently working in partner with the U.S. Government and former hero and colleague Adrian Veidt (Matthew Goode) on renewable sources of energy, Manhattan is so named for his ability to manipulate matter on an atomic level - an ability he gained when he was caught in an Intrinsic Field Subtractor in 1959.  These godlike abilities have distanced Dr. Manhattan from mankind.  Not perceiving time from a linear perspective, he is unable to relate to the machinations and emotions of humans, claiming, "the existence of life is a highly overrated phenomenon."

Though once the centers of attention, costumed heroes were banned by the Keane Act in 1977, which was passed to settle nationwide police strikes brought on by frustration for public tolerance of vigilantism.  The heroes in New York City, unofficially dubbed Watchmen, have all gone their separate ways since the ban: Dan Dreiberg / Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson), lives a quiet life alone, weekly visiting his 1950's predecessor; Laurie Jupiter / Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman) keeps Dr. Manhattan company on an army based; Edward Blake / The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is a government hero with a resume that includes serving in Vietnam and multiple political assassinations; Veidt / Ozymandias, who's been called the smartest man in the world, is now the CEO of a global conglomerate having revealed and profited off his secret identity two years before the Keane Act; and Rorschach / Walter Kovacs (Jackie Earle Haley) has completely ignored the ban, persisting in his often brutal attempts to rid the streets of crime.  When The Comedian is killed by an unknown assailant, Rorschach believes it to be a plot to pick off masked heroes,  though the others initially consider him paranoid and crazy.  As they dig deeper though, the heroes begin to discover a complicated plot in which they are all pawns that will change the fate of the entire human race.

True to the form he established with 300, Zack Snyder is amazingly faithful to his source material.  It's clear by watching the story pan out from The Comedian's death to the startling discovery of Rorschach and Nite Owl's that Snyder didn't want to upset his fellow fans by taking creative liberties.  However, creative liberties are often what elevates a film adaptation above a simple copy and paste job.  Many scenes and lines of dialogue are framed and said exactly as they are in the book and the running time makes it clear that the filmmakers were trying to include as much content from the 12 issues of "Watchmen" as they possibly could.  But part of the translation problem stems from the fact that Zack Snyder is no Christopher Nolan and he just can't hold a 2 and a half-hour+ film together coherently and emotionally.  First and foremost, Snyder is not an actor's director - he's a visual director.  Focusing so much on efficiently visualizing the physical pages of "Watchmen," Snyder is incapable of milking solid performances out of his C-list cast.  I understand the desire to cast little known actors so that no single name takes focus above the film, but A-listers are A-listers for a reason: because they do what they do well.  Sure, there are moments where it really seems like Morgan and Haley are really having fun with their parts, but there's so much emotional weight inherent within Moore's words that to hear Akerman or Wilson or Goode sleepwalk through their roles as though they were reading off of cue cards in a high school drama production strips away so much of the comic's maturity, social commentary, and blurring of our anti-heroes' moral lines.  These undercurrents are THE meat of comic and we're simply given the bones to satisfy our hunger. 

It's harder for me to judge the film on specifically cinematic terms seeing as the source material is so ingrained within me, however, those not knowing what to expect from the film may leave the theater almost 3 hours later feeling like they don't understand what all the hype was about.  As I said, Nolan was able to competently hold together an epic film like The Dark Knight to widescale acclaim. but even then people had complaints about it being a little on the long side.  Watchmen is even longer than the Batman flick, but not nearly as coherently constructed in terms of pacing, tone and building tension.  In regards to pacing, the flow of the film is constantly interrupted by the constant flashbacks necessary for exposition.  Just when you're getting oriented to the happenings in 1985, the film jumps back to an extensive development years or months ago, which in turn develops its own narrative flow that's imminently interrupted by a return to the present.  Tonally the film can't decide if it's going to take itself seriously or not, often caused by curious soundtrack choices by Snyder; some that work (Dylan's "Times They Are A-Changin'" plays over the comic-panel like opening credit sequence) and some that fail laughably (Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" plays over a lovemaking scene after Nite Owl and Silk Spectre have rescued tenants from a burning apartment building).  With so much stop-and-go on the way to the finish line, the film can't glue its audience to their seats (I don't know how many people left for bathroom breaks during my screening), then the revelation at the end - preceding a climax that I, in the minority, DON'T think works in replacing the comic's climax - becomes surprisingly flat and lacking resonance. 

In Snyder's defense, the other part of the problem stems from the fact that, as Moore has said before, some material just isn't fertile for a transition across mediums.  "Watchmen" exists as the gold standard of comics because of the gravity packed into every single page.  As each minute went by, it became clear to me that, by no fault of Snyder's, "Watchmen" more than likely would not have been sufficiently adapted by anyone.