Zack Snyder’s “Watchmen” was a box office failure that continues to be divisive to this day. The 2009 film was criticized for being too faithful to the comic book series by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons on which it is based, and also for not being faithful enough. It was considered both too hollow a pastiche of Moore’s multi-layered story and too complex a tale to function as mass entertainment. As such, the film has held an unusual place in Hollywood history since its debut, both forgotten and praised by various parts of the fandom. However, one man who was certainly not conflicted in his assessment of the film was Roger Ebert, who gave “Watchmen” a perfect 4/4 star rating.
Ebert gave perfect scores to many films throughout his career. He gave Matt Damon and Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter” an impeccable 4/4, and did the same for 1972’s “The Red Mantle” and 2012’s “The Kite.” He was also the only critic to give a notoriously mediocre Samuel L. Jackson crime thriller a perfect score. Also among these seemingly flawless films is Snyder’s 2009 film, which Ebert said was “another bold exercise in liberating the superhero movie.”
The esteemed critic, who died in 2013 at the age of 70, clearly had a “powerful experience” with “Watchmen,” describing it as “a gripping, visceral film,” adding, “the sound, images and characters combined into a decidedly eerie visual experience that evokes the atmosphere of a graphic novel.” But if Ebert saw the film as a transporting visceral experience, he also saw it as the kind of thing that could inspire debate. For a critic, especially of Ebert’s ilk, this is precisely the sort of thing you might expect him to appreciate.
Roger Ebert appreciated Watchmen on its own merits
Long before “The Boys” or “Invincible” attacked the very concept of superheroes, Alan Moore succeeded in deconstructing these modern myths with his 1986/87 comic strip, “Watchmen”. The alternate history depicted in the story involved superheroes appearing in the 1940s and helping the United States achieve victory in the Vietnam War. Richard Nixon remained in power into the 1980s, just as the Cold War was at its height and superheroes were banned, with most retired and only a handful working for the government. After one of these officially sanctioned heroes is assassinated, a group of former vigilantes investigate and uncover a sinister conspiracy.
For 20 years, a film adaptation sat in development hell before Zack Snyder finally managed to make such a thing happen. His pre-DC Extended Universe film shaped the look of this next franchise and impressed Christopher Nolan, who said “Watchmen” was ahead of its time and would have fared better had it debuted in a post-“Avengers” world.
For Roger Ebert, however, the film was perfectly fine in its early days. The reviewer was convinced that Snyder delivered a masterpiece with “Watchmen,” from the visual style, which divided other critics, to the performances. The reviewer praised Dr. Manhattan actor Billy Crudup in particular for bringing “a solemn detachment” to his character, while complimenting the film as a whole for bringing “a surprising conviction to these characters as flawed, minor gods.” But in addition to enjoying these aspects of the film itself, Ebert also seemed excited about the discourse it might provoke.
Watchmen sparked the kind of debate that Roger Ebert thrived on
Zack Snyder’s “Watchmen” is arguably the best scenario for anyone adapting the comic, which, prior to its 2009 adaptation, had been called “unfilmable” by many who worked on its development. Roger Ebert, however, didn’t come to the film with any preconceived ideas about how best to bring Alan Moore’s story to the big screen. He simply appreciated it as something that “seems[ed] charged from within by its fable power. » But there was another aspect to his enjoyment – one that almost certainly contributed to him giving the film a full four stars.
In his review of “Watchmen,” Ebert wrote that the film “will inspire feverish analysis.” These are the kinds of things that allowed him to thrive. The only film critic to ever win a Pulitzer Prize, Ebert wrote a passionate defense of film analysis in his 2012 essay “Death to Film Critics! Hail to the CelebCult!”, in which he argued that professionals in his profession “should encourage critical thinking.” Clearly, Ebert was passionate about opinion writing and contributing to discourse, and his polemic against the idea of reviews simply reflecting the tastes of the general public attests to this.
With “Watchmen,” it seems the critic has found something that appeals to his fundamental love of intellectual discussion. “Fever Analysis” was sort of the focal point for him, and “Watchmen” certainly inspired its share of that, even though it only grossed $185.3 million on a $130 million budget. Rotten Tomatoes may have been Ebert’s fault, but his work was about so much more than this modern aggregator’s Fresh/Rotten binary. Whether or not you agree with his love of “Watchmen,” he and many other critics clearly found enough in the film to spark the kind of discussions they so enjoyed.
