Who Watched The Watchmen?

Ok, here is goes. I used to never read anything aside from the occasional manga but over the summer i mutated into an American comic freak. No lies. One of the first characters I started reading was Batman. The Long Halloween, Dark Victory etc... and then I touched a few one shot Marvel stories, The Civil War, Zombies ya know stuff like that. I finally got around to reading Watchmen. I felt this strange love towards this nihlistic novel. I have read only one Alan Moore book before and it was V For Vendetta which i felt was a solid read. Upon finishing the novel I was impressed by how most of the characters flaws were stronger than most of their positive outlooks.


Rorschach was by far my favorite upon a first read. He was normal until one event changed his life, well normal is by far a far fetched term in his case. But he lost his mind and was no longer who he really was, he was just Rorschach. If there was no back story to his character then there would be no sympathy. Dr. Manhattan is someone who you want to hate so bad because of his lack of emotion for humanity and everything else in general. But upon reading the novel you see all that he sees more in depth or at least to a certain extent. Each character in the novel is given insight into why they are the way they are. You begin to realize they are human beings just like us just having taken on a larger responsibility.

I went to the Dark Knight and attached to it was the trailer for this film and on it was a song that I felt fit the film, The Smashing Pumpkins: The End is the Beginning The Beginning is the End, and instantly I was excited at first glance upon seeing the amazing visuals. I sat there and thought if anyone can do a damn good job pulling this film successfully it would either be Christopher Nolan or Zach Synder [I felt this way about Synder in highest of hopes]. The idea of a Watchmen film never really left my mind. From that moment on it became and obsession.

When December rolled around and hearing about the possible delay thanks to the law suit I was upset and once March rolled around I had been exceedingly tired of seeing the commercials on TV but still wanted to see the film. So when I got my ticket I was doing the preverbal fist pump. So I sat in the theater with my Hot Topic shirt with the Comedian upon it and my sweatshirt with the logo for the film upon it with a tub of buttery popcorn and a large ass mother fucking drink and I watched it.

The first half hour or so was almost entirely accurate to the novel. The opening sequence and the like. I should have realized how many times Synder would have used the slo-mo bull shit from 300 or how over stylized the film would have been and yes it was but I tried so hard to ignore it. Overall the film was real artsy, the imagry is what sold me the most on it. The dark coloring the excellent costume design, the amazing cg and decent make up job all was impressive.

The dialog through most of the film in the parts that were ripped from the book were almost exact to the puncuation. In terms of story there was a few changes but upon discussion on that I came to a conclusion that it had to have been changed for it to be taken seriously by movie going audiences and people who don't know how to read a masterpiece.

The cinematography was bland in some points, the actions were over done. Most of the fight scenes had to have extreme exaggerations on them but why? Why did you have to freeze the frame into a slow moving object as the blood dripped onto the badge as he is about to be thrown out the window and keep the audio at the same pace? It's not real logical! All the fight sequences save for the Rorschach one were over the top, no need for us to see slow motion punches from Nite Owl onto some nameless thug. And along those lines, these guys aren't trained! So why is Nite Owl using real kung fu mixed with wrestling manuvers like a pro? It doesn't make sense! But accept it I did because I was being leinent on the film since I wanted to be in love with it.

The acting wasn't as bad as some people make it seem. It felt that Jackie Earle Harley tried and put out a damn good Rorschach. My biggest complaint is that it sounded a tad bit too much like Christian Bale's Batman. But I still felt that it was one of the best jobs in the film. Harley had it so that you weren't sure whether or not you should hate or love Rorschach. He gave that extra dimension that several of the characters lacked and it wasn't just because of the characters multiple personas. Now Jeffery Dean Morgan gave the Comedian a little more than I expected to be given. The Comedian entering the film was not my favorite character and upon leaving the theater he was damn close. His character was an integral part in the story in the comic but they cut out the reason as to why he was in the film, disappointing. Most of Morgan's scenes in the film were via flashbacks and the like and they had to make him look older and younger throughout the film and damn it worked. The way he delievered the lines, he was just pure bad assery. The rest of the cast was lacking in this enthusiasm. Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan/Jon Osterman seemed to have some of the shittiest dialog in the film. He tried rather hard to portray emotion when Manhattan doesn't have as much emotion as Crudup portrayed. Although some of his dialog was rather interesting and with a voice that was almost as flat as the cherry pepsi I had last night which made sense for the character. As for Patrick Wilson I totally agree with my collegue on that he hammed it up entirely but his role wasn't one of the worst I have ever seen, it was acceptable. Malin Akerman was mainly eye candy if there ever was one and Matthew Goode as Ozymandias was well flat and stale but I feel that it felt.

The music placement was one of the worst things in the world. I can't emphasize this enough. In the trailers they had the Pumpkins song as well as Muse's Take A Bow but neither of these were seen in the film, by seen I mean heard. So disappointing and the impressive soundtrack that was scored by Tyler Bates was kept at the downlow volume wise which was so sad. But the best job done in the entire film for music was the placement of Tears For Fears' Everybody Wants To Rule the World, elevator music version while Ozy was stating why he is totally in the right about what ever the plot development that is being developed. I am with holding spoilers lol.

So all in all I have to say the film was mediocre as a translation to a comic to film but as a film it was real good. It tried to remain as faithful as possible. I just hope that when the deluxe director's cut comes out that most of these problems are fixed. I still say take a look at the film.