Words cannot do Watchmen justice. Watchmen is an epic brutal (near) masterpiece. At a running time of 2hrs 40mins, I could have gone for more, and from the sound of things the DVD release will be about 3 hours. As the film opens on the event that sets the story into motion: The death of the Comedian, one word was going through my mind as it unfolded: Brutal. The fights were incredibly performed and incredibly filmed. The Comedian is physically huge and that required watching from a sort of distance, and it was incredible. Instead of using the “let’s shake the camera a lot to look intense” method, they perfected the fights and let us watch every move. A fantastic start.
One word that people were using to describe why this movie couldn’t work is “complicated”. But I followed the story very well, and I haven’t read the book yet (I’ll explain why in a minute). There was one exception to this however, when a major event was discovered by one of the characters. I had no idea what he was looking at and had to wait to figure out what he found, even thought they tried to show it initially. That was only one of a few drop points in the movie that took me out a bit.
I didn’t read the book beforehand because I wanted to be surprised while watching the movie. If the story was as good as they say it is, I wanted to see it on the screen first, then read the book. Doing it that way can only mean it will be better. I caught the midnight showing which was awesome. Even the 3am ride home. I will be picking up the book and reading it entirely, and then go see Watchmen in the IMAX. The theater I saw it in was decent, but the sound wasn’t that great. Some people say they don’t see the point in IMAX unless it was shot for the IMAX (i.e. certain Dark Knight scenes, and Transformers 2), but the sound in the IMAX is also way better than any theater.
The film was obvioulsy very dark in nature, and in that way I felt closer to it than any other superhero movie. Life is fucked up, and life in Watchmen was REALLY fucked up. So somehow that had a very emotional appeal. I loved Dr. Manhattan. He was forced into being the way he was through an accident, and over time lost his humanity, and started to not care about people at all. If you feel like you are really awesome and everyone around you sucks, to the point it depresses you, then Dr. Manhattan is the role model for you.
Rorschach was really awesome. You could say he was the “Batman” of the film because of the similarities in the voice, but this guy makes Batman look like the nice guy. Oh yeah, and Rorschach kills the bad guys. He’s not fuckin around. Rorschach has had it up to HERE with the scum of the city, not just the murderers and rapists, but people who…have sex and stuff (I REALLY have to read that book).
The opening credits, with “The Times They Are A-Changin’” playing, was a major major major highlight for me. The way it was put together was just fantastic. I love segments like that, they are like another movie in a movie. I was MOST impressed with the incredibly accurate re-enactment of the assassination of JFK.
There was a couple parts in the last third of the film that totally pulled me out of the movie. The dialogue all of a sudden started to suck, and the story went very formulaic, but it quickly changed and I was right back in it. So it is very negligible at this point. Another thing that I questioned briefly was the music choices, but I understood why they did that and it didn’t distract me a whole lot. It was mostly popular music from the eras the were showing. There was some disco music for the 1970’s, and then some music from that Dustin Hoffman movie for the funeral. My favorite use of music was the rendition of Hallelujah during the fuck scene (the term “sex” is too light for what we saw), and then the organ tunes during the telling of the tragedy of Dr. Manhattan.
I am still amazed at how long this film was, and how much the length didn’t bother me. It could have been a five hour film, and as long as it was good, I would have watched it all. Their was a TON of awesome lines, most thanks to the graphic novel obviously, and the fight scenes were the best I’ve seen in a long time. Fucking brutal violence. It makes things very real when you go that far, and it pulls you in THAT much more. All the actors ranged from decent to brilliant, and you can’t ask for more from a cast of unknowns. The fact they are, for the most part, unknowns makes the movie that much better. They ARE those characters to you.
Zack Snyder is officially the coolest director in my world right now. I can’t wait to see what he does next.
I suggest you see this movie more than once. At least twice: The first time, stare at Dr. Manhattan’s penis every time it is on screen. That floppy blue penis will be calling your attention the whole time and if you try to avoid it, you will lose concentration on the slightly more important aspects of the film. By the time you see it again, you will have hopefully gotten rid of the urge to watch that thing flop around when he walks, and pay attention. Fuck it, go see it a third time JUST for all the nudity: Silk Spectre’s boobs, Night Owl’s ass cheeks, and the immortal floppy blue penis of Dr. Manhattan.
