Wesley Fenlon | Not with a bang but a whimper.

While the Hollywood of the 1930s is hardly known for its raunch or bawdry, literature of the early 20th century is an altogether different animal. The rise of pulp fiction and the hardboiled genre in the 1920s meant popular literature was poking against the boundaries of polite society. And while the 1934 film adaptation of Dashiell Hammet’s classic murder mystery The Thin Man tones down on some of the novel’s more indecent and suggestive dialogue, it perfectly captures the playful chemistry between the story’s leading couple.

Nick and Nora Charles, played by William Powell (in a Best Actor-nominated performance) and Myrna Loy, became one of the screen’s most successful couples after The Thin Man’s release. A few minutes into the film, and it’s easy to see why. Nick, a former private investigator, becomes embroiled in a murder mystery thanks to past associations, but he doesn’t tackle the caper with the tough guy mentality Humphrey Bogart would later popularize in the 1940s. Powell energetically bounces between flippancy, nonchalance and sharp wit, playing Nick as a devilish gentleman who has far more interest in drinking liquor and teasing his young wife than solving a murder. Loy does just as much to hold up her end of the couple, going toe-to-toe against her on-screen husband with comical facial expressions and banter aplenty.

In fact, the entire production of The Thin Man plays up Hammett’s underappreciated talent for comedy, resulting in an amusing twist on the typically serious detective genre. The film skews more on the side of entertainment than complex mystery, making a few minor adjustments to Hammett’s novel to for the benefit of the Hollywood presentation. Clyde Wynant (the titular thin man) actually makes an appearance at the beginning of the film, while he is only spoken of but never actually encountered in the novel. The first scene establishes Wynant’s character and his relationship with his daughter Dorothy, which ultimately leads to the girl meeting Nick and pleading with him to find her missing father.

In the novel, a thing aren’t packaged quite so neatly — Dorothy hasn’t seen her father since childhood, nor is she the pure hearted innocent she appears in the film. Her brother receives similar treatment, having his role marginalized in favor of a one-dimensional, goofy persona purely in place for the laughs. Even so, once the film establishes its story to simplify things for viewers the plot moves along at Hammett’s brisk pace. Several portions of the backstory are excised for the sake of time, but everything comes together in the final moments in classic form, as Nick lays out the tangled, murderous details at a delightful dinner party packed with nearly the entire cast.

Hammett’s complex plot hardly seems to matter next to the electric relationship between Powell and Loy, who went on to star in five more Thin Man capers as the flirtatious husband-and-wife team. If the series had been established after John Huston’s genre-defining film noir treatment of The Maltese Falcon, Hammett’s penchant for devious mysteries may have taken on a more serious role in the film.

Thankfully, the Hollywood of the 30s took the laughs and ran with them, resulting in a rare balance between crime and comedy. In fact, any film made since 1934 combining the two genres may owe The Thin Man for writing the recipe of a perfect murder-comedy cocktail.

Every so often, a story manages to brook the transition from written form to television to the silver screen.  Batman and Superman both began life as comic book characters, starred in a number of live-action and animated television shows, and eventually achieved success in Hollywood.  Masters of the Universe is not one of those stories.

In 1987, the popularity of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe had reached its fever pitch — the cartoon show and its spin-off She-Ra had just concluded, and the toy line from which the series was first born was still going strong.  It was time to take the muscle-bound, uncomfortably homoerotic hero to the big leagues.  Though this decision undoubtedly thrilled legions of 10 year-olds around the world, the resulting film was, not-so-surprisingly, a mess of bad acting, an utterly asinine script, and a hodgepodge of movie clichés.

The opening titles of Masters of the Universe look and sound as if they were ripped straight from 1978’s Superman, and the legions of ineffectual soldiers are dead-ringers for the black-helmeted crewmembers of the Death Star.  Even borrowing heavily from its betters, Masters of the Universe may have been a salvageable effort if it took place in the creative sci-fi/medieval fantasy world of Eternia.  Instead, everyone involved decided it would be much more fun to throw the heroes through a wormhole, drop them in New Jersey, and pair them up with a couple troubled teenagers (including a pre-Friends Courteney Cox).

