Good, not great.

I went in knowing very little about the graphic novel. I’m a comic fan, so I’ve flicked through it a few times but never actually got around to buying it. In hindsight I’m really glad I didn’t because I think knowing the whole story before it unfolds on-screen would have detracted from the film.

As for the film itself I thought it was amazing – I’ve said it in another post but I feel this is a masterpiece. I cannot see any way Zack Snyder could have made it a better film. I’ve heard comments about some of the acting but for me it was all perfect, all the characters/actors fit togeter as you would think. The characters also retained that comic book feel – though I can’t put my finger on why but it did carry over to the rest of the film.
The action scenes were extremely well done. Fast cuts interspersed with slow motion shots came together brilliantly – possibly some of the best action sequences I’ve seen.
The soundtrack was also a nice touch – all the music was from the 70s – no songs post 1985 (that I noticed).
The story itself is (as Roger Ebert has already said) highly nuanced with political and moral agendas – it’s going to be used on a few Media students essays/exams for quite some time.

The only negative thing I would have to say would be that there were a few bits and pieces – such as Ozy’s Lynx – which weren’t explained for people who haven’t read the comic. But it’s not something I would get pissy about purely because the film was already 160 minutes and I’m sure the comic fans appreciate the nod.

I went to a midnight screening expecting to see a maximum of 50 people there. I was shocked when after I took my seat the screen filled up ~ 250 people. I left the screen around 3am to realise that 2 other screens were just leaving too! Just shows the hype this film has and my box office predictions have doubled.

Overall I think it’s a stunning film which will undoubtedly become a cult classic.

Just came back from the theater…
Alan Moore was right, “Watchmen” is unfilmable.

Really well done there is plenty of stuff that the film was missing from the novel but it was to be expected. No squid was a problem for me but overall pretty damn good.

I went with no knowledge and really enjoyed it, it’s really made me want to read the graphic novel. I was hooked the whole way though!

I was surprised by how terrible the acting was in some of the scenes. I mean, you have this huge multimillion dollar movie, but then you have this b-movie acting. Why not make the effort to get descent performances from you actors? Laurie’s flashbacks reminded me of seeing a high school play. The actress who played Laurie was sexy but she just could not pull it off.

Jackie Earle Haley was awesome as Rorschach, but the character never really had a chance to develop.Its a shame that the script didn’t give him enough to sink his teeth into.

The biggest fault of the movie was Adrian Veidt.
He had this whole Mr.Burns off the Simpsons evil millionaire vibe to him. He had a creepy accent, and i almost expected to see him stroking a white cat like a Bond villain. The whole point of his character was that he was supposed to be a charismatic and charming mega-celebrity that no one would think could ever do anything evil.

The music was out of place, and did not establish the atmosphere of dread and confusion that the graphic novel had. The opening sequence was really cool, it was satirical, clever and intensely detailed, but couldn’t they think of a less obvious song then “the times they are a-changin”?

I actually liked the ending. I always thought the giant squid was something that could only work on the pages of a comic book. The movie ending was still very close to the graphic novel’s.

The film was pretty much what I expected it to be. I actually think I would have enjoyed it more had I not read graphic novel.

By the way, I have to ask those who have never read the graphic novel; was is hard to follow the plot, or did it make sense as it unfolded?

I thought it was amazing.and i loved the fight and action scenes in the movie.I personaly did not have a problem with the acting thought it was great.I liked how corny it was in the begining which made it feel like a comic book but then turned in to such a deep serious movie.So i thought it was great but i never read the comic so i dont know how theyed compare.

Never read the novel.

Awesome film. A real slow burner, with awesome characterisation, and the most original superhero film in years. It is exactly what the Dark Knight wishes it was…a thoughtful, thematically driven superhero story.

It suffered from a deeply underdeveloped villain, and I thought the action scenes were wildly unnecessary. But other than that, a wonderful film that is unfortunately doomed to being underrated.

The majority of the people praising this film haven’t read the source material….The movie was good, but not as good as the book and nowhere near a masterpiece. It tries too hard to be like the book and replicate certain portions of it, and loses focus on the actual plot as a result. So the story is a mess. Certain details that worked in the book don’t work on film. Adaptations are meant to have creative liberties taken with them. The only real creative liberty they took with WATCHMEN was changing the ending up (which was stupid anyway and shouldn’t have been done). Not to mention the action scenes, excessive slo-mo, terrible acting (save for Rorshach, Nite Owl, and Comedian), and fake-looking CGI (particularly Doc Manhattan, Doc’s Martian fortress, and Ozy’s lynx Bubastis; Rorshach’s mask was done well though).

The Dark Knight wipes its ass with this movie.

