And not just a movie; Snyder hasn’t created some processional of images or a living audio book. He’s made a film that feels like a living, breathing thing all its own while also being – almost completely – the book. Snyder’s Watchmen captures the themes and the meanings and the characters that Moore and Gibbons created but makes them his own, turning the movie from being simply an adaptation into something that feels closer to collaboration.
Had he only done that, Snyder would have earned a positive review from me. But he does more; Snyder had crafted a movie that flirts with honest to God greatness, that doesn’t just capture the events of the comic but also the humanity and the emotion. It’s a remarkable film, and an uncompromising one. It’s the sort of movie that major studios are simply not supposed to be making now that the 1970s are over.
When people try to convince me that I should feel convinced by a particular movie site with a ridiculous name, I suddenly remember this breathless review of the Watchmen movie (Elsewhere in the same review: “I believe that it is a monumental achievement, a alchemical balancing act that manages to serve the original material while feeling fresh and the product of a director’s vision”).