7. Watchmen
The audacity of Zack Snyder. It was the most celebrated graphic novel ever written, and also deemed “unfilmable,” by Terry Gilliam, who was at one point attached to the project when it was stuck in developmental hell. And yet the director of 300, with a tremendous respect for the source material, has fashioned an exhilarating comic book film like no other.
It is remarkable that this movie even exists. With no name stars, a meandering non-linear narrative, brutal violence, sex, and, god forbid, such a thing as character complexity, Warner Brothers and Paramount firstly deserve credit for green-lighting a $130 million dollar comic-book movie with uncertain box office potential.
As a movie, it has its problems. The plot doesn’t have a totally satisfying structure, there is one retched performance (a stone dry Malin Akerman as Silk Spectre) and Snyder is slavish, to a fault, to the source text. Yet to do otherwise would result in a movie that does a disserve to the immense achievement of the original novel. This movie is the unadulterated Watchmen, rough edged, complex and provocative. It retains the shades of the book while delivering an exhilarating visceral ride of image and sound. Be sure to check out the more robust director’s cut, which contains 24 minutes of extra footage that brings the running time to a more satisfying three hours.
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