I enjoyed the film. The beginning was great, most of the beats from the book were there and excellent. Two things bothered me, 1) Rorschach’s conversation with the prison psychiatrist. I didn’t like how Rorschach was made to look like he opened up over the course of one conversation. In the book there is a longer beat about how the psychiatrist is changed by his dealings with Rorschach. I get that wasn’t time but they could have split the scene to make it seem that it was a few days later that he opened up.
The end “massacre” just didn’t have the emotional impact it should. Maybe because I knew it was coming. I’m hoping the extended DVD will fix these issues.
All in all I look at what Hollywood has done to several comic properties (LXG, Ghost Rider, Punisher)and it’s amazing Watchmen got this kind of adaption. You can’t argue that this movie was a rush job or a mutant child of the book. This was an adaptation with huge resources and ambition (why not a best picture Oscar nomination?). Watchmen was better than Chicago and Crash.

I’m going to see it tomorrow, I hated the book so I’ve got high hopes for the film.(Am I the only person in the world who didn’t like Watchmen the book?)

I happen to like the Watchmen comic quite a bit and I found the movie enjoyable. Then again, I wasn’t expecting it to be mind blowing or anything.

I thought the acting was good for the most part. Aside from her ass being rather nice to look at, Silk Spectre II could have been much better though I think. She was the only one that seemed to not be quite right as far as attitude and mannerisms. Rorschach I can already see is going to be this year’s Joker. Having read the comic multiple times I can’t stand him because he’s completely childish and self absorbed, but then again that’s what the Hot Topic generation loves these days so get ready for the wave of Rorschach t-shirts at Hot Topic.

I’m only halfway through the graphic novel currently and I saw the movie last night and I really enjoyed it. I’m a very visual person so this movie was very enjoyable for me. I LOVED the beginning. I thought it was put together really well and I liked the song choice a lot. I actually liked the music all through the movie. Dr. Manhattan was pretty cool too.
Once I finish the graphic novel I’ll decide if I liked the book better than the film (though I assume I probably will) but I liked the movie a lot!

I didn’t read everyone’s comments, just a few. But i give it a c maybe a c+. But it was well directed. The shot that stood out for me was when Rorschach went into the bathroom and as the door went back and forth he got closer and closer, it was pretty neat. Then the story was really well done and put forth.The characters chemistry was once again really put together. It was really graphic and the cinematography was brilliant. And the last good thing, well the best thing, was Rorschach, he held the hold movie for me and made it much more watchable. But now the bad. I hated that they needed to show Dr. Manhattans dick as much as they did, i get it that they wanted to be realistic and and just like the comic book but why the hell do i want to see that much dick. And also the sex scenes were soo bad and annoying because there was like 4 of them with basically the same people and had absolutely no relevance to the story. And the worst part was Nixon. Did they just throw a Nixon mask over just any random guy!! That was the biggest thing that ruined it for me besides the 20 minutes of screeentime that Dr. Manhattans dick got. So overall i wont watch it again ever unless it was just Rorschach’s scenes.

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT OVER THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS.

Never read the novels but really liked the film. The cast was good especially Patrick Wison as Nite Owl. Totally likeable and he centered the film. I was a skeptic because I didn’t like the trailers but the movie won me over bigtime. I was very impressed.
8.5 out of 10.

chuck

I am one of the many that have not read the graphic novel, but took the chance on the movie none the less. I have to be honest, I was lost as piss the first hour of the movie. Thinking to myself, where is all of this going, how does all this fit together? I kept watching, and boy am I glad. When the ending credits rolled, I was disappointed, I wanted more. The action scenes are amazing, so are the sex scenes for that matter. All in all, very good film, not great….yet, that is because I still don’t quite understand the whole story yet, but that will come after I see it again.

I became a watch-man. A dreadful pun, but I was constantly watching my watch.

I will start by saying that the visuals, and anything technical about this movie was perfect. It simply cannot be knocked. It was all very convincing, and true to the panels.

But I felt that this was all the movie had going for it. 3 hours is too long to sit in a cinema and look at pretty sequences, and this film demands it, and quite frankly the film should have been 4 hours long spending more time developping characters, explaining the plot and genuinely tugging on your heart strings.

Instead it was a mish-mash of scenes showing characters trying to emote, but with no background knowledge to this makes it completely flat, transparent and leaves you without a care.

I always feel that sex scenes in these movies are for the nerds. I cringe at sexual content in comics, purely because I find it pervy and completely unecessary, and a poor self indulgant excuse for the artist to be “shocking” so they can justify drawing much sought after boobies! Pathetic. I don’t like looking at men’s arses either, (or a blue penis) but they to crop up countless times. Ditch the pointless sex and give us more story.

I got tired of the format, the boring storyline, the cheesy soundtrack and the lack of an interval or break! I was massively disappointed and couldn’t wait for it to end.

