Critical Condition: Watchmen

Watchmen | SoHo, 2.00/9.30 Mondays, Neon (weekly)

☆☆☆☆ “HBO’s drop-dead fantastic new series Watchmen is many things at once — a righteously topical, thrillingly conceived riff on race and criminal justice set in an allegorical USA of vigilante cops, shady superheroes and subversive domestic terrorists. It’s fabulous and flammable and feels exactly right …  The show is made with the kind of precision and thought that HBO’s competitors (especially Netflix) only occasionally achieve, and it’s all the indication anyone needs that, yes, there is life after Game of Thrones.” — The Washington Post.

☆☆☆☆ “Damon Lindelof, the inspired, divisive mind behind Lost and The Leftovers — two shows with a generous helping of Watchmen DNA already — is in charge. Rather than simply retell the comic story at greater length, Lindelof has taken an enormous swing. He’s sidestepped adaptation altogether and created a sequel set in the same universe as the comic, that is faithful to the events of that story but only features a few characters from it.” — Rolling Stone.

☆☆☆☆ “Watchmen is a first-class entertainment out of the box, immediately creating a sad and wondrous retro-futuristic world. It takes longer, though, to get a handle on the complicated and all-too-real material it uses as its nuclear fuel.” — New York Times.

☆☆☆☆ “The series will be utterly confusing (if visually astonishing) for newbies unless they brush up on their Watchmen backstory … If you didn’t know that an alien squid landed on Manhattan and prevented World War III, that the United States won the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon was never impeached (he actually served into the 1980s and was succeeded by Robert Redford, who is still president), or that even though it’s 2019 there’s no internet or cellphones and tobacco is illegal, then you should probably do a little homework.” — The Hollywood Reporter.

☆☆☆☆ “To tackle the meanness and violence of history in a truly serious way — with superheroes or with mere magnificently brave mortals telling the story — demands a focus Watchmen simply lacks, and attempts to make up for with a tone of increasing dudgeon. What Watchmen sets out to do, taking the opportunity of an artwork perceived as unadaptable and writing a whole new story, is admirable. But both that original artwork and, more crucially, this story deserve better.” — Variety.