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1. jc25 said:

   March 6th, 2009 at 8:32 am

   Damn you, CA. I’m actively avoiding all Watchmen reviews until seeing it this weekend. BC is a cruel temptress.

2. ChrisApplewhite said:

   March 6th, 2009 at 8:37 am

   I get that a lot.

3. huge said:

   March 6th, 2009 at 9:03 am

   i’ll still see it even though it’s getting slammed by a bunch of critics i usually listen to.

4. The General said:

   March 6th, 2009 at 10:05 am

   What would that review look like if you were writing it for someone who had never seen a comic?

5. ChrisApplewhite said:

   March 6th, 2009 at 10:49 am

   Read the book first. The movie sucks the magic out.

6. The Dude said:

   March 6th, 2009 at 11:09 am

   *Spoiler Alert*

   If I am on Chapter 5 of the book and plan on finishing that before I see the movue, should I read any of the above?

7. The Dude said:

   March 6th, 2009 at 11:12 am

   Also -

   Do you have the same issues as I do in trying to keep your velvet costume dry when hosing down the Dr. Spock blow up doll after a romp?

8. Sanders said:

   March 6th, 2009 at 6:44 pm

   Spoilers here

   Saw it today, felt almost the same. My major complaint is obviously the ending. The squid provided a threat that had no attachments to any govt or organization, meaning a true outside threat. This is very different from the movie ending. Also, the movie seems to suggest that Dan is a better person than he was in the book.

   Other things that were changed bothered me, small things like Dan not wearing the goggles when standing naked in the basement. That was a great scene in the book, truly a pitiful scene, also funny.

   The timing seemed to be off as well for a lot of scenes. My most specific example would be the scene with Dan and Laurie in Archie after the fire. To me that scene is the punchline to a joke that had been set up with the first appearance of Archie’s flame thrower. And instead, the movie’s scene was about gratuitous sex. Not that I minded the nudity, but it should have happened on the couch, didn’t really need the grinding and what not.

   A lot of that little stuff cant be fixed because its just the fault of the director not knowing what he’s doing. But for the big stuff, like the newstand guy and the kid with the pirate story, Hollis, and the Squid, just wait for the Ultimate Watchman DVD that should have everything. It’ll probably be like 5-6 hrs long but it should have all the dropped story lines.

9. Eskimhorn said:

   March 7th, 2009 at 6:07 am

   From someone who never really heard of the Watchmen, I thought it was a very satisfactory movie. I would not have liked to see a squid at the end. From my perspective – made more sense this way. Same with Lord of the Rings – would you really want to have it end with Frodo kicking Saruman out of the Shire?

   Sounds like casting could have been better, especially Sally Jupiter. I do disagree on the Comedian.

10. caradoc said:

    March 7th, 2009 at 6:14 pm

    Oh, squiddy, why did they have to cut you? With that change, the story lost several vital elements. With no island, there’s no need for Veidt’s genetics and thus Bubastis becomes incongruous. There is no foundation to the attacks on masks, which is what sets the story in motion. We lose the significance of the NYC settings, since the end game is no longer localized. And it is never made clear how blaming Dr. M makes the world come together, since he was a partisan American.

11. Sanders said:

    March 7th, 2009 at 6:53 pm

    Exactly caradoc. I forgot to post it but yes Bubastis is out of place in the movie. In the book everything was put in for a reason. Bubastis is there to show the reader early examples of genetic engineering.

    And framing Manhattan wouldn’t unite the world in my opinion because he was American. Doesn’t matter if he supposedly attacked the US as well, if a dog bites you and his owner you don’t just blame the dog you blame the owner as well.

    If they didn’t have the balls to do the squid, it still should have been a mock-alien attack of some kind. Aliens provide a totally outside threat that cant be tied to any nation.

12. Texas_Dawg said:

    March 9th, 2009 at 8:21 am

    Nice summary, CA.

    By the way, you’d like the forum at which I’m a regular. Mainly a crew that rolled out of UGASports.com (Sigh… Rivals boards… drool…) but we’ve since added some non-UGA regulars (Florida, Texas, etc.).

    It’s a Barking Carnival/sports nerds type crowd. Add it to your rotation for a few days. We’d love having another UT regular to get us up to speed on anything UT, but even as a lurker I think you’ll find some good UGA/UF/SEC info… or just stupid nerd humor from a different region.

13. jc25 said:

    March 9th, 2009 at 11:06 am

    Since this is the only website I read with any regularity on which I can post my inane thoughts regarding this movie…I will go ahead and do so. First, although I’m not the hugest comic book fan, I’m in firm agreement with myself that Watchmen is the greatest book ever written. I could be wrong.

