Who Watches the Watchmen?

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Well…I do!

A group of us (9 to be exact) went Saturday night to the Aventura theater to watch Watchmen in one of their IMAX theaters. I had the pleasure of reading the comic before sitting down to watch the movie, and I am so glad I did. My first opinion of the movie was that someone who did not read the comic would probably not understand it or hate it altogether because it did a great job replicating the comic, which tended to be a bit disjointed. With that said, I absolutely loved it. I thought it did the comic great justice and really nailed a lot of the main characters, especially Rorschach. Some scenes were panel-perfect and a lot of the dialogue stayed true to the original. I was pleasantly surprised to see that a lot of scenes I thought would be omitted were not and I was very happy with the intro – overall, I give it two thumbs up and would love to see it again, 3 hours and all!

But, I had some gripes although few (warning: SPOILERS under cut):

– Too much music throughout the movie. I really enjoyed it during the intro, but when it continued throughout the movie it seemed like more of a music video than a motion picture and didn’t always quite fit with the mood. Although they get props for using era-appropriate tunes.
– What was up with the awkwardly long and kind of graphic sex scene between Dan and Laurie? I have no problem with sex on screen, but it went on entirely too long to the point that we were all shifting around uncomfortably in our seats. A minute would have been more than enough.
– This one is just silly because I know it will be featured on a separate DVD, but I was kind of bummed that the underlying pirate comic was not included even in a minor way. That was probably my favorite aspect of the Watchmen comic, I thought it was so genius to have a comic within a comic. I can’t wait to see how they put it together later.

So I bet you can all guess that I highly recommend this movie, but even more so recommend reading the comic – it’s a great read and will better help you appreciate what a fabulous job they did with the movie.

So what did all of you think?
Let me know!

ps; Really sorry about the late post today. Daylight Savings Time really kicked my butt this time around! I’ll be back to my normal posting ways by tomorrow. :)

  • Ang

    I kind of hated it & almost fell asleep a few times (which is very unlike me).

    I have no doubt that the comic is awesome. But I feel that if a movie is good, it shouldn’t require you to do background research to understand it.

    With that being said, I loved the costumes!

    • http://www.melificent.com Meli

      I’m sorry you didn’t like it!!! :(

  • Roxæ

    I agree with your comment about the music. It seemed really out of place most of the time, even if a large percentage of the songs used were direct references to the novel they just didn’t work in the film.

    Overall though I thought it was excellent :D Really couldn’t have done a better job in my opinion. They changed just enough to keep it film worthy while remaining faithful to the novel where it really counted.

    I hope all this just drums up even more interest in reading WATCHMEN. And I can’t wait for the Super-Ultra-Director’s Cut DVD in December that will splice Tales of the Black Freighter back into the film. (Even if it does seem just a teensy bit superfluous since the whole disappearance of the comic’s writer has nothing to do with the film version of the ending.)