by Adam Shaftoe

Created on: March 17, 2009   Last Updated: March 18, 2009

Usually I know better than to let myself get caught up in the hype of impending movies. Watchmen, based on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' graphic novel of the same name, found itself as an exception to that rule. Early trailers seemed to promise a film that would follow in the footsteps of the re-booted Batman franchise: Approaching superhero mythology not as escapist fantasy, but as something that is plausible within our own contemporary world.

As if the promise of the word "cerebral" riding in the same car as the word "superhero" was not enough to whet the appetite of both movie goers and comic book lovers alike, Watchmen's trailers offered a faint whiff of hope that the film would remain loyal to the darkly comedic, often depressing but still brilliant piece of Reagan-era pseudo-sedition upon which it is based. Set in an alternate reality 1985 where America wins Vietnam and Nixon has been elected to a fifth term in office, the graphic novel is held as seminal for elevating the comic book to the level of literature. But much to the chagrin of this reviewer, Watchmen is best seen as a loosely inspired carbon copy of its source material. While Watchmen adhered fairly well to the plot of the graphic novel, it is noticeably lacking in any of the subtext, social commentary, character depth and moral ambiguity of its namesake.

I won't go so far as to echo the sentiments of Slate.com's Dana Stevens and suggest that "Zack Snyder performed a lab experiment on Alan Moore's wonderfully human sized story." It is fairer to say that Watchmen demonstrates that Snyder, whose only other claim to fame is the contentious and ultra-violent 300, has not evolved beyond his status as a neophyte director. Snyder seems incapable of conveying nuance or subtext without marrying it with gore, ritualized violence and answering the question: "How would this particular actress look topless?"

Moore and Gibbons were not bashful about exploring the sexual motivations of super heroes in their graphic novel. The love triangle between Doctor Manhattan/Jonathan Osterman (Billy Crudup), Nite Owl II/Dan Dreiberg (Patrick Wilson) and Silk Specter II/Laurie Juspeczyk (Malin Akerman) called Laurie Jupiter in the screen adaptation was often tumultuous, vengeful and left readers with the odd aftertaste of costume fetishism. In Snyder's defense, I do not think him ignorant of this theme, nor the graphic novel's other significant subtexts; his attempt to portray subtlety on screen, however, is almost unforgivably

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