OVERALL

FILM

AUDIO

VIDEO

EXTRAS

ADVICE

Every now and again I see a film that really makes me scratch my head, wondering what the heck it was that I just watched. These movies are often very confusing and opaque, with overly complicated plots, numerous flashbacks and poor storytelling. These films may even have very interesting and original plot lines that simply fall under the weight of there own obtuseness and incoherence. Such a film unfortunately, is Watchmen, making its debut on Blu-ray.

Film

As you can no doubt already tell, I am not a big fan of this film. I really wanted to like it, as I am a big fan of comic books and all things superhero. However, this film is just too confusing, too goofy and far too long to be an enjoyable experience. The director’s cut clocks in at 186 minutes, which is 25 minutes longer than the theatrical release. Frankly, at a little over 3 hours, this film is far too long . The film is directed by Zach Snyder and is based on the limited series of comic books by Alan Moore and David Gibbons.

The film is set in an alternate time line in the year 1985. It turns out that beginning in the 1930′s in this alternate timeline, the United States was defended by a group of masked superheroes that were more like vigilantes than the Police. This group of masked heroes rose up in response to a group of masked and costumed criminals. While they were successful in fighting crime, the public grew weary of their excesses and turned against them, with the Federal Government eventually passing a law banning the use of masks in public.

Most of the original group of masked heroes went into retirement and were replaced by a new generation which by the year 1985, were all now underground, with the exception of one, Mr. Manhattan, a former nuclear research scientist who was exposed to lethal radiation who rather than dying, reconstituted himself into an all powerful and all knowing giant naked blue man. Mr. Manhattan was eventually tapped by President Nixon to use his superpowers used end and win the Vietnam War. Rather than being forced to resign by the Watergate fiasco, President Nixon went on to serve numerous terms as President, remaining in office until 1985. After winning the war, Mr. Manhattan became involved in a project to develop a renewable source of energy to replace fossil fuels. He was also a hedge against nuclear attack by the Soviet Union as he was the ultimate doomsday weapon. The film opens with the murder of one of the masked heroes, The Comedian.

The rest of the masked heros become fearful for their lives. In the meanwhile, Mr. Manhattan is undergoing a bit of a mental breakdown and flees the planet to take up residence on Mars. With Mr. Manhattan gone, the Soviet Union begins to move against the strategic interests of the United States, prompting President Nixon to begin to prepare to launch a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. While all this is occurring, a mysterious person or group outside the government is planning to launch their own attack to dominate the world. Will our masked heroes be able to crack this plot and prevent an all out nuclear war between the US and the USSR while also saving themselves? Plots don’t get much more convoluted than this. Too much of the film is used trying to introduce the masked characters and their histories to the audience. The use of repeated flashbacks is really distracting and franking, disorienting, making this a very difficult film to follow.

If you are unfamiliar with this comic series as I was, you will probably find this movie just as confusing as I did. The film’s pace is very tedious as well and frankly, nearly put me to sleep. Unless you are a fan, I would recommend that you skip this release entirely. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Video

Watchmen is a very stylized looking film. If you are looking for a film with a natural looking color palette, this is not the film for you. The film has a slightly muted color palette that is skewed to the colors brown, blue and grey. Skin tones in particular have a brownish cast to them. Most of the film takes place either at night or in darkened interior settings. Black levels are superb as is shadow detail. I found the overall level of detail to be excellent as well, with fine facial details as well as the details of the various costumes and masks and backgrounds clearly visible. Despite the overall dark, dreary and drab look of the film, the film’s overall sense of depth and clarity remained excellent, with only occasional image softness. I am sure that given the look of the film, that is was a difficult film to encode. Fortunately, this person responsible for the encoding was more than up to the task.

Audio

As one would expect from a comic book based superheroes action film, Watchmen boasts a fine immersive audio experience with excellent dynamics, punchy bass and excellent sound effects. The surrounds are used aggressively throughout the film and create a beautiful immersive sound field. The overall sound of the film is smooth and open with excellent transparency and imaging, with pinpoint and seamless placement of the numerous sound effects within the sound field.. The panning effects here are excellent. Dynamics are excellent as well as is the sense of perceived sound depth, both from front to back and side to side within the sound field. The dialogue track is also well recorded and well placed in the mix and always intelligible, even during the loudest action sequences. This is a fine sounding audio encode and is one that will no doubt thrill fans of the film.

Special Features

Watchmen is BD-Live enabled and contains a digital copy that is compatible with Macs and PCs. The extras included with the release consist of what is described as Warner Brothers Maximum Movie Mode hosted by director Zack Snyder with director walk-ons with scene analysis, picture-in-picture video with the cast and crew, side-by-side comparisons of the graphic novel and film, timeline comparisons of our real world and the alternate timeline of the film as well as photo galleries of production stills and storyboards. These features run along side the film in a separate window.

Also included is a second disc with additional extras including The Phenomenon: The Comic That Changed Comics which details the history and influence of the Watchmen comics. Also included is the featurette Real Superheroes, Real Vigilantes which explores the fascination and psychology behind real world vigilantes as well as Mechanics: Technologies of a Fantastic World, which details how the technologies featured in the comics were transfered to the big screen. Also included is the My Chemical Romance Desolation Row Music video. All of the extras are presented in high definition.

Final Thoughts

While Watchmen features excellent audio and video, I found the film to be confusing, tedious and disjointed and as such, can’t really recommend it to any one other than fans of the original comic.