Almost as daunting as tackling one of the great American novels like Gatsby is the task Zack Snyder took on in adapting what is considered one of if not the greatest graphic novels of all time. There is widespread disagreement on whether it ultimately works or not. A lot of this is tinged by the dispute over the extent to which it “did justice” to the comic. Having seen the movie first, my judgment is also biased, but I thought Snyder did an excellent job for a couple of reasons.
I give a lot of the credit to Snyder even though the writing credits belong to David Hayter and Alex Tse, but it’s because of the aesthetic that Snyder achieves not only in this, but all his films. Firstly, just the visuals, from color to lighting to casting, pay perhaps the closest tribute to a comic that we’ve yet seen. Panels are used as storyboards to a far greater extent than any other movie I’m aware of. But the main thing for me was, as usual, the tone and rhythm of the thing, which felt far more like the feeling you get reading a graphic novel than any movie before or since, outside of perhaps Sin City. The pacing of the cuts mixed with the framing of the important shots and the timing of the dialogue had that quality in comics that is far from realistic but isn’t exactly melodramatic. Maybe those more familiar with the medium have a term to describe this quality. But in terms of being faithful to a source, factoring in both the strengths and limitations the screen provides, Watchmen has to be considered near the top of the heap. I think if Snyder’s Man of Steel becomes the success many are expecting it to be, his past films could be retrospectively rehabilitated in the public eye.
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