If the relocation to Jersey wasn’t a clear indication, practically nothing in Masters of the Universe corresponds to the original He-Man comics.  Most of the major characters are represented, but other heroes like Stratos are nowhere to be seen.  And Orko, He-Man’s floating sidekick whose blunderings once served as comic relief in the animated series, is replaced by the film’s ugly Hobbit/troll mashup Gwildor.

Though Dolph Lundgren would’ve been a far better He-Man without ever opening his mouth, Frank Langella’s Skeletor may be the highlight of the film, simply because his make-up looks a little cool.  Considering how limited his facial expressions are behind Skeletor’s yellow-white skull exterior, Langella’s voicework outpaces the rest of the cringe-inducing cast…until the finale, anyway, when Skeletor transforms himself into some sort of Golden God and utterly ruins everything.

Kids may blissfully overlook the terrible acting and moronic plot, delight in Skeletor’s cliché blundering henchmen and be thrilled by the clumsy choreography of each painful fight scene.  They’ll even get a kick out of the real-world setting and the infusion of distraught teenagers, who rise to the challenge of helping a mostly naked man save his home planet and are rewarded with true love forever. For everyone else, Masters of the Universe is a textbook on how to make a bad children’s movie — take a terrible story, cast bad actors, and try to make it look as cheap as possible.  New Jersey seems to boast a population of about twelve people, but maybe that’s understandable — nobody else wanted anything to do with Masters of the Universe.

“Ordinary people caught up in extraordinary situations” — John Wagner’s foundation for the graphic novel A History of Violence, the story of a normal man caught up in a frighteningly real kill-or-be-killed world.  David Cronenberg’s film adaptation depicts the same extraordinary situation, but alters or cuts most of the extraneous plot points, resulting in a leaner film that is both more believable and intense than the original comic.

A History of Violence begins with a lengthy, continuous tracking shot, seemingly easing into the story with a relaxed nonchalance.  The same casual air continues for the first twenty minutes of the film’s running time, introducing us to Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) and his wife (Mario Bello) and children, a seemingly perfect family in an idyllic small town.

That all comes crumbling down when Tom kills two vicious robbers in self-defense, exposing his long-hidden identity to the demons of his past.  When those demons manifest in the form of the menacing Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris), the Stalls are tossed into an incredibly tense battle for survival and sanity.  The slow build-up of the first half of A History of Violence introduces a cast of realistic, human characters, and the slowly-mounting tension continuously heightens the suspense.  The film gives us just enough information to understand each scene as it unfolds, keeping us guessing all the way through—is Tom really an experienced killer with a history of violence, or is he simply an ordinary man caught up in an extraordinary situation?

Cronenberg’s film deftly maintains a level of balanced believability that makes its story so gripping — despite the insanity of the circumstances, each character reacts like a real person, and it’s that subtle storytelling that elevates A History of Violence well past its comic book roots.  Wagner’s story possesses none of the subtlety of the film, immediately beginning with a random murder and delving straight into Tom’s fight in his diner.

From that point forward, it’s obvious that Tom’s hiding dark secrets, and the eventual revelation leads into a long backstory substantially different than the brief glimpse of Tom’s past we get in the film.  We discover Tom committed all his misdeeds as a teenager, alongside his friend Richie; in the movie, Richie (William Hurt) is a mobster, Tom’s brother, and the evil Tom must ultimately confront to end his cycle of violence.

Despite the Tom of Wagner’s graphic novel seeming like a more normal everyman than Mortensen’s character, the comic strings together explosions, shootouts, and insanely evil forces.  Even the film’s fantastic characterization is nowhere to be found — Tom’s son “Buzz” throws out lame catchphrases, and his wife’s quick acceptance of his bloody past is almost laughably simplistic contrasted with the emotionally-wrenching fracture that comes between Mortensen and Maria Bello.

