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...pounded out his scripts on a manual typewriter), when most comics had an afterlife only in the back-issue bins. But Watchmen soon attained the status of legend and literature; in 2005, TIME cited it as one of the 100 best novels since 1923. (See page 54 for our book critic's take on the film adaptation.) And it continues to expand its base. Last fall Gibbons put out the latte-table book Watching the Watchmen. The story is also available on DVD in "moving comic" form--very limited animation of the drawings, with a narrator reading the text--that...
...know Snyder is in no way an actor's director. (The two self-starters are Haley, who does right by his grizzled role, and Morgan, a Robert Downey Jr. knockoff who chews the scenery and his stogie with equal aplomb.) And while the climax is unusual in a comic-book movie--bad guy does very bad thing, then escapes his comeuppance by persuading folks that what he's done is really kind of a good thing--it lacks the kick of apocalyptic retribution the mass audience expects and deserves...
Personal respect for its creator isn't the only reason not to see Watchmen. There are aesthetic grounds aplenty. The book doesn't lend itself particularly well to film. It's a long, many-threaded serial narrative that's not meant to be forcibly administered in one dose. Its content is also not easily extricable from its comic-book form. The fifth chapter, "Fearful Symmetry," unfolds symmetrically, the panels at the beginning echoing the panels at the end, with a grand mirror-image spread at its heart. Palindromes, reflections, symmetries--Watchmen teems with them. Look at Rorschach's face. They...
Bottom line: this is about knowing what you're getting into. The mistake for newcomers would be to confuse Watchmen the film with Watchmen the graphic novel--to think of the film as a substitute for the book. The two are neither identical nor symmetrical. The film is an homage to the original or perhaps an advertisement for it, but nothing more...
...BLAGOJEVICH gets a book deal. Publishers mysteriously get a Senate seat...