To start things off in almost the only way moviegoers already familiar with the Alan Moore-Dave Gibbons comic book will care about, let’s see how it relates to the source material. As we already know, the “unfilmable” story spent a long time in Hollywood waiting for Snyder to come along and say it really was possible to tell exactly as originally envisioned, so the majority of the movie is almost exactly what you read on the page. Besides the opening montage (in case I completely forget to mention it, during this sequence Snyder also begins a superb instinct to contextualize scenes with established pop recordings, in this instance Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” that are both obvious for their purposes and ingenious in their keen insight, like the film ‘Across the Universe’ and its exploration of the Beatles catalogue) , which skims through the progression of the superhero in American society, almost everything is pretty literally page-to-screen, and Snyder winks at the audience early on by staging sequences involving the death of the Comedian and a meeting between two generations of Night Owl in a very deliberate way, just so you know that he knows that most of you know exactly what you’re watching. Then things loosen up. By the time he reimagines the plan Ozymandias has to win world peace, you understand that he has indeed not only mastered the story, but the idea of the story as well.

The release of ‘The Dark Knight’ changed the rules comic book movies were allowed to play with, but film needed twenty years for a movie like ‘Watchmen’ to be possible for more reasons than that. Assuming (and this review does not seek to judge whether or not this is the case, because as it is, it is a powerful vision of the story regardless) that a straight translation was the only way ‘Watchmen’ could become a film that could be taken seriously, there was simply no way it would have happened sooner. ‘Superman’ in 1978 and ‘Batman’ in 1989 each took different routes in making legitimate cases for comic books being made into modern moviegoing experiences, and while ‘Batman and Robin’ seemingly obliterated the public trust, ‘Blade,’ ‘X-Men,’ and ’Spider-Man’ made the case anew, and in varying ways, each made it exceedingly safe for superheroes to again conquer multiplexes. Then ‘Sin City’ translated a comic book almost panel-for-panel to film, and ‘300’ proved whether or not audiences realized the source material was a graphic novel, the experience could still prove wildly successful. Throughout these films, the progression of film techniques could also be found, from believing a man could fly to a total immersion in a fictional version of reality. All this time, ‘Watchmen’ became that much more possible, both technically and literally, a total acceptance of its vision more probable.

While the majority of its predecessors preferred fairly simple morality tales of easily defined parameters, ‘Watchmen’ found a perfect herald in the murky worldview of ‘The Dark Knight,’ which didn’t automatically accept that actions, whether good or bad, are always pursued by characters easily accepted as good or evil. ‘Watchmen,’ whether as comic or film, is set up from the start as being more than the sum of its parts. Viewers already familiar with the story will probably fail to overlook the fact that the Comedian’s killer is almost painfully easy to identify, unlike in the original material. But those who are seeing the sequence for the first time will still get the enjoy the complex thought process of Adrian Veidt as he explains his version of the philosophy that permeates the whole experience later in the film: sometimes good things must necessarily come about as the result of bad things. No one ever says that’s an easy thing to swallow, and that’s why the entire thing is structured on dozens of explorations on that thought, the origins of the characters and their journeys that all culminate in an undoing of their logic that even Rorschach doesn’t seem to appreciate when his bitter end finally arrives, that their dirty little secret stands revealed regardless of their actions.

For a movie as long as it is (close to three hours), maybe it’s just coming from someone familiar with the story who appreciates so much of it being retained, but ‘Watchmen’ is one of the clear examples of a timeless experience, where so much is confidently happening throughout the film that you never notice how long you’re sitting there watching it. Any sequence involving Nixon and his comically exaggerated nose certainly helps to pull you ought of the drama every now and again, but there’s so much intensity in making the story relevant to the viewer, regardless of its now-period setting, that it remains riveting throughout, a constant debate that never degenerates into mere political stances, but rather a confluence of ideologies that allow characters to be exactly what they are without judging them (so okay, no matter what you think of him, Rorschach always ends up being the cool one, all the more when he loses his ever-shifting inkblot mask). I could spend some time reflecting on the performances and actors that help make all of this possible, but the casting is so perfect, you’re content to let them slip inside the reality they inhabit.

Unlike the majority of recent comic book movies, ‘Watchmen’ actually embraces some of the looks seen in the least-respected filmed adventures, from the cloth costumes of the Minutemen to the rubber (and nipples) of the Watchmen, which only suggests further that Snyder and company are so comfortable in the timing of the movie that they are affirming the whole of the experience before them, just as the comic book did. Moore has consistently rebuffed the adaptations of his works, and he’s done so again here, but at least this time, he’s wrong, just as everyone who has ever said ‘Watchmen’ is a cynical interpretation of superheroes. As you watch the film, if you didn’t think so before, you’re swept up in the horrible realization that if superheroes were real, they would find themselves locked up in an endgame much like this, the sum of their existence proving them right. It does take something outlandish to seek justice, but justice doesn’t turn out anything like you thought it would when you started your quest. Whatever your motivations, your convictions, you realize it really is a big joke. And more often than not, you’re the punch line.

The film does not negate the comic, and the comic does not negate the film. If anything, regardless of whether or not it’s successful to any great degree, the film is exactly the affirmation the comic was looking for, that it had a story worth telling, a vision of the world worth knowing. In the way it retains not just the trappings but the thoughts found within, the film represents a chance to see more clearly what the story was saying all along, not that it was possible to take superheroes seriously, but why, because they have something to say, not just or even about themselves, but our own world. A lot of the critics, in denying this, are dismissing not just the movie or comic, but this basic fact, that there’s a complex way to view the world, and few easy answers to find within it.