Who watches the Watchmen? Hopefully not the fanboys because they are going to hate it.
So, after my long break from reading the book (Which I still can’t read because it’s not on the mainland with me) I went to see it. Not opening night like I thought I would, but Sunday night when the theatre was quiet and the fanboys brought their girlfriends to the theatre to watch it. And I have to say, they did a good job making the story into a movie. I was never bored, it kept the drag to a minimum and it didn’t watch like a book. It was close to the book, I think, but it watched like a movie.
Rorschach was wonderful. I think the guy’s name was Haley. His performance was marvellous and I just loved him to death in the movie. The voice, the look on his face, the just about everything in his performance was exactly as I would ever want to see in Rorschach. He made me happy.
Nite Owl too, while I’m at it, and everyone else. It was a wonderfully cast movie. I don’t know who any of them are, but they all did such a great job that I may want to track down a few of their other movies. They looked like their counterparts and acted like their counterparts. I wanted Manhattan’s voice to be a little deeper, but that was negligible.
Although Adrian bothered me. Was he supposed to have an accent or wasn’t he? Because it kind of popped in and out with very little warning between the scenes and I was confused on that point.
It was very much a Snyder film, though. The slow motion action sequences don’t bother me like other people, but the gore and violence was a little gratuitous at parts. Other parts were well done, like the whole bit in the jail and especially Kovack’s little trip to the washroom.
Overall, I loved the movie. It was fun, I thought it kept the point of the story and I liked it. It was a movie and not a comic. I wasn’t sure parts that they kept from the comic fit properly in the movie (Rorschach’s Journal just seemed a little out of place) but some of what they put in was great. And that was probably the best opening credit sequence I’ve ever seen.
The thing I’ve heard the most complaints about from the not so die hard fans, or the guys who saw it and have never read the book, is that there was a naked blue guy in it. Oh, boo hoo. Male full frontal nudity. There was a gratuitous sex scene thrown in there for you so you didn’t feel so threatened. Get over it, there was a lot more to the movie than that. For all the obsession people have had over that, I was actually disappointed it wasn’t as prominent. I barely even noticed, but apparently the guys were just staring at it the whole movie. Go figure.
And, of course, the die hard fans were pissed about the ending, which I thought was a good alteration. They took out a lot of the subplots for time, but the squid from the book was closely tied to all of those subplots. With them gone, they made a plotline from existing story elements that still made excellent sense (more sense than the book in some ways) and the bottom line is that it worked. They couldn’t do everything and so they did what they could and adjusted it wonderfully.
In short, go see it. If only because you’re going to complain about the whole thing later. Either you’ll like the movie or you’ll complain on the internet about it, so there’s no real loss.
