Comments
- on Apr, 6 2009
- in General
This post has been in the backlog for awhile now, I’ve finally decided just to put it up and get it over with.
While continuing the same train of thought from my previous post, I finally got a chance to check out Watchmen movie. Before I go into any specific details about it, I will say this – I absolutely loved it and wished it wouldn’t end.
I’ll try to structure this with what I didn’t like first, and then finish the review off with what I thought was really great about the movie.
The first thing I didn’t like about the film was actually one particular scene of the movie that was so offputting and unnecessary that it really just stuck with me as the most “wrong” scene about the movie .
The scene I’m referring to is the love scene between Night Owl and the 2nd Silk Specter – like in 300, Snyder decided that it would be an awesome idea to take a love scene and extend it to the point where it’s just uncomfortable and ultimately comical. Like a comic book frame, the camera stays in the exact same position for a good 45 seconds while Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah plays and the two bodies gyrate awkwardly as the audience gazes, dumbfounded.
Now that that’s out of the way, the next point that turned me off of the movie was the pacing. Yeah, it is impossible to turn a comic series into a three hour movie, but maybe they should have split the movie in two and released them separately, that probably makes no business sense, but it would really do the adaptation justice .It reminded me a lot of X-Men 3 in that there’s just way too much packed into a short time frame for anyone to really appreciate the movie. By the end of Watchmen, the you don’t really feel a stake into many of the characters because there really wasn’t much exposition into them (you can particularly see this with the Silk Specter/Comedian relationship, that really just didn’t end up paying off the way it did in the comic. )
So there’s the bad – well, what about the good?
First and foremost, this is a faithful adaptation (aside from the ending, but I’m not even going to touch that fanboy firepit) and I love the world/universe that the movie is set in. The opening montage alone was worth the price of admission to me – it’s not very often that you get to watch history re-write itself right in front of your eyes… with super heroes!
Next, there’s the action – for a movie with relatively limited action scenes, Snyder did a great job of stretching the conflicts out and, guess what, slow motion is still cool. The fight choreography is also pretty good, and without a shaky cam to ruin the view, the combat was as satisfying as it was brutal.
Finally, my favorite part of Watchmen , and the reason above all that you should go see it – Rorshach. Thankfully, Rorshach the character gets a huge chunk of screen time and he eats it up with glee. Jackie Earle Haley plays a psychopath really well, and the bitter, black and white world view that made Rorshach so great in the comic thankfully made the transition to the silver screen.
Overall, I think the movie was great and aside from the points I’ve already raised, it’s worth the time and money to see it. It probably won’t have the commercial success of 300, but to me it’s just that much better.
