Watchmen

Title: Watchmen
Release Date: March 6th, 2009
Type: Movie
Language: English

Visually, spectacular, plot, interesting, execution, rushed. The film adaptation of Watchmen has been eagerly anticipated since its first trailer ran before the Dark Knight in theatres and it has not met without its share of controversy. Fans of the graphic novel were up in arms the moment they heard that the unfilmable was being filmed, Fox sued Warner Brothers after they discovered that the latter had violated the rights to the film, Mathew Goode with a slight German accent over his American one over his natural English one. It seemed that Watchmen was bound to disappoint but really, it wasn’t that bad.

In an alternate 1985 where Nixon is still president and Indian food is all the rage, there is a murder in New York. Edward Morgan Blake, aka “the Comedian,” was thrown from his high-rise apartment down onto the sidewalk below. Blake had been a costumed vigilante, a masked adventurer, a superhero who worked for the United States government. Now a magerie of masks, both retired and active, try to solve the murder and reveal to the viewer the history of their lives and of the world in which they live.

Sure, the film is pretty accurate to the comic but I’m not here to talk about that bullshit. I’m here to talk about the film, so if you want to hear about the comic, fuck off and go read my review of that, you cocksucking vagabond. The movie, which I am writing about here, as opposed to the comic book, which I wrote about there, is entertaining enough but while it’s pretty to look at, I for one am mainly interested in the quality and story. If you disagree with my priorities then tough titty because I’m the one writing this review.

The biggest problem that I had was that the movie was rushed. The studio forced director Zack Snyder to remove about an hour out of his first cut and so he was forced to cram the most important elements of the central story into a single film, leading to some confusion and anomalies. It all comes too fast for anyone to digest unless they had read the comic prior to viewing the film. On top of that, most of the characters were a bit off from how they were in the comic. Maybe not enough to be noticeable to casual readers of the comic, but enough to totally drain most of the feeling out of the characters. I had no emotional connection to anyone on the screen. Blake came off as a total ass without the slight glimpses that were given in the comic to show the little humanity he had, Veidt wasn’t smug at all and was more like any other superhero doing ‘a good deed,’ Rorschach was slightly humorous, or at least not even close to as dark as he was in the comic, Laurie was slightly incompetent and a whore, Dan was just sort of there, Jon… I like Jon. I think that the film accurately captured Dr. Manhattan, at least as so far as the comic is concerned. This all, however, does not really matter to the quality of the film, because regardless, there were going to be differences.

Most readers of the comic, I feel, only truly appreciate the central storyline and that is what this film follows. It even follows the comic when it should not, such as in the case of Veidt’s mutant Lynx/cat/tiger/meowmeowkitty, Bubastis. In the comic, Veidt’s plan is different. The nature of his plan requires some development of the cloning/gene manipulation/etc. technologies. So, starting small and working their way up, Veidt industries begins to work with altering dna. Bubastis was one of the great, early successes and so her existence makes sense. The existence of four legged chickens also makes sense because who doesn’t like drumsticks? Besides vegetarians like Veidt and myself… and Hitler… that is. It’s all possible in the comic book because of Veidt’s research. The changes made to his plan in the film, however, render all of that research pointless and so it logically would never have occurred. Amazingly, however, Bubastis shows up near the end, without explanation. I’m assuming that was cut from the film but Bubastis should have been cut all together as well. Way to fuck up, Zack.

But for the average moviegoer, most of my fussing makes no difference. It’s a good, entertaining movie. If you can stomach bad words, graphic violence, a very upfront sex scene that just won’t end ohmyfuckinggodwhywon’titstop, then go see it. I’d prefer that you read the comic instead, though, because it is soooo much better. But you won’t, will you? I know you. Fucker.

There was one improvement made over the comic, however: The Silhouette.

Hominah hominah hominah, aoooga, wowowowowohoh! WOOF!





- Jared “JaredisLeader” Carlson


Grading scale: 1 is the worst, 5 is the best.
Watchmen receives 4/5 child killers.