Vince Locke’s rough art continuously felt like the bare minimum of functionality needed to convey Wagner’s story — only a few rare scenes stood out or managed to exaggerate the horror of Tom’s ordeal.  The black-and-white sketchbook ugliness may be in keeping with the story’s tone, but with Cronenberg at the reins, A History of Violence tells a better story and wraps it in a superior package of haunting cinematography and an understated score.   Where Wagner’s comic tells a contained story that leaves little to the imagination, the film’s ending can only leave us yearning for more, as if A History of Violence was a glimpse into the lives of real people that’s over far too soon.

Cinema as a form of entertainment has been around for about a century, now, though its constant evolution has ensured that the films of 2010 don’t look or work much like the films of 1950. The way movies convey drama, for instance, has evolved considerably in the past fifty years, thanks in large part to the changes in camera technology.

Take Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, for example. The film derives its absolutely incredible intensity from hand-held camerawork, moving in so close to the characters that its impossible not to feel tightly linked to every moment that plays out on the screen. Scenes filmed in the cramped confines of compact cars never betray the fact that a camera is in the midst of actors ducking in and out of shots with precise timing, and as a result it’s one of the most immersive examples of cinematography in movie history. By being invisible, the camera performs miracles.

Which brings us to Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, a game that hews closer to the realm of Hollywood high adventure than perhaps any video game since the medium was born. Nathan Drake’s globe-spanning, Indiana Jonesian adventure comes alive with beautiful, immaculately-detailed environments, delightful character interaction, and one unbelievable set piece after another. But like Cuarón’s Children of Men, the real marvel is at work behind the scenes — Uncharted 2 is such a perfectly designed video game, it comes closer to achieving the storytelling power of the movies than I could have possibly expected.

Despite the limited speed of the Playstation 3’s Blu-Ray drive, Uncharted 2 continuously streams its lush world with nary a hitch, and loading screens only show up between clearly defined sections or episodes of the game.  Even the most exciting moments of powerfully cinematic games like Mass Effect 2 take a break to load with some frequency; not Uncharted 2.  Among Thieves’ train section illustrates Naughty Dog’s development chops, standing out as the most breathtaking moment of a game filled with unbelievable spectacles; the jungle streams in seamlessly, the train jerks and groans along its track, the enemies advance through boxcars to close in on Drake’s position — and it never once stutters.

Essentially, what we’re talking about is momentum, and a lot of it.  And while the train chapter of the game is probably the most obviously wowing, I found myself more impressed by the environmental changes Naughty Dog could pull off while still leaving Drake’s actions completely in the hands of the player.  Last generation, fluidly animated cinematic cutscenes in games were the method of choice to convey over-the-top dramatic moments, and they were often aided by quick time events to keep the player involved.  Just think of God of War II’s intense final battle against Zeus, or Resident Evil 4’s knife fight against Krauser.  Both used cinematics to do things with camera angles and character animation you wouldn’t usually see in the directly controllable portions of the game.  But in Uncharted 2, Naughty Dog affects massive changes to their environments without a single second of hesitation.  One second Drake is hiding behind a desk in an office building, firing at a crew of mercenaries — the next second he’s staggering to retain his balance as the building begins to crumble and tip over.  Full player control?  Still there.

Every second is made all the more impressive by the character animation, no doubt bolstered by a fantastic motion capture crew.  When Uncharted 2 does transition to cutscenes, it happens so instantly they retain that essence of seamlessness — it feels like the camera has just taken control for a moment.  Other games employ much more obvious triggers for cutscenes that suddenly find your character in a different position than you’d been just moments before, when in control.  But Uncharted 2 makes it all seem natural and authentic, a testament to the balance between storytelling and interactivity Naughty Dog has created.  Games in the future may trend closer to being movies with bits and pieces of interactivity (Heavy Rain springs to mind), but if anything finds a better mesh of cinema and game, it’ll likely be Uncharted 3.  Naughty Dog has taken the best pieces of bombastic high adventure film and incorporated it into a compelling video game experience, without sacrificing the power of player control.  It’s like being guided through the coolest movie ever.  And that is good game design.

