So much has been said about this comic adaptation it is hard to know where to begin. You know the legend by now, so I won’t delve into the background of it. I’ll just give you my thoughts on the movie. But I will start by saying I am a huge fan of the comic series and do it in very high regard.

With any film on this kind of scale, Cinema viewing is a must. The one undeniable thing about this film is that is visually stunning. I think pretty much anybody even remotely interested in movies could agree on that. The strange thing about seeing this film in the cinema for me, having followed the development of this movie very closely, was knowing that even though this film is 240 minutes long, it still is missing 30 to 40 minutes of extra footage that will be included on the extended cut on DVD. Bearing this in mind, I gave the cinema cut a little extra leeway with regards to things that were left out, such Hollis Mason’s death, the goings on at the news stand, the origin of Rorschach’s mask etc as I know they will eventually be re-added.

Let’s start off with the good stuff.

Despite all the bitching about him, Zack Snyder has actually delivered a Watchmen movie. It may not be perfect, but he, in my opinion, has succeeded in translating 85/90% of what makes Watchmen what it is to the big screen. Yes things have been changed along the way to suit the new medium, and something’s work and some don’t, but we’ll get to all that in a minute.

This film is undeniably stunning to look at. The main area that Snyder succeeds in is that he’s translated the world in which the Watchmen takes place to the screen perfectly. Everywhere you look there are little references to characters back stories and histories and it really does convey the layered feel of the comic very well.

The characters were very close to the book; Rorschach especially was perfectly cast and was vividly brought to life by Jackie Earle Hailey, both in and out of the mask. I was apprehensive of this casting when I heard that the always excellent Doug Hutchinson had been up for the role, but J.E.H delivers in spades. Patrick Wilson and Bill Crudup both deliver as Nite Owl 2 and Dr Manhattan, with Crudup’s voice having just the right amount of effects on top of it to sound other-worldly yet still familiar. Patrick Wilson’s portrayal of The Comedian is also very good, he manages to come across as even more of an asshole than he does in the comic, yet I still felt a little sympathy for him.

A lot has been said about the added level of gore and violence that wasn’t in the comic, and about the soundtrack. With the music choices (which I thought were, for the most part, fine apart from Ride of the Valkyries, which was just too obvious to be called an allusion and Hallelujah, which is song that just grates on my nerves anyway), I felt it was a nuance of a wider part of the film’s design, in that modern superhero films tend to have cheesy nu-metal songs tacked onto them and so he went for the most obvious songs he could from the era, not to mention that a lot of them are referenced in the comic. I think that while it was a pretty obvious way of doing things, the songs chosen helped establish that while things are different in the Watchmen universe, it still a slightly warped version of our mid-1980′s.

I think this point continues on into the over-the-top choreographing of the fight scenes too. Take for instance the prison fight sequence when Dan and Laurie are trying to spring Rorschach. The prisoners don’t land a single blow on Dan and Laurie, it’s part of a parody of the violence in comic movies, which when coupled with the fact that you see how these blows seriously injure the assailants, helps portrays how superheroes would actually fit into the real world if they had these ultra adept fighting skills, rather than a world where people get hit and knocked over without actually dying or suffering permanent injury. This also ties in with the costume designs, which as many have already noted, parody the overly stylised nature of superhero costumes such as the Batsuit from Batman & Robin..

The violence, combined with the very overlong sex scene, I felt worked to make Watchmen the film comparable to other superhero movies what the comic series was it its peers of the time. A grittier and more graphic depiction of an alternate version of our modern world, where things aren’t always black and white, and everybody is not either good or bad. Watchmen may not have been the first comic story to deal with the ying and yang of good and evil in the human psyche, but it was the first to fill a whole story of superheros with such seriously flawed characters as Rorschach and The Comedian. Though the sex scene was a little too overboard, and was the one instance where musical choice really distracted me for a second.

Now, the bad.

Malin Ackerman as Silk Spectre. Now, whilst she is not the worst or most annoying actress working at the moment (Stand up Kirsten Dunst), neither is she one of the best. Her performance here was just very bland, she neither stood out nor faded away, she simply was there, and with her and Carla Gugino as her mother were very good, the movie does seem to lack a strong female lead

The ending. Much discussed, and notoriously different from the book. The long and short of it is that it works, in a sense. It’s very simplified, and not quite as waterproof as in the book, but with the time constraints of the medium, simplifying the ending allowed Snyder to jettison a lot of smaller elements of the film that were eating into his timeframe. he characters still ended up in the same position (Nite Owl 2 reduced back to his impotence, Manhattan agreeing due to his detachment from the human race, Rorschach the only character who’s horrified by it and, despite being a terrible fascist, perhaps the one whose reaction you relate to most in the circumstances). Maybe the ending from the book comes a little out of leftfield, but again, in the book it is written as a parody of the crazy plans hatched by supervillians in comics, only this time you get to see the consequences. I would have rathered the threat remained extraterrestrial.

The changed ending does bring with it a few other problems, for instance the loss of Veidt’s chat with Manhattan at the end, which I felt was very sorely missed from the end of the movie, as it was the only part where Adrian shows any doubt in his actions. There is a hint at this in the movie, though I think it will be easily missed on first viewing, especially to viewers unfamiliar with the comic.

This brings me to possibly the biggest criticism levelled at the movie, There is a lot to digest for anybody who has not read the comic, and since there is so much to fit in, the film throws you head first into scenes very quickly and this could be a bit disorientating. The overwhelming visuals may also distract some moviegoers from the bigger picture.

The relationships between these individuals is one of the keys to grasping this movie, and it seems like when the book was slimmed to work as a script, some of this is lost and the interactions become a little bit less natural. The extra stuff that was filmed I feel will add an extra sense of humanity back to the story also, as the newsstand characters gave you somebody more relatable in the story.

So, overall. I really enjoyed the film, and whilst I don’t think it quite stands up to the excellence of the comic, as a film adaptation it’s pretty much as near as anybody is ever going to get, and I really enjoyed seeing all my favourite scenes played out on film. It definitely requires repeated viewings in the same way the comic requires multiple readings.

I am now very much looking forward to seeing the extended cut.

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