A Conspiracy of Peace

When watching the first half of this version of Watchmen, I was struck by the weird zone it sits in. It’s not as weird or as loving towards its action as the Zack Snyder version, which had some real “bro dude” energy to it (as all Snyder works inevitably have), but it also lacks the artistry that Zack SnyderOften reviled for the bombastic and idiotic content of his films, there is no question that what Snyder's movies lack in substance they (at least try to) balance out with flash and style, making him one of Hollywood's top directors... sadly. brought to the film. Like, say what you will about the man as a director, and the various works he’s created, but there are perfect moments in each of his films that almost, very nearly, justify his entire career. I don’t like his movies, but I have to admit that sometimes he nearly gets it. Sometimes.

No, this version of Watchmen (both Chapter I, which we discussed a little while ago, and now Chapter II) seem even more slavishly committed to bringing the original version of the comic into film format. It feels like an overcorrection, a need from Warner Bros. to give the fanboys an adaptation of the comic they were asking for ever since Snyder did his thing and changed a little too much the original story in his adaptation. But the new animated adaptation, especially in this Chapter II, copies so much from the original comic, adapting every page and panel, that it leaves audiences with one major question that has to be asked: if you’re going to be this exact in your copy of a work, why even bother making an adaptation in the first place?

Picking up from where Chapter I left off, Watchmen: Chapter II sees Dan Dreiberg / Nite Owl and Laurie Juspeczyk / Silk Spectre II working the case that Rorschach essentially dumped on them before he was hauled off to prison: someone seems to be going after superheroes, getting them out of the way one way or another (Comedian dead, Dr. Manhattan away on Mars, Rorschach in prison) so they can do… something. Dan thinks it’s so the mastermind can usher in World War III, stoking the flames of fear between the U.S. and Russia to bring about the great war. But to what end?

Suiting up, Dan and Laurie decide to break Rorschach out of prison. He was the one that put everything together, and if he was framed and didn’t commit the specific crime in question (even if he has been shown to commit other crimes) then he shouldn’t be forced to rot in there. Plus, they need him. So they stage a prison break, helping their comrade out, and then they plan to go see the world’s smartest man, Adrian Veidt / Ozymandias, to get his help. Someone apparently tried to kill him, too, even if he fought them off, so clearly whoever is behind all this wants every superhero out of the way. But what more could be going on, and why is all of this happening now. There are more questions than answers, and the case keeps getting weirder and weirder, even before the big reveal comes into focus.

I’ve got to be honest, I just didn’t not enjoy the second half of this film, Chapter II, as much as I enjoyed the first. I’m not the biggest Watchmen fan, having read the comics and watched the previous film adaptation and been left cold by both. I get what Alan Moore was going for, his thoughts about the strange place superheroes take in society, the thoughts about war and revolution, the fact that governments are ineffectual and it takes a great man to get things done. You can get all kinds of messages from Watchmen (the book), but you have to agree with Moore on some level to truly enjoy his story, and that goes just as much for this film, which is a slavish adaptation, as for the comic.

The real issue with Chapter II, though, is that most of the plot of the movie was already resolved in Chapter I. That film set up the case, put the pieces out there, built nearly to the reveal of everything, and then stopped at just the right moment to leave the mystery lingering. But once we get into this second half, the mystery is basically done. The movie reveals the solution to the case within the first fifteen minutes, even if it takes the heroes another hour to catch up, and all the narrative momentum that was built up in Chapter I falls apart in Chapter II. What we’re left with is a film that feels like a third act even when it has an entire hour and a half of runtime to get through.

No, make no mistake, there are good sequences in this second half. The parts with Rorschach are always great because the character is fantastic. Moore reinterpretation of the Question very nearly feels like a self-insert character, discussing the moral depravity of humanity and raising valid issues about our own society. Plus he’s just a bad-ass who gives no fucks and takes no prisoners. I could watch Rorschach all day, making his scenes the best in the film. I say that even if Titus Welliver, who voices the character, is a poor substitute for Jackie Earle Haley, who played him with such menace and vitality in the 2009 movie.

In fact, I think that’s another area where this film suffers: the performances just aren’t as good. It’s surprising considering we have some talented performers in the case, including Matthew Rhys as Dan Dreiberg, Katee Sackhoff as Laurie Juspeczyk, Troy Baker as Adrian Veidt, and Michael Cerveris as Dr. Manhattan, but man, their performances feel very flat. The life, the punchiness we need from these people, to make us feel like they’re acting and not just reading lines in a booth, simply isn’t there. I don’t know if that’s the fault of the director, Brandon Vietti, maybe wanting them to downplay emotions and keep the two-part film feeling subdued and “dramatic”, but it just doesn’t work. They feel as flat and lifeless as comic characters.

Because of that, especially in this second half which has to carry an entire film runtime while barely presenting more in the way of story, this second part feels empty. All the action set pieces they put in – the prison break, an earlier rescue of people at a tenement, the eventual fight against the supervillain – it feels like padding, moments to tick down the time while we wait for everyone to figure out what happened and who is at fault. By placing this half of the story at this moment and this way, the second chapter actually sucks the life out of the story instead of feeling like the grand finale.

I get that the film adapts the comic one-for-one, so the films were split right around the middle of the whole tale. But that just shows that this adaptation was too slavish, too committed to mirroring every beat and moment. Yes, Zack Snyder changed a lot (including the ending of the story), and yes there were too many moments in the film that felt like Synder just couldn’t control himself, but his film at least had perspective. It had ideas about how to make a watchable adaptation of the story, and it tried to breathe life into it. When he hit it just right, his film was great. That wasn’t often, but those moments absolutely stood out.

Watchmen: Chapter II, especially, isn’t able to do that. It feels empty, muted, and less than. It’s a copy of a copy of a copy, in a way, actually taking us further from the life and vitality of the source material without adding anything in response. The Watchmen comic is the best version of this story so far, while this animated version is absolutely the worst. It would be better for Warners to leave well enough alone and go find something else to adapt instead.

But they can’t, of course, because they have to keep milking money out of this property. Every ten years or so, some new version, or new comics, or a sequel TV show (which, okay, that one was actually pretty good). If they don’t then the rights to the book revert back to Moore, and corporate greed keeps that from happening. So we keep getting watered down versions of the story, like this 2024 adaptation, just so Warners can make a few more dollars. It’s sad, really. And it likely means that, in another decade or so, we’ll be going through this whole dance again with some other empty adaptation of the material.