I’ve never been to war.  I’ve never been shot at, never had my life seriously threatened.  I’ve never killed another human being, or seen one die.

It is impossible for the reality of any of those sensations to be fully conveyed to someone who has never experienced them.  No film, no matter how powerful or insightful, could truly encapsulate those feelings.  But as Tim O’Brien wrote in “How to Tell a True War Story,”

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things they have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.

The Hurt Locker is a true war story.  It may be impossible to understand war without living it, but the film captures the essence of that experience.  Through remarkable cinematography and utterly convincing  performances, it communicates the intensity, the fear, the confusion of desert warfare with a calm sense of authority.  If it wasn’t such good filmmaking, it would be all too easy to believe the events were completely real.

Instead of the traditional angle of battle-hardened footsoldiers on the front lines of combat, The Hurt Locker focuses on a small Army bomb squad, a group of men faced with the most unpredictable and fearsome element of guerrilla warfare.  It is the threat of the unknowable that lends The Hurt Locker its incredible sense of tension; even with its protagonist bulked up in protective bomb gear, the omnipresent danger makes him and his squad seem naked and exposed in the wide open streets of Baghdad.

Nearly every scene in the film is intense and riveting, but it never cashes in its audience’s emotional investment with cheap tricks.  There are no shocking plot twists — in fact, The Hurt Locker does a remarkable job portraying the lives of three soldiers and their experiences in war without trying to tie them into a more grandiose plot.  There is no storyline here, no villain — just the day in, day out threat of death.  There are no random explosions, no contrived conversations.  Even the tenuous camaraderie James and Sanborn develop is strained, natural.

The long moments of eerie stillness in The Hurt Locker become its most compelling because the potential for death always lingers, always hangs in the air (the sparing use of music also highlights the emptiness of many a scene).  The cinematography bolsters the tense atmosphere with tight shots and expert hand-held camera work.  Even though the shaky cameras depict the action from close-up like authentic war time documentaries, plenty of shots still convey the scope of the desert and the rubble-strewn city hiding homemade bombs under plastic bags and broken concrete.

Despite how accurately The Hurt Locker depicts the middle east, perhaps the most powerful shot in the film comes when James returns homes.  A wide shot of cereal boxes in an empty Publix, seemingly stretching across both ends of the screen and into infinity, cause a man who once risked his life on a daily basis to look hopelessly lost.

It is rare for a war movie, especially one about bombs, to be so captivating when no explosions are erupting on the screen.  No doubt writer Mark Boal basing the script on real experiences made The Hurt Locker the powerful film it is, but the work is subtle.  Since there’s no flashy dialogue, the actors all but assume the identities of the characters.  Watching each of them grapple with the war in their own way begs the question: how many true war stories from Iraq are out there even now, just waiting to be told?

Most of them never will be, but The Hurt Locker tells their essence.  No moral.  No rectitude.  Just people.

Hayao Miyazaki is, undeniably, one of the most talented and celebrated filmmakers in the history of Japan.  Not that his ability need only be measured against that of his countrymen; short of Walt Disney and the rising star of Pixar, no other animation company in the world exists to match Miyazki’s own Studio Ghibli. My first exposure to his work was Princess Mononoke, and I instantly latched onto it as the best animated film I’d ever seen.  It was visually stunning and thematically complex, altogether different from anything I’d seen before.

And it remained my favorite for at least half a decade, even as I’ve journeyed back through Ghibli’s productions.  Now, I haven’t yet seen them all — there’s something intensely frightening about the prospect of there being no more Miyazaki for me to experience for the very first time.  After watching absolutely wonderful films such as Spirited Away and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, I was just as enraptured by Miyazaki’s creative talent, but growing more secure in the notion that Princess Mononoke was the height of his craft.

