Why waste time on other directors when you can rag on Zack Snyder all day? His Watchmen certainly isn't the greatest of his cinematic crimes, and there are plenty of audiences who'd consider it a fine film adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's superlative comic, and a very close one to boot. But therein lies the problem. Snyder's film glues far too closely to the plot and even the look of Watchmen's pages, recreating iconic image after iconic image in much the same way he does in Man of Steel. That may lend the film some associative thrill and a sheen of authenticity but also it begs the question: if all the filmmaker's doing is putting exactly what's in the comic onscreen, then what's the point exactly? To his credit, Snyder does add his own ideas into the mix, albeit sparingly, and his time-hopping opening credits sequence is a rightly celebrated piece of the film. Unfortunately this just makes the director's slavish devotion to his source all the more frustrating. He could have made a much more interesting and surprising film if he'd just let Watchmen go. Alan Moore did.
