Product Description
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Watchmen (BD) (Steelbook)
Someone’s killing our super heroes. The year is 1985 and super
heroes have banded together to respond to the murder of one of
their own. They soon uncover a sinister plot that puts all of
humanity in grave danger. The super heroes fight to stop the
impending doom only to find themselves a target for annihilation.
But, if our super heroes are gone, who will save us?
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Everybody's favorite graphic novel comes to the screen (after
years of rumors and false starts), less a roaring work of
adaptation than a respectful and faithful take on a radical
original. Watchmen is set in the mid-1980s, a time of increased
nuclear tension between the United States and the Soviet Union,
as Richard Nixon is enjoying his fifth term as president and the
world's superheroes have been forcibly retired. (As you can
probably tell, the mix of authentic history and alternate reality
is heady.) Things begin with a bang: the mysterious high-rise
murder of the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a ed hero with
a checkered past, puts the rest of the retired superhero
community on alert. The credits sequence, a series of tableaux
that wittily catches us up on crime-fighting backstory, actually
turns out to be the high point of the movie. Thereafter we meet
the other caped and hooded avengers: the furious Rorschach
(Jackie Earle Haley), the inexplicably naked Dr. Manhattan (Billy
Crudup, amidst much blue-skinned, genital-swinging digital work),
Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman), Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson),
and Ozymandias (Matthew Goode). The corkscrewing storytelling,
which worked well in the comic book, gives the movie the strange
sense of never quite getting in gear, even as some of the
episodes are arresting. Director Zack Snyder (300) doesn't try to
approximate the electric impact of the original (written by Alan
Moore--who declined to be credited on the movie--and illustrated
by Dave Gibbons) but retains careful fidelity to his source
material. That doesn't feel right, even with the generally
enjoyable roll-out of anecdotes. Even less forgivable is the blah
acting, excepting Jeffrey Dean Morgan (lusty) and Patrick Wilson
(mellow). Watchmen certainly fills the eyes, although less so the
ears: the song choices are regrettable, especially during an
embarrassing mid-air coupling between Nite Owl II and Silk
Spectre II as they unite their--ah--Roman numerals. In the end it
feels as though a huge work of transcription has been
successfully completed, which isn't the same as making a
full-blooded movie experience. --Robert Horton
Also on the Blu-ray disc
The extended director's cut restores 24 minutes of connective
tissue to the 162-minute film, most significantly the last scene
of Hollis Mason, the first Nite Owl. Other elements help restore
and fill in details that had been in the graphic novel. Fans of
the film will be glad for the extra footage but there's nothing
momentous that will change anyone's basic like or dislike of the
film.
By far the most interesting Blu-ray feature (in addition to the
great picture and DTS-HD Master Audio sound) is the Maximum Movie
Mode, which incorporates several features into the viewing
experience. Director Zack Snyder periodically appears on screen
in front of two large monitors, one continuing to play the movie
and the other displaying special-effects s or scenes from the
graphic novel. Snyder talks about how he the film and points
out details in a variety of scenes: the opening with the
Comedian, Dr. Manhattan's lab, the Nite Owl ship, Mars,
Antarctica, and the ending (and why it was changed for the
movie). This feature is much more interesting than an audio
commentary or a standard picture-in-picture commentary so it'd be
nice if it had been done for more scenes. Also appearing in
Maximum Movie Mode is a timeline contrasting events in the
Watchmen world with the "real world," occasional
picture-in-picture comments by cast and crew, still galleries,
and a series of 11 "focus points" that allow you to exit the film
to watch these three-minute featurettes (sets, costumes, the
Minutemen, etc.). Worthy of mention is how easy the Maximum Movie
Mode material is to find: Snyder's footage and the focus points
are very visible (even in fast-forward), and you can also access
the focus points directly from the main menu.
The second disc has three documentaries. The first, "The
Phenomenon: The Comic That Changed Comics," 29 min.), looks at
the original graphic novel and its themes, and interviews artist
Dave Gibbons, DC Comics executives Jenette Kahn and Paul Levitz,
and cast and crew, illustrating its points with scenes from the
movie, panels from the graphic novel, and parts of the motion
comic. The next two are only on the Blu-ray disc but are less
interesting and of varying relevance to the movie. "Real
Superheroes, Real Vigilantes" (26 min.) examines real-life
vigilantes including the Guardian Angels and New York subway
man Bernard Goetz and compares them to Rorschach. "Mechanics:
Technologies of a Future World" (17 min.) spotlights a physicist
who served as a consultant on the movie. He talks about his
experiences then discusses whether elements from the movie, such
as Dr. Manhattan, the Owl Ship, and Rorschach's could really
work.