Then I saw Lupin.  And, a couple weeks later, I saw it again.  And again, after a few months.  With the exception of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (a hopelessly addicting and energizing work of animation), no other movie or television series has penetrated my mind so thoroughly as to be an evening’s entertainment three times in less than a year.  Now, when I think of Princess Mononoke, I still see it as Miyazaki’s grandest vision, examining the spirit of mankind, celebrating the mysticism of nature, and questioning the interaction of those two worlds, that’s not really what he does best.  His skill, reduced to its purest form, is instilling an incomparable sense of life, soul, and adventure into two dimensional drawings.  My Neighbor Totoro and Lupin III show that Miyazaki is at his best on the smaller scale, and The Castle of Cagliostro is quite possibly the most hilarious, heartwarming, and fun heist film ever made.  Maybe it’s not quite a heist movie, in classic Lupin form, but it is an exercise in pure adventure, with the charismatic thief at the top of his form and at a pinnacle of lovability that he’d never quite reach again.

Unlike his heavily fantasy-laden works, Lupin is a movie more or less grounded in reality.  There are no mystical forest creatures, no airships or magical powers.  Yet somehow, Miyazaki manages to perfectly balance the real-world setting with Lupin’s absurd antics without ruining the believability of the film.  In one of the movie’s greatest — and most ridiculous — moments, Lupin bungles his meticulous plan to use a rope to get from one steep roof precipice of Cagliostro’s castle to another, and ends up leaping the distance in great cartoony bounds, bear hugging the sheer wall and holding on for dear life.  It’s entirely impossible, but by subverting our expectations and showing Lupin succeed in a wholly unexpected way, the warm appeal of Miyazaki’s presentation makes the scene a laugh-out-loud good time rather than an oh, please cringe-inducer.

The Castle of Cagliostro immortalized Lupin and no doubt helped the obscenely popular franchise continue for a solid three decades.  It’s almost a shame that Miyazaki’s work with the character is so brilliantly perfect and charming; when protagonist and director both shine so brightly, you know later efforts may never be able to capture that same quintessence of movie magic.  Of course, Miyazaki has continued to direct incredible works of animation, but with Lupin stealing the favorite slot in my heart, I wish the pair could be reunited once again, just to see what would happen.

For as long as I’ve loved movies, I’ve hated horror. What was there to like? It’s a genre of cheap tricks, manipulating the cinematic space to produce scares and generally throwing plot and character development to the wind in favor of blood, gore and one absurd murder after another. But like all generalizations, mine has proven it’s not quite a perfect fit. The most popular horror films almost always appeal to the worst in us — slasher flicks were all the rages for years, with franchises like Friday the 13th, Halloween, and Nightmare on Elm Street persisting year after year. More recently, so-called torture porn like Saw, Hostel, and The Hills Have Eyes has pushed the glorification of gore and violence to its limits, doing its best to scare the audience with a grisly sensory overload. And that’s not the horror worth paying attention to.

Tonight I watched Rosemary’s Baby, a deeply disturbing film perfectly crafted by Roman Polanski. There are no cheap scares produced by actors suddenly jumping into frame; there are no rivers of blood, eviscerated corpses or immortal murderers. There’s just the story of a young woman entangled in a surreal web of the occult, not comprehending or believing the terror of her situation until it’s far too late. Perfect pacing creates a taught, constantly unsettling film that grows more and more eerie as it goes. Polanski drops enough hints, employs just enough subtle music, to gradually increase the suspense to the bursting point. That’s what great horror is about — withholding information as long as possible, unnerving the audience and ultimately facing them with something relentless, impossible to overcome, something that strikes at the soul rather than the body.

Aside from the suspenseful filmmaking itself, Polanski accomplished this in Rosemary’s Baby by tapping into a primal instinct and subverting it — the innocence of a child. It’s because they should be so innocent that the reverse becomes so horrifying. It’s been used to great effect in classics like Village of the Damned and The Omen. Of course, plenty of not-so-great films try to employ the same concept — The Good Son, for example — but even then, the psychological angle still works better than any Jason or Freddy movie.