Oh and you shouldn’t be expected to have read the novel before seeing it. Otherwise it should be a DVD release only to be appreciated by true fans rather than rammed down the throats of the general public.

Right now I am in the middle of reading the novel and I must say that the film stays pretty true to the source material. However, at times the dialogue just seemed to be going on forever and to certain extent it felt like I was reading the novel on screen. I figure films and comics would be two different mediums.

Someone mentioned in an earlier comment about the music being a bit “out of place,” and honestly I can understand where the director was coming from, but it did not work for me. Instead of enhancing the atmosphere to make it meaningful it made certain scenes just seem hysterical and ridiculous.

Overall a decent movie, but it is no where near the caliber of The Dark Knight.

As a nonreader of the GN, i enjoyed the movie. Yes, i did feel the length of the movie definately, and it slowed down in some parts, but there was just so much going on, so many characters and different histories and storylines going on, it kept my interest up. The characters were really developed i thought, and all in all, a very nice looking film, visually. I find Zack snyder’s love for slo mo a tad annoying, but it was tolerable in this movie, and even (gasp!) used effectively in some scenes(and even necessary, dare I say?) My only problem with the movie was Malin Ackerman who I thought did the worst job as far as acting, when you see her other roles in other movies, and you see far better. While many can find a lot of things they don’t like about Watchmen, you can’t say its not a brilliant technical achievement and a well put together film. Not a masterpiece, but theres far more pros in this movie that outweigh whatever cons people pull out of their asses about the movie.

Does not and I repeat does not touch dark knight

FIRST OF ALL,
I apologize for this impending novel-like comment of mine.
It’s gonna be a long post for me. So for that, I AM SINCERELY SORRY.
________________________

I have, since last Friday’s release, seen the Watchmen movie THREE TIMES.
To begin with, the length of the whole movie was NOT IN ANY WAY a problem for me.
I had no issues with the almost-three-hour duration of Snyder’s Watchmen.
HOWEVER, this movie did give me a handful of cognitive dissonances regarding the other aspects of the film.

For frakk’s sake,
to hell with all the slow-mo sequences already!
It was sickening after god-knows-how-many-times they’d used that technique in this flick!
Those trademark Snyder camera action styles worked great in 300 (in the first place, the slow-mo action scenes first became loveable in the Matrix trilogy).
But, come on, folks. Not every frame needed to be in slow-mo. Quit it already. Bejeezus.

And then,
there were quite a few minor scenes that dint sit well with me.
For instance, this wasn’t a life-changing poignant scene in the Watchmen tale,
BUT the sex scenes (between Laurie & Dan) in this Snyder film were fugly! Forced, exaggerated nonsense, to say the least.

Overall, I’d have to say… Watchmen still did not meet my expectations.
And I’d set my personal expectations really low for this movie. I really set aside my comicnerdiness for this.
I give it a maximum rating of B.
A minimum rating of C.

Now, I’m not actually mad.
But how dare those people put this movie in the rank of The Dark Knight. (?!).
Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Watchmen was nowhere near the epic-ness of Nolan’s TDK (!?!).

In my humble opinion,
there’s just no point in comparing TDK with Watchmen because they are two different entities.
Okay, they’re both adaptations of serious-tone comicbook sagas. But that’s just about it.
Plot-wise, theme-wise, character-wise, etcetera there are no logical points of comparison between TDK and Watchmen.

The problem of this incarnation of Watchmen for me was that
in trying to execute an almost 95% accurate frame-by-frame version of the 12-part Watchmen graphic novel from the comicbook sheets to the movie screen,
Zack Snyder has produced a flick that is indeed 95% faithful to the source material AND YET still hugely short in terms of depth and reimagination.

Okay. What’s really great about this Snyder output was its superb visual eye-candy aspect. Loved it that I was like watching a motion comics onscreen.
But that was the thing: The superb aesthetics of this movie was both its PRO and its CON.
On one hand,
the colors, movements, and elements in almost every scene in Snyder’s Watchmen was were in keeping with the actual Watchmen panels.
On the flip side though,
the movie was mindblowing ONLY BECAUSE of its mindblowing visual/action FX.

As someone who’s read the source material innumerable times already within my 20-year lifetime,
watching Snyder’s take on Watchmen was like a REDUNDANT TERAFLOP.
It’s as though I wanted to verbally ask Zack Snyder:
“Hey dude. Couldn’t you balance your own creative liberties WITH your verbatim lifting of content from the pages of the graphic novel?”
There was just no balance between the director’s creative inputs AND the contents lifted from the source material.