    The most apt comparison I can think of for the Watchmen movie is V for Vendetta, another Alan Moore comic transcribed for the big screen (and also the movie that so infuriated Moore that he swore off working with Hollywood). As a movie, V for Vendetta was pretty brilliant, and without a doubt a much better film than Watchmen was. However, the movie version basically bastardized the comic, which was fine with me. It was a lot easier to do, since the movie had to focus only on two main characters–V and Evey Hammond–thus making it a relatively easy story to tell. Modernizing the story and cutting a lot of the other characters’ backstories allowed the movie to fit into a neat 2 hour flick. Watchmen, with its millions of hardcore devotees, was allowed no such leeway–it was the comic book way or the highway (as clearly evidenced by CA’s review). Knowing this going in, I tried to view the movie both as a literal adaptation of the comic and as an enjoyable movie, comic be damned.

    It goes without saying the rest of this is on SPOILER ALERT.

    To begin, the opening credits were nothing short of incredible. I had goosebumps the entire time, and it led me to believe the movie would be better than it actually was. In retrospect, that made perfect sense, since the credits were glorified panels taken out of a comic book. Nevertheless, well done, Mr. Snyder, despite the fact that throughout the credits, I kept thinking that Ron Burgundy had never heard of that song.

    Speaking of the music, I didn’t quite understand Snyder’s blend of oldies, techno Matrix fight music, and Explosions in the Sky-esque instrumentals. Had he stuck with one theme and carried it through, the music would’ve played a lot better. The Bob Dylan intro was still genius, though.

    Jackie Earl Haley was by far the best casting decision. He played Rorschach to a T; I don’t think that’s inarguable. I’d actually put the Comedian second. He looked the part indeed, but I thought Jeffrey Dean Morgan played him even more despicably than he comes off in the comic, which is no small feat. I’d have liked to see a little more out of his “redeeming” moment in the end (when you find out he’s Laurie’s father), but that’s just nitpicking. I may have a soft spot for Malin Akerman, so I was actually happy with her performance as Silk Spectre. It’s not like she has as much to work with as the male Watchmen characters, and yes, she looks great in spandex and is definitely dynamite in bed (at least in the movie sense—see The Heartbreak Kid or Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle). Carla Gugino was much better in Sin City, but that may be because half her role was topless. I’m ambivalent on Patrick Wilson. I may be biased because he had a tailor-made role for him with William Barrett Travis in The Alamo, and he bombed it. That’s unforgivable to us Texans. He did an ok job, but for some reason his glasses kept throwing me off, and I don’t think he came off as pathetic as the comic.

    Billy Crudup, aside from an amazingly inspiring performance in Almost Famous, plays droll monotony better than any other actor I’ve seen. It sometimes backfires, though; see his mediocre performance in an otherwise excellent Big Fish. I suppose that’s the type of voice acting you need with Dr. Manhattan, but I couldn’t help thinking that it was continually Billy Crudup voicing Billy Crudup. And cover up, man. The amount of crotch detail was wildly unnecessary. The worst offender, in my opinion, was Matthew Goode’s Ozymandias. I would’ve almost rather seen a Colin Farrell-esque butchering of Alexander than see Goode’s strangely accented fifteen year old try to tackle the godlike role of Ozymandias. I knew this was a mistake going in.

    The movie on the whole was visually spectacular. Zach made a concerted effort to translate the Watchmen world to the movies, and it worked amazingly. There were times when I was more interested in looking at the sets than the actors. Snyder clearly doesn’t have as much talent working with character development. The same two sentiments almost exactly mirror my thoughts on Sin City. The movie is visually and technically great, but the actors seem to be reading the words off the comic. Continual monotone voice; emphasize bold words; scream when exclamation points exist!! The story didn’t translate as well; there’s just way too much detail that can’t be captured on screen, and you lose some of the story along with it. That’s not a problem for me, but all the time hops and character profile skips confused the average movie-goer who had never read the comic. The fight scenes were great and better than the comic; the excess gore was not. I was fine with the ending, as the giant squid may have been way too Deus Ex Machina for someone who hadn’t read the comic. I’m also fine with the Dr. Manhattan uniting the world idea. They said both NY and LA were bombed, so the U.S. is just as fucked with the rest of the world. Having Tales of the Black Freighter as a separate DVD is fiscally maddening.

    Next time I watch this, I may just put it on mute and enjoy the pretty colors.

14. Scipio Tex said:

    March 12th, 2009 at 9:25 am

    Kissing Suzy Kolber: All the Bored Office Drones and Mainstream Media Will Look Up and Shout ‘Post Something!’ … And I’ll Look Down and Whisper ‘No.’

15. coffee said:

    March 15th, 2009 at 10:13 am

    Rorschach was an especially well developed as a character; i hope the actor that played his role is nominated for some kind of an award (when that season comes around again)

16. groverat said:

    March 15th, 2009 at 10:49 am

    Fuck the stupid squid.

    Making Manhattan a devil works just as well (if not better because it ties into the irrational fear that he causes cancer).

    All the doomsday device had to do was (1) hit the US and the USSR at the same time so they would not feel as if the other was responsible and (2) be a massive threat that required constant, unified vigilance to combat.

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