Where each film starring the terror of Camp Crystal Lake relishing in showing every kill, the most suspenseful horror films drawing out the scene and subverting your expectations. The Hitcher might seem like it has more in common with slashers than Hitchcock, but it’s another example of a horror movie that triumphs by attacking the mind of its characters, rather than impaling them on a fishhook or giving them the old meat cleaver; it’s relentless insanity, presented against a serene and beautiful backdrop that makes Rutger Hauer’s chilling hitchhiker a scarier incarnation of evil than Freddy or Michael Myers.

Remakes of classic or cult classic horror films almost unanimously lack some quality of their forbearers; the new Hitcher passes up the grit and mental intensity of the original for more glamorous violence. Maybe it’s just the current trend, a newfound bloodlust in the wake of torture porn’s popularity. At least there are still movies every so often that are more about building tension than shocking the audience. Sunshine was a noble and entertaining effort in the sci-fi realm, though it was certainly no Alien. Maybe it’s time I got around to seeing The Descent…or maybe I’ll just explore the depths of Hitchcock, instead.

Poor Final Fantasy VII. If you hadn’t been so wildly popular, such a spectacularly successful smash hit for Sony’s fledgling disc-based console, perhaps you would have remained a happy memory. But that’s not how things worked out. When you sell more than 10 million copies and introduce a new generation of gamers to the role-playing genre, it’s hard to be bound by the realm of nostalgia. It makes me wonder who’s more to blame for the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII nonsense — Square Enix, eager to whore out their most popular characters for all the money they can grab, or the fans, who eagerly lap it up and still clamor for that PS3 remake.

The whole thing really began with Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. Now, just three years after the release of the original movie, Advent Children Complete is out, resplendent in 1080p and jammed with 25 minutes of extra footage. Supposedly it’s not the end of the line for the Compilation, but it’s all we’ve got for the foreseeable future.

Read the rest of this entry on GameSpite »

Despite the inevitable dissent among Watchmen fans, moviegoers, and critics, one thing is fairly certain: Zack Snyder did not butcher, destroy, or otherwise mangle the source material in his effort to convert the most respected graphic novel of all time into something acceptably Hollywood. Camera shots, lines of dialogue, and important plot elements were plucked wholesale from Alan Moore’s creation. The harsh, bleak atmosphere of a Commie-fearing America remained completely intact; the vast majority of the novel was represented faithfully on screen, and a mammoth extended edition will integrate even more material that couldn’t make the theatrical cut.

Of course, complaints remain, opinions will forever be mixed, and Watchmen certainly provides its share of disappointing elements for all its successes. Read on to find out what worked and what didn’t in the cinematic world of Watchmen.

What Watchmen Does Right

Rorschach – Outside of the film noir, voice-over narration rarely really works, and far too often it feels like a contrived or lazy way to quickly convey important plot information. Watchmen is a wonderful exception.

Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) delivers his dry, gravelly account of New York’s descent into sin impeccably, dropping unnecessary articles to produce that trademark jarring, blunt assessment of the world. Haley’s portrayal of Rorschach brings the full brunt of the character’s cynicism and brutality to bear in a way I didn’t think would be possible for the film, reaffirming Rorschach’s place in the ranks of the all-time greatest characters in comic book history. And man, that mask — the constantly-shifting inkblot is simply mesmerizing in a way the comic couldn’t hope to match.

Nite Owl – In the graphic novel, Dan Dreiberg hardly seems like a once-upon-a-time superhero — he’s overweight, middle-aged, and more than a little awkward. On screen, he fares a little better — as portrayed by Patrick Wilson he’s younger, more vibrant, and not quite so heavy. The change to his character actually reflects a noticeable shift towards youth and vitality in Snyder’s Watchmen, and I’ll admit that something about his character is lost in the change.

