Who watched the Watchmen? I did, and you should too!

… well, you should if you’re willing to deal with a deep/heavy storyline involving personal issues, the nature of humanity, and supes.  The story ain’t for everybody, nor is the movie.

If you still don’t know, Watchmen is a movie directed by Zack Snyder based on a 12-issue comic of the same name, which was written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons.  Actually, many fans (me included) would consider this as THE superhero comic.

I was very very afraid when I first heard that they were seriously considering turning this into a film.  For one, given the horrendous movie adaptations of LXG and From Hell (or so they say, I haven’t watched the From Hell movie), Alan Moore’s work has never been translated to film well, V for Vendetta being the exception (that movie is sooo underrated).  Second, although Zack Snyder did great in 300, 300 was not exactly wordy, and the action translated great on film.  Watchmen is as wordy as it gets, and it’s not exactly an action driven comic.  That’s 12 freakin issues of extremely wordy pages, with fighting few and far in between.  How the hell would that translate into a 2 hour movie?

Well, for one thing, it was more than 2 hours (2:40?).  Second, they removed the whole Black Freighter sub-comic.  Even so, there’s bound to be other stuff removed.  Was all this enough, tho?

Yep, and it did pretty well too.  They took enough of the important parts so as to not lose the essence (or rather, essences) of the 12 issues.  Most of the important conflicts were included, and the whole thing feels whole.  The effects and the fight scenes, which were good, did not detract from the rich and complex story.

Which will probably be the real gripe people will make on the film.  The story quite faithfully follows the story of the comic, and that will not sit well with a lot of people.  The plot is complex, the issues raw, and the messages varied and mind numbing.  With few caveats, it’s a good translation of medium for the plot.  And for some people, this is not something they would be ready for.

[possible spoilers, I'll TRY not to give anything away]

The Dan Dreiberg, Rorschach, and Dr. Manhattan angles in relation to The Comedian were generally the focused parts, others are left for viewer inference.  I noticed that the least developed characters were Laurie Juspeczyk and Adrian Veidt.  The Silk Spectre’s case is strange since Laurie is given quite a bit of airtime, but the side of her unrelated to Dr. Manhattan and The Comedian was never well explored.

The ending was modified to be more… “believable”.  If you’ve read the comic, you’ll realize that there are some aspects about the main villain’s “final move” that won’t make sense if it’s included as-is in the silver screen.  Remember Wanted?  Imagine how idiotic the film would’ve been if they did an exact migration of the comic.  Can you honestly say that you’ll take a walking/talking super-villain that was quite literally made of poo seriously?  Perhaps things like these do diverge from the original, but a realistic film practically requires such divergence.

[spoiler end]

Like I mentioned earlier, you can’t expect to translate that much text to film without leaving things out.  I think they left enough of the the core items in for the film to work by itself and still touch base with the other aspects of the 12 issue comic (except for the Black Freighter parts).  To those who loved the comic, and for those who are ready to tackle a plot that deals with several high and complex issues, you’re gonna love this.  Purists might find the missing pieces, but seriously, there just isn’t enough space.  And a new medium will never exactly capture the original medium.  This, my friends, is a pretty good transfer of medium.

THIS IS NOT A SUPERHERO FILM!  It’s a story that has superheroes, not a superhero film with a story.  If you’re looking for a straightforward superhero flick, LOOK SOMEWHERE ELSE!  Most of the negative comments I hear from people who didn’t like the film stem from this frame of mind.

And don’t even think about taking your kids to see this!

To fans of the Watchmen comic, hell yeah! Go see it!  Then again, you’ve probably seen it already.

To the rest of you, if you’re willing to deal with an ambitious plot, you just might be surprised at how a comic can convey such a compelling story.  If you like it, please read the comic and see the stuff the movie left out.

Watch the Watchmen… IF you think you’re up to it.

— [edit] —

I made edits above to emphasize some points based on some comments I’ve been hearing, but I’ll say ‘em again:

• THIS IS NOT A SUPERHERO FILM!  If you’re looking for a straightforward superhero flick, LOOK SOMEWHERE ELSE!
• If you’re looking for straight-up action sequences and powers that go swoosh, bang kapow, you’ll be disappointed.  The story doesn’t revolve around those.
• Don’t bring your kids to this, unless you think they’re mature enough for concepts of ambiguous morality, murder and sex which are depicted straight-up.  It’s not all that graphic, but it’s raw enough to be disturbing.

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