Word: manhattans
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...that it couldn't. An epic superhero saga, spanning 45 years, with six major characters who all sport double identities and crucial, intertwined back-stories, does not lend itself to the narrative turbo-thrust of a standard action film. Indeed, the superest hero of the bunch - Dr. Manhattan, once known as Jon Osterman - is not an action hero; he's a passive one, a contemplative godhead, a sinewy blue nude Buddha, emotionally removed from the comic's central whodunit quest: Who killed Eddie Blake? A.k.a. the Comedian...
...heart, Watchmen is a detective story, with Eddie (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) as the victim and Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), he of the shifting-inkblot mask, as the questing sleuth. Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) is not much help in the search, preoccupied as he is with helping another superhero, Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), in a secret experiment that may save the world or put a big hole in it. Dr. M. has also paid scant heed to his girlfriend Laurie (Malin Akerman), a.k.a. Silk Spectre II, who's ready to fall into the open arms of nerdy Dan Dreiberg (Patrick Wilson), a.k.a...
...stopped his clock. It's an apt structure for the Watchmen, since most of them are past their prime - Eddie's 67 when he dies; the first Silk Spectre (Carla Gugino), who had a carnal run-in or two with Eddie, is in her 60s; and Dr. Manhattan is 56, though he looks great for his age - and facing serious midlife introspection. International celebrities for decades, they have a lot of history to remember or suppress, to warm or haunt them...
...brilliant opening-credits sequence, set to Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin'. 1945: In the Times Square revelry on V.J. Day, a nurse is kissed by the slinky superheroine Silhouette in the style of Alfred Eisenstadt's famous photo. 1961: President Kennedy greets Dr. Manhattan at the White House. 1963: JFK is gunned down by the splenetic, cigar-chomping Comedian. 1969: A U.S. astronaut walks on the moon, and finds Dr. Manhattan waiting for him. 1971: President Nixon sends Manhattan and The Comedian to Vietnam; the war is over within a week, with the locals lining...
...this is a real movie, vigorously visualized from Gibbons' template, and daring to splice flashbacks within flashbacks, toying with the conventional notion of screen time. The section showing the mutation of mild-mannered scientist Jon Osterman into Dr. Manhattan is a gem of lucid storytelling. Shuffling the sequence of tenses, the film shows Jon as a young man in love, a fellow scarred by a nuclear accident, a boy watching his watchmaker dad, a superhero who can change size and location at will, a middle-aged stud letting his old love slip away as he finds someone younger and finally...