In the end, though, dropping the paunch and a few weary middle-age years works for the character. Enough of the washed-up average joe remains in Wilson’s performance, and he delivers both a solid Dreiberg, bespectacled and tweeded out, and a kickass Nite Owl in a sleek, deadly costume, which makes for far more entertaining cinema than Moore’s out of shape hero.

Dr. Manhattan – I can’t pinpoint exactly why, but there’s just something about Billy Crudup’s soft-spoken delivery that enhances the appeal of any powerful character he portrays. Maybe it’s that dichotomy between Dr. Manhattan’s infinite, deadly abilities and his delicate, oh-so human voice. But Crudup’s performance alone doesn’t bring Dr. Manhattan to life — it’s the incredible special effects that truly transform him. That consistent blue glow that bathes the other actors in an eerie light and those milky-white eyes make Crudup’s character a dead-on match for Moore’s creation.

The Comedian – Edward Blake’s death in the first moments of Watchmen kicks off the story, sending Rorschach on an investigation that eventually leads to the unearthing of Ozymandias’ plot. Despite being dead for the entirety of the story, The Comedian regularly shows up in flashbacks, and it gradually becomes apparent that he is the lynchpin to the complex situation. As the film clues us in on the events Blake took part in over the decades that make up Watchmen’s backstory, it also peels away layers of his character, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan absolutely becomes The Comedian — smirking, malicious, bloodthirsty and cynical. He represents the spirit of Watchmen to the core, a depressing depiction of humanity who sees the worst in people — and in himself — and basks in the debauchery until it consumes him.

Tone – Alan Moore’s Watchmen remains consistently serious over its 12 chapters, telling an intricate tale with realistic characters and a plot more structured and deliberately, delicately paced than nearly any other comic book ever written. Even Rorschach’s joke about Pagliacci the clown reflects the graphic novel’s bitter sentimentality, turning comic relief into a means of showing how utterly hopeless life truly is. And while Snyder’s adaptation retains the adult plot and impending doom of nuclear Holocaust, the tone is noticeably different.

Ironically, the film version of Watchmen feels more like a comic book than its paper-and-ink counterpart, a change that undoubtedly irks the majority of Moore purists, to say nothing of the author himself. Pop music, a caricatured Nixon and raucous action scenes all populate the movie. And for the most part, they make it a considerably more enjoyable experience. By taking itself just a little less seriously than the original work, Watchmen manages to turn incredibly difficult source material into something entertaining and watchable, while leaving the adult narrative more or less intact.

Music – Watchmen’s soundtrack is as awesome as it is unexpected. The marginally less serious, comic book feel of the film allows for music that connects key scenes with a relevant piece of pop culture or simply fits the vibe of the moment. Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel are the last things that come to mind alongside a comic like Watchmen, but they add emotion and energy to scenes in a way that printed material, quite obviously, cannot. A more traditional, solely orchestral score would’ve been playing it safe, but the pop songs show a unique awareness of the historic periods the film moves through. And that part when Archie bursts through the Antarctic ice and carves a groove into the snow in time with the wailing guitar of All Along the Watchtower? Oh yeah.

Slow motion – Given that Snyder’s previous film, 300, was built upon a foundation of gratuitous slow-motion, I expected to see a repeat performance in Watchmen. The trailers painted a grim picture, but Snyder toned it down for the full feature, and by and large the slow motion remains in its appropriate place, improving the action scenes instead of slowing them to a ridiculous crawl. Each fight scene feels appropriately kickass, balancing Snyder’s trademark style with a welcome healthy dose of moderation.

What Watchmen Does Wrong

Ozymandias – He’s the smartest man in the world. The fastest man in the world. His grand, evil scheme is really a genius plot to save humanity. Unfortunately, Snyder’s Watchmen cuts Adrian Veidt’s screen time down to his essential scenes and crams his backstory into a portion of the film that robs it of its effectiveness. Matthew Goode simply can’t carry the character, and his portrayal of Ozymandias invokes none of the elegance, eloquence, or human appeal it should. And the dramatic revelation of his guilt hardly delivers the gut-punch of surprise it should — how could it, when Goode comes across as cold and arrogant and his black costume practically screams menace?

