The problem, in the plainest terms, with Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Watchmen, is that it confuses fidelity to the source material with narrative propulsion. There are plenty of great books, or story ideas, that just don’t make compelling movies, and this is certainly an example of one. The film is a pretty, cool-looking rocket with an unlit fuse; it never gets off the ground. For those not primed to already give it a full-thrust embrace, does the surfeit of “cool” amount to anything more than just a decent time at the movies? Does it stick with you in any lasting fashion? Do you care about what has happened to the characters? No, I would submit that it doesn’t, and you don’t.
Uneven performances don’t help, but the film doesn’t create a convincing enough dystopian backdrop — either through sheer breadth, or perspicacious detail — to really sell the weight of its alleged doomsday drama, especially coming on the heels of something like last summer’s The Dark Knight. Even for kids who came of age at the end of the Cold War, in the Reagan era, the conflict of nuclear brinksmanship never loomed quite as large, front-and-center, as the new, present-day threats of international terrorism. The anxieties of the world today feel more diffuse and asymmetrical, so if you’re going to build your film around a superpower standoff — the type of conflict that would be the result of a massive, systemic conflict between two intractable nation-states — you’d better be prepared to do at least a bit of heavy lifting, story-wise. Watchmen does not; instead it gives us a couple digressive character backstories, and fritters away time on Nite Owl and Silk Spectre rescuing some people from a burning building… yawn.
“Even for kids who came of age at the end of the Cold War, in the Reagan era, the conflict of nuclear brinksmanship never loomed quite as large, front-and-center, as the new, present-day threats of international terrorism.”
I completely disagree, but it may depend on where you grew up.
If you live in small-town America right now, the likelihood you’ll die in a terrorist attack is close to zero. (I grew up in rural Ireland — no Al Quaeda threat there now either)
In a global nuclear war? Small towns would be no safer than big cities — you’d just die more slowly. Plus, in the ’80s, you had major TV movies on the topic, as well as numerous sci-fi movies set hypothetically post-nuke, and even countless chart-topping pop songs on the subject. Nowadays, we have “24” and…what else?
The new era of terrorism is still anxiety provoking for those of us who live in the world’s most major cities, for sure. But even if there is another big terror attack, the likelihood of surviving it is a whole lot better than of a war with Russia.
If McCain/Palin had won and proceeded to try and kick Russia out of every major global organization like he wanted, those fears would be coming right back.