It has been seven years since an HBO series helped fix the biggest problem with a Zack Snyder blockbuster comic book adaptation. In 2009, Snyder directed the DC big-screen adaptation of the Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons comic book Watchmen. The movie only had Gibbons’ name listed as the creator, and that is because Moore had become disillusioned by the Hollywood adaptations of his past work, believing that many of the movies ripped the souls out of the stories. He spoke out harshly about From Hell, V for Vendetta, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. None of these treated his writing with the respect that it deserves.
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But the truth is that Watchmen also had little to nothing to do with the book’s story, even though Snyder tried to duplicate it from comic panel to movie screen. While Snyder recreated several scenes from the book in his movie, he lost sight of its message.
Zack Snyder’s Watchmen Misunderstood the Book’s Themes
First off, Watchmen was a good movie for what it was. However, for fans of the comics, it was a huge miss. Sure, Snyder meticulously created practical environments to transplant the comic’s panels to the big screen, but Robert Rodriguez did it better using green screen when he made Sin City. In fact, Snyder had a more faithful attempt when he directed 300 in front of a green screen as well. He dropped the ball with Watchmen. What really didn’t work about the movie was that it completely missed the point of the comics, and Snyder seemed to take what Moore and Gibbons were saying at the surface level without going any deeper than that.
Almost everything that was great about Snyder’s movie was the result of him copying things from the comics to the big screen. However, what didn’t work about Watchmen was ignoring the actual themes and intent, as Snyder was never able to capture the story that Moore delivered. Sure, Snyder wanted to show that his movie could be serious art, as the comics did, but what made the original comics true art was the story that was being told and how it broke down and critiqued superhero comics at their core.
Adapting any comic book, or any form of media, will result in something aesthetically different because the medium is different. It is impossible to bring a comic book story to the big screen in a completely faithful manner because comics are different from movies. However, while the story beats and moments in the plot will differ, it is important to keep the main themes and ideas from the original source material because that is what remains most important about any story. It is about respecting the source material.
While Snyder recreated several comic book panels with a level of love that proves his mastery as a director, he didn’t get why things happened in the book. Scenes that are supposed to be dark humor are presented as bleak moments in the movie. The characters end up as superficial sketches of what they were in the book, as if Snyder wanted to make them look right, but they never felt right. Dr. Manhattan in the comics was a man who knew he had lost his humanity, but he is someone who has lost his humanity in Snyder’s story. Rorschach was a cautionary tale in the comics, but he was made to be a cult hero in the movie.
In the comics, most of the worst moments happened off-panel, but Snyder wanted to show the horrors, which helped make the movie dark and grim, when it should have played out more like the satire the comics mastered. The ending was also mishandled, with the fake alien invasion featuring the giant squid creature being changed to Dr. Manhattan seemingly slaughtering millions. The books had Ozymandias fake an alien invasion to bring society together, and Snyder’s movie used a weapon the United States government had used for decades to do the same thing, which made no sense. It made no sense if the goal was world peace. The movie just didn’t work.
HBO’s Watchmen Returned to the Book’s Main Themes and Story
That leads to the HBO Watchmen series. This ran for nine episodes and took place years after the events of the Watchmen comics. Smartly, Damon Lindelof made this a sequel to the comics, and not to Zack Snyder’s film, because this was about following the story and the themes from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ story. This was not about following whatever message Zack Snyder was trying to convey. By doing so, Lindelof was able to create a story in the world created by the squid attack, and also show how even that wouldn’t last.
There were several great moments in the series, including showing that Dr. Manhattan had imprisoned Ozymandias on Europa for his crimes, while also trying to hide the true nature of the faked alien attack. However, the best part of the HBO series was showing that Rorschach was never a hero in the original story. He believed he was doing the right thing, but in the HBO series, the people who worshipped and followed what Rorschach did were racists and bigots and used his journals to persecute others.
The series also took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and it used the Tulsa Race Massacre as a backdrop that showed that Ozymandias failed tremendously when formulating his plan. The smartest man in the world believed that he could create world peace by faking the alien attack, without ever thinking that the evil in men’s hearts would not leave, even after that. The books showed superheroes as damaged, fascist, and morally compromised people, and the series showed extremist groups who romanticized that fantasy. What is best is that Watchmen had Ozymandias believe he could force world peace. The series showed that systemic violence couldn’t disappear like that. Zack Snyder didn’t understand Watchmen, but the HBO series understood it completely.
What were your thoughts on the two Watchmen adaptations? Let us know which you think better represented the themes from the comics in the comment section below.