Silk Spectre II – Like Nite Owl, Silk Spectre II sheds a few years for the film adaptation of Watchmen, and Malin Akerman looks mighty fine in that black-and-yellow latex. Too bad that’s just about all she does. While there’s still enough left to Dan Dreiberg after his Hollywood makeover to retain an appealing character, Laurie Jupiter is stripped of all the little flaws that make her interesting. She no longer smokes; she’s no longer depressed or temperamental; she looks just as young and vibrant in the film’s present as she does in its flashbacks. And without those flaws, Laurie becomes the shallowest member of the main cast. I’m not sure if the majority of the blame lies with the script or Malin Akerman’s performance, but the end result is a flat, weak character.

Rorschach and the psychiatrist – We’ve already established that Rorschach exudes awesome in almost lethal doses, and the film adaptation brings him to life perfectly. That said, I was disappointed to see his time with Dr. Malcolm Long cut short; in the original story, Malcolm plays an important role in Chapter VI, and Rorschach’s blunt cynicism gradually breaks down the psychiatrist’s cheery optimism. We see the world through Malcolm’s eyes, and his own transformation at the figurative hands of Walter Kovacs’ psyche exposes us to the full brunt of Moore’s bleak depiction of human existence. It’s Rorschach’s finest moment, and would likely be the first scene I’d choose to have added to an extended adaptation.

Minor inconsistencies – When dealing with such a complex story and the time constraints of a film conversion, some things aren’t going to work out quite perfectly. A few remnants of the story remained intact when they really shouldn’t have, resulting in weaker scenes lacking the thought-out precision of Moore’s work. In the graphic novel, The Comedian discovers Veidt’s master plan accidentally while investigating the island housing the faux-alien giant squid. But in the film, there’s no such justification for his unearthing of Ozymandias’ intentions. Veidt’s giant lynx, Bubastis, was meant to be a holdover of his genetic experimentations in that same project, but that plot thread is entirely absent from the film, leaving the animal’s existence unexplained.

Rorschach’s confrontation with Moloch also suffers from the conversion, as much of their interaction is cut from the film. In the comic, Rorschach tells the retired villain to drop a note requesting a second meeting, should he remember any useful information. With that sequence of events missing, Rorschach’s convenient arrival at Moloch’s apartment, just in time for Veidt’s trap, makes little sense. And the office of the New Frontiersman newspaper only shows up in the film’s final moments, which makes Rorschach’s decision to give them his journal some 20 minutes earlier especially vague.

Nudity – The nudity in Watchmen is a tricky subject. On the one hand, the film deserves considerable respect for not flinching from male nudity and staying absolutely true to Dr. Manhattan’s comic book depiction. On the other hand, the significance of his nudity as a symbolic detachment from everyday society isn’t referenced, and I’m not sure anyone really wanted or needed to see quite that much blue wang. Even the sex scenes between Laurie and Dan appear goofy and poorly handled.

While artist David Gibbons drew plenty of scenes with nude characters, the inherent difference in detail between a comic book and a live-action movie shifts the focus considerably. When there are naked people on screen, it’s hard, if not impossible, to pay attention to something else, and the film simply couldn’t convey the same degree of subtlety as Gibbons’ art. That not-quite-so-subtle tone worked for nearly everything in Snyder’s Watchmen, but not so for the nudity.

From the moment John Williams’ iconic score strikes its first ominous chord, no one would ever think of water in the same way again. The spectacular success of “Jaws” extends beyond the silver screen in a way few films can boast to match — not only did it launch the concept of the summer blockbuster, it penetrated the public conscience so completely that beach attendance in the summer of 1975 took a noticeable hit.

John Williams’ inventive use of minimalism, which was an integral part of the movie’s success, gave birth to a new style of suspense music that quickly became synonymous with impending doom. The same concept of minimalism pervades the entire production, making the shark’s appearance on-screen all the more terrifying when it finally happens.

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