For context I went to see this with my ever amazing, artfully minded wife who doesn't read comics but is certainly tolerant and accepting of them. I read Watchmen around 15 years ago and several times since. Amazing Wife is as good a yardstick as a decent movie goer with no knowledge of the comic. She didn't like the movie. It was too long, and there was too little happening in the middle for someone with no knowledge of the comic to appreciate and then there were questions Amazing Wife asked, for example what exactly did happen to Jon Osterman? We as comic readers know but nothing is actually explained to the average movie viewer. Why was there a big CGI cat hanging around at the end that didn't do anything? Again we know it's an example of Ozymandias's genetic experiments, but as this is a moot point in the film why bother? Where did Latex (I'm sorry) SILK Specter get that gun from at the end and why do they all have super ninja powers when hubby said they were all supposed to be kinda' normal humans? Frankly she was bored.
My reaction as a fan of the comic was confusion. The problem with a lot of comic adaptations can be boiled down to one of two things, either the director has too much 'creative vision' or the studio has too much control. Spider-Man 3 is a good example of a movie destroyed by studio control and Batman and Robin is a good example of a director blowing the budget on rent boys and crack, then having too much 'creative vision'. Watchmen has both these problems in spades. Zack Snyder directs with visual flare, with many scenes lifted from the comic. But, he directs them with the attitude of an 11 year old boy that thinks 'mature' and 'adult' means 'sex' and 'violence'. The characters are treated with all the respect of a rentboy at Boy Georges house. Dan Dreiberg goes from tubby has been to super ninja in the time it takes to clench a cliched fist and delivers each line with so much painful earnest it's like watching Barrack Obamas inaugural speech all over again, in half time. Ozymandias is a chinless wonder in a nipple suit who is frankly camper than the Liberace appreciation society and Silk Specter is nothing more than a latex clad sperm receptacle with a scowly face.
The ending of the film is limp, apparently 15 million people where killed and there's nothing but a large hole that looks like a large demolition site, leaving you with a large desolate feeling where your emotional investment should have been. This is mainly because the build up has been as slow and impenetrable as a tortoise wearing a chastity belt and much like that tortoise you don't care enough to penetrate it anyway. While we're at it let's take all reference to cigarettes out to because they're very bad. Even though it's a period piece, an 18 and we're all adults who don't need big nanny to hold our hands and tell us things are bad. You are simply left not caring and after a lot of boredom, vaguely angry that you sat through it. Like Spider-Man 3 I simply don't care about this movie beyond expressing my opinion here. If I was offered a free DvD of Watchmen I would turn it down. The only reason I even did my own review was because this film could have been what Lord Of The Rings was to it's source material, a great way into something wonderful. The comic is the granddaddy of 'classic' comics and its comic adaptation should have reflected that as an entry point for new readers to the Industry.
That, unless someone starts a debate, is all I will ever say on this movie.
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