Watchmen: Director's Cut (Amazon Exclusive Nite Owl Ship) [Blu-ray]
by Zack Snyder
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Blu-ray details
Actor: Billy Crudup, Jackie Earle Haley, Malin Akerman, Patrick WilsonDirector: Zack Snyder
Audio: English (Unknown), DTS-HD High Res Audio; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Color, Director's Cut, Special Extended Version, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.40:1
Running Time: 186 minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: 2009-07-21
Studio: Warner Home Video
Blu-ray Reviews of Watchmen: Director's Cut (Amazon Exclusive Nite Owl Ship) [Blu-ray]
Blu-ray Review: As faithful to the graphic novel as a movie will ever get
Summary: 5 Stars
They year 1986 was a watershed year for comic books. It was the year that people started taking comic books seriously as a form of literature. The reason? Alan Moore's Watchmen (along with Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns) introduced readers to superheroes with real problems. This was a vast departure from the the years of the kid-friendly Super Friends and the campy Adam West Batman television series.
When Watchmen hit, that all changed. Hailed for its deconstruction and examination of superhero tropes, it won a Hugo Award in 1988 and it is the only graphic novel to be listed by Time as one of the 100 greatest novels of the 20th century.
Naturally, Hollywood wanted in on the action, and attempts to make a Watchmen movie have continued since its publication. However, they were never able to crack the Watchmen nut. How do you take such a layered, complex book like Watchmen and turn it into a two-hour movie? How much would the material need to be changed? What elements would need to be left out? Many concepts were pitched - making it a buddy film centered on Rorschach and Nite-Owl, getting rid of crucial characters, setting the film in a contemporary setting instead of the 80's, the list goes on. Several directors were involved. After attempting to make his own Watchmen movie, Paul Greengrass ultimately deemed Watchmen "unfilmable."
But Zack Snyder, who had just come off the huge success of directing another graphic novel adaptation with 300, stepped forward and was given the task to film the unfilmable. Using the graphic novel itself as the film's storyboard, Snyder succeeded. His Watchmen film is as faithful to the graphic novel as you can expect. The Comedian is still a cynic who takes pleasure in his violent "crimebusting", Rorschach is still a brutal vigilante who sees everything in black-and-white morality (and is played with fury and intensity by a resurgent Jackie Earle Haley in the film's standout performance), Nite-Owl still can't "get it up" without being in his superhero costume, and Dr. Manhattan is still as naked as a jaybird and apathetic to the plight of humanity.
Most of the film's departures from the graphic novel are understandable. The graphic novel's out-of-deep-left-field finale involving a cataclysmic event is altered, though the goals and motives behind it are unchanged. This new ending actually makes more sense and ties to the characters much better, but it still doesn't quite have the gut-punch shock that the book's end had. Perhaps this has more to do with the fact that Snyder is forced to cram as much into the film as possible while trying to keep the film's runtime from getting too long that the audience isn't given much time to really absorb it.
Another element that Snyder has included in this film is moments of horror-movie gore that almost seem out of place. Perhaps the book's violence lends itself to a very violent film interpretation, but I felt Snyder (who directed the remake of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead) may have gone overboard during a few moments, like Nite-Owl breaking a thug's arm to the point that the bones burst through the flesh. Ouch.
The Director's Cut adds nearly a half an hour of footage that Snyder was forced to cut to keep the film under three hours. Most of this footage comes in the form of lengthened scenes. In one, Rorschach's investigation of The Comedian's apartment is interrupted by the police and a fight ensues, and Rorschach's questioning by Dr. Malcolm is longer. Hollis Mason's sad and brutal death at the hands of a street gang is also reinserted in the Director's Cut, a scene I was disappointed to hear that it was omitted from the theatrical version.
This version of the Blu-Ray comes with a handful of featurettes that reflect on the graphic novel's impact on comic books. Another examines the psychology and cultural impact of actual vigilantes like New York's Guardian Angels, Bernard Goetz, as well as the recent trend of "real life superheroes" who dress up in costume and patrol their neighborhoods. One featurette even delves into the real scientific basis behind the elements of the Watchmen world.
For me, the best feature would have to be the special commentary performed by Zack Snyder himself, who will step in during the film and explain aspects of the film's production as opposed to just giving a voice-only commentary. Then the audience has the option to view a vignette about that aspect of the film or continue watching the film.
This Amazon-exclusive version of Watchmen: Director's Cut comes in a replica of the Owlship, Nite-Owl's hovering vehicle, which emits lights and sounds with the press of a button. The Owlship itself can be removed from its base, and I'm sure your kids would like to run around the house with the Owlship in their hands pretending it can fly (note: Watchmen is an R-rated film and NOT for children, but i'm sure kids will still get a kick out of playing with the Owlship).
There is a Digital Copy for your computers and iPods, but I was disappointed to find that it is of the theatrical version and NOT the Director's Cut.
There is an "Ultimate Edition" of Watchmen being released around Christmas, which will include the animated "Tales of the Black Freighter" feature spliced into the film as it appears in the graphic novel, so if you want a copy of Watchmen: DIrector's Cut that will give you the most bang for your buck until it comes out, the Amazon-exclusive Owlship version is probably the best way to go.
Description of Watchmen: Director's Cut (Amazon Exclusive Nite Owl Ship) [Blu-ray]
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 masked 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 HortonAlso 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 shots or scenes from the graphic novel. Snyder talks about how he shot 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 gunman 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 mask could really work. There's also My Chemical Romance's "Desolation Row" music video and a Digital Copy of the film (compatible with both iTunes and Windows Media; download code expires July 21, 2010), and BD-Live offers even more making-of material. --David Horiuchi
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