A hailstorm of expectation notwithstanding, my hunch is that history will soon forget Watchmen, an obedient translation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s influential—some would say landmark—graphic novel (or “comic book,” to the uninitiated). It is mainly a question of timing. Moore’s deconstructed superhero saga may have seemed fresh on its release nearly a quarter of a century ago, but as enshrined by Zack Snyder (the “visionary” director of 300), it comes off as trendy, just another overblown entry in a long line of revisionist action flicks.

The story takes place in an imaginary 1985 and revolves around a second generation of freelance vigilantes known as the Watchmen. Once esteemed by the American public, they have officially retired from fighting crime. Some retain visibility as private citizens, while others recede into the margins of society. The plot kicks into gear when one of their number—the viciously misanthropic Comedian—is murdered in his apartment by an unseen assailant, indicating a conspiracy to eliminate all Watchmen. Snyder doesn’t sustain much interest in the whodunit aspect of the storyline, spending the lion’s share of the 163-minute running time probing the motivations of the rest of the costumed clan: the psychologically scarred Rorschach (who narrates in the noir style); the intellectually superior Ozymandias; the withdrawn, gadget-loving Nite Owl; the voluptuous, love-starved Silk Spectre; and most impressive of all, Dr. Manhattan, a scientist turned by a haywire experiment into a buck-naked blue demigod. When it finally becomes clear who is doing what to whom and why, the film takes on the same morally relativistic posturing that burdened The Dark Knight.

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