by Rianne Hill Soriano

Created on: March 22, 2010

Watchmen is visually brilliant but flawed in certain ways. Nevertheless, this eye-poppingly faithful adaptation is carefully crafted as a lavish cult movie. It spins a comic deemed unfilmable into a blockbuster for the specific admirers of the superhero genre and the fan base of the groundbreaking book from writer Alan Moore and illustrator Dave Gibbons. Grappling with the graphic novel's multi-layered storyline, this dystopian film utilizes a deeply dark heart unmasking the world's harsh realities.

Watchmen is no doubt a love letter to those who have been waiting for the film for the last two decades. The success of the acclaimed 1980's graphic novel about moral relativity, the futility of life, the violent nature of man, and the deconstruction of the concepts of humanity and heroism have pushed this film into monumental anticipation. Director Zack Snyder brings the superhero-noir murder mystery to life through the aesthetic pleasure of reproducing the key scenes with storyboard-like fidelity. As a deconstructionist superhero flick, it generally works in making fans thrilled with its visual experimentation, radical mythology, psychologically rich idealism, and grand indulgence.

Overall, the mood and tone of the film is what most fans could hope for. As the cinematic version of the world's most celebrated graphic novel, this sprawling film stays faithful to the book. It trims and reshapes it to its prime essentials. It may not include every nuance in the graphic novel, but it gets to capture the basic requirements of the moving picture medium. However, the overflowing technical energy has resulted to a power lost in terms of characterization and emotional engagement to the story. The technical brilliance upstages the other aspects of the film way too much. The filmmakers lose sight of what could make a film effective more than just the mere visual flair: the film lacks the emotional attachment for the audience to relate to the characters and the world they live in. Yes, the fans familiar to the characters and their alternate universe would find the film rendering generally well on screen. But how about the non-superficial facets of the film? How much energy was put on them? Looks like they couldn't quite measure up to what the film's technical competence provides. Indeed, this proves that a great source material, a respectful translation from graphic novel to film, a big budget, and an overflowing visual power are not enough to make a film live up to the greatest

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