Impressively faithful to the spirit — if not always the plotting — of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ seminal, Reagan-baiting graphic novel, Zack Snyder’s Watchmen is a visually grandiose superhero opera that takes itself at least as seriously as The Dark Knight, but with better follow-through. Where that No Country For Bat Men smash dealt in phony restraint and empty provocations, Watchmen dishes out its blood-sex-apocalypse-etc. in agreeably heaping portions.
The sheer abundance of visual and narrative elements renders any attempt at synopsis futile: suffice it to say that the Cold War paranoia and Outer Limits-inspired thematics remain intact, and that Moore’s two greatest creations — the caustic sociopath Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) and the blue behemoth Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) — are done justice by both the actors and CGI.
Snyder surely isn’t a subtle filmmaker (and his jones for plodding slo-mo violence is irritating) but he improves mightily on the frieze-dried reverence of 300, which aggressively enshrined Frank Miller’s juvenile machismo. With Watchmen, Snyder sublimates his sensibility without losing his signature: the scenes of Dr. Manhattan moping in Martian solitude and of Rorschach skulking purposely through a rancid, back-alley metropolis should sate fanboy anticipation, but the superb opening-credit montage, which spins out a century’s worth of juicy alternate history in the space of a single Bob Dylan standard, is as much an homage to the director’s own brilliant Dawn of the Dead 2.0 prologue as a fulfillment of the source material.