MOVIE: Watchmen

Where do I start... let's start with my overall feeling about the movie. It was very good. It was probably a little better than I expected it to be. (to be clear, I am an original Watchmen reader from the eighties; I know what the Watchmen is supposed to be)

Spoilers abound in this posting, so if you've not seen the movie and/or read the original story and don't want it partially ruined, turn away now.

The characters were portrayed well, especially Rorschach, with my least favorite being Dr. Manhattan (he was constantly in slow motion, annoyingly so, and his voice was just too "high pitch" to be logical to me). The Comedian was good, though I'd almost say the actor playing him was not every seasoned because it was not the best acting job in the world. Silk Spectre (II) was fine (didn't think she was very pretty, honestly). Nite Owl (II) was also spot-on and basically perfect in my mind. Ozymandias was played well, basically a cross between Bill Gates and BatMan.

The Owl Ship was absolutely awesome. I read somewhere someone whined that they added chain guns to the ship... and to such people who will nitpick the movie to death for details different from a 20 year old story I say "don't be silly". The "changes" made to the story were in most cases minor, not taking into account the heavily altered ending, and I was fine with them.

So much of this movie, however, did come directly from the visuals in the original comics, and that was excellent. The various inkblot and "who watches..." texts found painted on walls and elsewhere, the newspaper clippings, photographs; you were fully immersed in this alternate timeline (Nixon's nose was a bit much, though). And seeing Bubastis was pretty nift (the genetically engineered Lynx seen during the final scenes).

I remember thinking "wow, some parents are going to be PISSED" when their children get them to see this movie, and mom's the world over scramble to cover their younger kids' eyes during the very animated sexual encounter in the Owl Ship. Good lord! There are also, I'm sure, many people who probably saw the movie (not having read the original) and thought "what the heck... this isn't a super hero action movie... it's a DRAMA!" And they're right. It is a drama. Advertising should probably have gotten that point across better, but then again, they did what they needed to get butts in the seats, I guess.

Not including the "Black Freighter" storyline was probably wise (it's being released as an animated feature just days after the Watchmen was put out to the cinema). But I at least would have liked to see the young boy's interaction with the newspaper peddler. Oh well.

Probably one of the big things that many Watchmen "purists" are/were/will be up in arms about is the ending. It's only vaguely like the original.

Original:   Ozy creates a fake, giant space alien "squid" the size of skyscraper and teleports it into the heart of the city, causing the deaths of millions. This causes the world to halt it's advancing hostilities and consider the possibility that they (the various nations) should unite and prepare for extraterrestrial intervention, bad or good. Then later, we see signs that the plan, though temporarily successful, is not permanent, in the guise of news bits on television that show hostilities slowly beginning again.

Movie:   Ozy uses Dr. Manhattan-type energy blasts to kill millions in multiple cities around the world, making the world believe that the Doctor is to blame - a god-like being that even the entire world could not defeat, most likely - and the threat that he may attack again is supposed to keep hostilities at bay. Plus, there is no "ironic" ending showing hostilities continuing (in my mind, a huge part of the ending).

Truthfully, I think the ending worked fine for a movie. If a giant squid appeared in the middle of the city at the end, I'd bet the audiences (more non-purists than others) would be like "okay, yeah, that's... dumb". I think this altered ending (except the missing "irony" that it really didn't end hostilities) worked well.

Truly an R-rated movie (very graphic violence, sexual content at one major point, and a bit of raw language). I'd almost have expected there to be NC-17 on this flick, after having watched it twice.

So, I really liked the movie. There was no expectation that it would "the actual comic story" without alteration, and yet they were very true to the original material. It doesn't seem like it's making as much money as I would have hoped/expected, and that's unfortunate, but I really think non-comic people are scratching their heads about it, thinking it's Spider-Man with a dark tone, but getting Days Of Our Lives in spandex.