Watchmen Movie Review
Monday, March 9th, 2009I have been interested in this movie ever since I saw the first trailer and had no idea what was going in. Once I did a little research I discovered it was based on a graphic novel and I snatched it up quickly. Upon reading it I was eagerly anticipating the release date. All the legal drama around the release date, and the fact it almost didn’t get released at all, had me worried but thankfully it opened this weekend and I had a chance to go see it.
If you don’t know the story or anything about the movie here are a few key things to know before you see it
-It’s a superhero movie but there is only one ’superhero’ in it
-It’s not a kids movie, don’t bring them it’s got full frontal male nudity
-It’s set in an alternate 1985 where Richard Nixon is president and has been for awhile
-It’s long, almost 3 hours, if you have a small bladder skip the extra large drink
-If you have not yet, read the graphic novel, its great
-For those of you that have, ya some things were changed, deal with it
Now that that’s all out of the way lets get to my thoughts on the movie. Anyone who as read the book understands why previous directors have deemed it unfilmable, there is a lot of content to cover, and lots of scenes to portray.
However all of my doubts that the film would be faithful to the book were cast aside after the opening sequence. The opener nicely goes through a lot of the back story from the novel that took awhile to read without boring new viewers.
It also looks plain bad ass. It was online, but it’s already been taken down, sorry, you will have to go see it.
Now moving past the initial fight scene, and opening sequence, the movie follows along the graphic novel basically panel for panel. The amount of accuracy and research done by the production crew behind this movie is amazing. The graphic novel was basically their storyboard and if anything was changed it was just for the better.
The fight scenes are well choreographed and extremely graphic (no surprise to those of you who have seen 300), and the slow motion is used just enough. The acting is pretty much on point for every character (the actor that plays Big Figure I have not seen in long time) and Jackie Earle Haley did a great job in portraying Rorschach. I particularly like the scenes when Rorschach was in jail, those are some of my favorite from the book so I am glad they were done well.
All those great things aside, I felt that the movie did have some pacing problems. It moved a long in a somewhat slow methodical matter.
Two people I have talked to fell asleep briefly.
A few or the transitions from scene to scene were fairly evident that it was from book to book. I am not sure how this would have been avoidable and still faithful to the novel, so it’s just something to consider when you go and see it.
Personally I enjoyed the movie and I plan to purhcase the DVD so I can watch the extended version (and the tales of the black freighter). However I am aware that my opinion is biased having read and enjoyed the novel, so for those of you that saw it and have not read it what do you think?