As much as I don’t wanna bring up Nolan and TDK again,
I want Snyder to look at what Nolan did with the Batman movies.
Nolan stayed faithful to the comicbook lore of Batman AND YET he gave an adequate amount of his creative spin to produce movies that pleased SEVERAL audience groups.
Nolan’s Batman Begins and The Dark Knight generally pleased BOTH the comicbookgeeks (like me) AND the regular moviegoers who may or may not have any deep-seated education regarding the Batman multiverse.

Sadly,
Watchmen has failed in being a substantive movie when we disregard the spectacular visuals, when we strip it of its source-material-related accuracy.

Watchmen achieves a coherence – both plot wise and thematically – that Dark Knight falls massively short of. Where Watchmen takes the lead is the fact that it is able to to be a serious, meditative, brooding film, without losing sight of its genre. Dark Knight transcends the comic book genre, and ends up being a mediocre, badly plotted crime drama rather than a very successful superhero film. The glaring mistakes that would have otherwise been forgivable in a comic book film therefore become unacceptable and ruin what is otherwise a very ambitious film.

OMG! 3 hours of soft porn!! Enough said. Some things are better left alone and Watchmen fits really nice in that catagory. I can’t believe that I sat in a theater for 3 hours to watch Dr. Manhatten swing his MAN-parts in front of me. I tried taking a nap, but of course the seats were uncomfortable. I’m just wondering if there were any deleted scene’s?? I doubt it..I pretty sure the Janitors enjoyed not having to sweep up the cutting room floor…because nothing was left out! But wait..I digress…I did enjoy Dr. Manhatten running off to space and constructing that beautiful work of art! 2 thumbs up for that! I digress once more..my husband did nudge me for every fight scene and WOW they were awesome! Other than those 2 profound performaces, this movie SUCKED!! Where can I get a refund and whom do I discuss pain and suffering payouts?

um to Shannon O. – you dont’ get a refund. you paid for the movie, you’re stuck with it. unless there was a technical problem with the projecter or theater, then refunding a movie is completely unnecessary. To digress a little bit, people shouldn’t get their money back when they pay to see a movie. thats just pathetic. If you don’t like it, walk out and suck it up.
–and Softcore porn? PLLEEASE.. you need to watch a lot more movies then if you thought this was bad. The sex scenes were actually quite tame, especially when you pair it up with the song, Hallelujah!(but the scene was effective, not just “softcore porn.” lol)
There was nothing about the movie that should warrant you a ticket refund. It took alot of money to make, with lots of hard work from crew and filmmakers and made for the viewers to enjoy and take something away with.
…also, will people stop with this childish “TDK VS Watchmen” fight!! IT’s so stupid. These little kids and fans of TDK are just humiliating themselves when they bring this topic up, and actually, they are hurting the credibility of TDK. It was a great movie, but when people are incessantly saying its better than “this movie” than its just pathetic, especially when they cant back up their reasons. Watchmen was an enjoyable movie adaptation of a GN- will you just leave it at that. Ugh!

It was.. pretty bad. Even worse than the book. The structure of the screenplay was probably the worse thing that it had going for it.

The audience was not relating to anyone, they were not rooting for anyone — it was merely a spectacle.

All of the main cast were pro actors despite being relatively unknown. For anyone complaining about Malin Ackerman, how she might have been “annoying”, “bad”, “unnecessary” — news flash, that character was annoying, bad, and unnecessary.

And despite for being so long it felt almost embarrassingly cut short most of the time.

This was better as a music video (trailer).

Maybe…

bad book + ‘faithful’ director = even worse movie?

Watchmen was just that a movie to watch and enjoy. For those of you who pick it apart like you could do better. You are the same people who complain about everything in life, nothing is ever up to your standards. The popcorn is too salty, the movie was too long, the car in front of me is driving too slow. WOW stop enjoy life alittle, all the bad movies are still fun to watch,see someone elses point of view. Things would be really boring if we all were the same.
Hell 30 years ago for all of us Comic nerds as someone wants to call us, who would have thought any of our comics would ever become movies!!!!!!
Now we have seen Spiderman,X-men,Batman and yes even Watchmen come to life,that in it’s self is just mind blowing so Enjoy…STOP COMPLAINING.

Watchmen, for me, was brilliant. I have seen it three times already and although some parts feel rushed, I think overall as a film we will never ever get better. Kudos to Snyder, roll on the directors cut.

i think the movie was good till the end when i think it was the blond. the rich white guy pretty much told the whole story . i thought that was dumb. the prison scene was hella cool and too much sex they should have made the movie pg-13 . in the bay area California in the theaters i saw and herd from employers they turned down hundreds of under aged kids trying to get into to watchmen. they could of had the blue guy wearing a cloth and took out the sex scene

I can’t believe people are actually comparing Dark Knight to the Watchmen. One is an over-hyped pyrotechnic show with incoherent plot, laughable dialogue and one decent acting performance (you know which one), while the other is poetry.

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