WHO WATCHED THE WATCHMEN? - I DID

If you are a comic fan worth your salt, you’re going to see the Watchmen movie regardless of what anyone says about it – you’re all stubborn bastards that just have to see it for yourselves. Fear not comic fans, if you’ve read the graphic novel (get off this site if you haven’t) there are no spoilers to be had in this review. (ok, not many)

You might love it and you might hate it, but one thing you won’t be able to say is that the Watchmen movie was not true to the Alan Moore graphic novel… at least, the words and pictures part of it. Unfortunately, this is my big problem with the movie; it is so true to the text and imagery of Mr. Moore’s comic masterpiece that I found it incredibly boring to watch! I knew every line and every action before they happened. Watchmen’s director Zack Snider was really in a no-win situation from the start. If he got all “visionary” with Watchmen, the rabid comic nerds would rip him a new one. Staying ultra-true to the comic’s iconography and dialog was probably a more dangerous choice. From the silent audience and blank stares, I’m not sure many muggles (non-comic peeps) understood a large portion of the movie. To boot, comic fans can almost never be appeased with a portion saying it was not true enough to the Gospel of Alan and others like myself that know the story so well it was tedious to behold.

Want a copy of the Watchmen movie script? Grab your worn copy of the trade paperback and tear out about 20% of the pages. What you will have left is literally the line-for-line dialog of this movie. Two days before going to see Watchmen, I regrettably managed to find time to re-read Watchemen #1-4. It was spooky how few lines were added or altered. If this is how adaptations work, sign me up, I’ve got scripts for almost every DC and Marvel character ready to go…

There were some things I liked. Plot-wise, the changed ending was fine as I think the original ending would have broken the minds of the audience. In addition, the opening credits did a great job of presenting a lot of character bios in very little time and space. I also liked the shameless Silk Spectre II costume and I look forward to seeing many homemade copies of it at GenCon this year.

All in all, the acting was pretty weak – maybe because there was no opportunity to improvise, or maybe because the actors just aren’t very good. None of them did enough to make me empathize with their plight except maybe Rorschach.

Malin Akerman (Laurie Jupiter / Silk Spectre II) Drop the smoking, 10 years, the bitchiness, and add a black & yellow latex costume and you have a Silk Spectre updated for today’s man-boy. Malin is a pretty bad actress but not too hard on the eyes. They say she is Canadian (by way of Sweden) so she must have some redeeming qualities.

Matthew Goode (Adrian Veidt / Ozymandias) Mathew Goode was not. He made Malin look like a knighted Shakespearian actor. Line! He looked like Ozymandias, but, I’m sorry, it takes more…

Patrick Wilson (Dan Dreiberg / Nite Owl II) The fellow who played Nite Owl did a satisfactory job, but I think his mad skills were hampered by Zach’s over-zealous following of the Moore Bible. Very little emotion came through, and, frankly, I didn’t care if he lived or died.

Haley Joel Osmond (Walter Kovacs / Rorschach) Actually played by Jackie Earle Haley, Rorschach is the only character that is of any interest. Almost all of his lines are straight from the comic, but at least he is entertaining. One thing I didn’t about his portrayal , is that the moviemakers did a poor job highlighting his ultra right-wing personality. Sure, the lines were there, but they were easily missed if you were not looking for them.

Billy Crudup (Dr. Manhattan / Jon Osterman) I liked him when he was human, but the 1985 Dr. Manhattan was a bit of a sad sack and too soft spoken for my liking. If you like blue wieners this is the movie for you.

Three fairly strong performances were Carla Gugino as Sally Jupiter, Matt Frewer as Moloch the Mystic, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as The Comedian. Of the three, only the Comedian failed to be dead-on. Even though he committed atrocities upon the Vietnamese, US Citizens, JFK, and Sally Jupiter, he didn’t come off as much of a badass. He was about as hard as J. Jonah Jameson.
Watchmen gets a 65% from me and as of writing has a 66% on RottenTomatoes. You definitely need to see it (maybe the super-extendo version on DVD will be better) but if you go in expecting to be under-whelmed, you’ll probably have a much better experience then I did.