Wait, none of them were meant to have superpowers? I thought they all had superstrength at least, the way they were breaking limbs and throwing people through walls and stuff

Yeeeaaaa that kind of threw me off, but since it was cool I put it aside.

I thought it was okay. I saw it on the IMAX screen, so that made it seem better than it would have been otherwise, but...yeah. It was okay.

Well, Rorschach's namesake is the Rorschach inkblot test that you refer to.

I was talking with my friend about this movie. I guess I went in expecting wrongly. I was expecting a "superhero" movie à la X-Men et al. Now that I think of it, it is more of Stan Lee meets Raymond Chandler...except this is DC not Marvel comics.

Still, I could have done with less drama and less blue swinging dick.

At least Dr. Manhattan was wearing a crotchguard to shield us from massive swinging blue dick when he was huge and blowing people up in Vietnam.

I went in expecting the same thing, and was extremely happy to be wrong.
For me the drama and the swinging storyline twists was what made the movie great.

*cough*

>_>

hitler, spoilers, swearing, etc, you've been warned

edit: oh hay, the preview image has swaering, lolol. take down if ye mods don't like

Just got back from seeing it. My only major complaint is the music -- it felt thrown in and too strong. It felt like the same way they used the music in Shrek. And, as gathered, I liked the change in ending with Dr. Manhattan instead of alien-squid with psychics and whatnot . There are a few other things I could understand being miffed about, but I personally don't care that much about them. Overall, awesome movie.

agreed on the music geb
it was too forced in
i liked how adrian was portrayed the best. he seemed to be the only one to be fully brought alive from the graphic novel than the other characters.
i expected more from Rorschach and Nite Owl


and i liked that vid genk.

disappointed on the squid thing too

I don't think I would've respected the movie as much if that squid thing you guys are talking about happened

I fee like Rorschach was the one that pulled it together for me. He was perfect from the graphic novel. Him and the music are what made the movie for me (oh well we like it for different reasons, all that matters is we liked it) Adrian was to far out of it in the movie, in the book he cared more and seemed to be less of a pussy.

Overall, I liked it, but I'd say it's got a great number of flaws. Yes, I have read the comic and it's by far my favorite piece of any media I own.

The Good:
The opening scene with The Times They Are a-Changin was one of the best openings to any movie I've ever seen. It clearly introduced us to the Watchmen world, and gave us a great deal of the back story that was only revealed in the back of the comics. The music fit the scene very well, but was one of the only times in the movie I felt that.

Rorschach was executed perfectly, and every minute with him felt right. I even liked the chopping of the one guy's skull, but I still would've preferred the original part. I would've also liked to have heard more voice over by Rorschach.

I thought the casting for Nite Owl couldn't have been done better. The scene with him standing naked looking at the Nite Owl costume is probably one of my strongest memories of the comic, because it is so iconic of the watchmen universe. A chubby ex-hero looking at his "powers." Honestly, all of the casting choices were right on the money with one very minor exception I'll mention later.

The Bad

I felt there was a lot of work done on this movie to make it accessible for all kinds of people, but it failed miserably. The entire plot is lost on anyone who isn't a fan of the comic. They did not make a good movie, they made a good fan service. At 3 hours, I can't imagine anyone who didn't know about watchmen to come out of that movie liking the story.

The music was stupid. Hallelujah during the 5 minute sex scene? The music when Manhattan is killing in Nam is hilariously retarded. It's like the music director went through the top 10 most used songs in movies and made sure each one was in Watchmen for all of the non-watchmen people. This completely removed me from the magic every single time they did it. The only successfully used music piece was at the beginning.

The major loss in the translation between comic and film is the subtleties. I don't think that these things would've been difficult at all to incorporate, either. The TV during the impotence sex scene is very important in the comic: In the movie, the scene is about them screwing. The superimposing of ideas onto other ideas was what made watchmen so completely amazing. They do some of that, but only in the most obvious ways. The ZOOMING IN on the sign out in front of old nite owls house was stupidly obvious.

On the above point, I still think I enjoyed the comic more because of things like the pirate comic book being a direct allegory for the events in the story. The characters around the newsstand also made the ending of the comic resonate and make more sense. We saw people we understood and cared about die for no reason in NY. Their arguments and problems were what realized the actions of the heroes as important. I also missed the "idea" of the monster and his creation and the point of there being an alien attack. The Dr. Manhattan idea is far more logical for the film, but it makes it a story about him and the God complex, and not about the compromise a hero must make in order to save people.

The makeup on all of the "old" people was terribly bad. Just stupid bad. I spent all of the time looking at the glue on the edge of Silk Specter's mom's forehead. She wasn't a very good actress, either. Manhattan's old girlfriend was equally poorly makeuped. Considering how polished everything else was, this stuck out like an ugly ugly sore.

They tossed in things that were just stupid. Why did time freeze when Silk Specter was in the burning building? It just felt contrived and illogical to toss in. Like the director needed to use his staple slowmo from 300 in order to tell the story. There were other moments that I can't quite remember now, but it very much felt like lots of things were done just to make the movie more action-packed or exciting. This bothered me greatly.

I am highly anticipating the box set DVD release of this film, as I'm willing to bet there's a lot of the scenes I really want to see. If there isn't an edited together pirate/newsstand/properending I'll edit one together myself, god dammit.


I want to repeat this outside of the spoilers: The intro is so god damned well done, I just saw it again.

On your point about the plot being lost on people who hadn't read the comic?
Couldn't disagree more.
I've never read the comic, neither has any of the (now many) people I pushed into watching the movie after seeing it for myself.
It has been greatly appreciated all round, by nerds and non-nerds alike. It's like the next firefly down here, a movie all types of people are watching and enjoying.

Snyder uses slow motion only on panels in comics where one would want to study the detail of the frame. He films his movies as if you were reading the comic, you slow down on certain parts to see all the little details.

Regarding the apparent superhumanness of the characters, you get the same impression of them from reading the graphic novel so it's not something that Zack Snyder introduced to make the action more exciting. The conclusion I reached was that these are people who have been masked vigilantes fighting hardened criminals for quite some time, a lot of their peers are dead - they are the ones who survived. It stands to reason that they know how to kick some serious arse.

Ozymandias seemed the most superhuman, but if you look carefully he doesn't move that fast, he just reads people and anticipates where the shots will be fired.

Yeah, I didn't feel they were superhuman at all, just better than most humans, especially Det's part about Ozy.

I liked it a lot.
That being said, I suspect that if I was trying to follow the plot as it was laid out in the movie, it wouldn't have made a ton of sense. A lot of other moviegoers looked deeply upset/confused.

I would have liked the Rorschach kidnapping scene to have ended as it did in the comic. I'm not a purist about this kind of thing, I just think the point they were trying to make could have just as easily been made with the hacksaw/fire thing.
I think the point of the scene in the book was different too, but I guess given the time and other cut scenes, I can understand why it was made there.

I was surprised how overwhelmingly negative reviews were of the movie. I can usually see the point the critics were trying to make, but I really didn't see it here. I thought the point of Malin's "bad acting" was a bit exaggerated, and as for the pathetic love scenes, I thought that was the point.

Overall it touched most of the major bases, and it was fun to see it on the big screen.

As my date and I were leaving the movie, we tried to irk some nerd ire by asking:

"So, the bad guy was Magneto, right?"
"Which one was Wolverine, again?"

No success.

As for the actual movie, I dd like how they explained Dr. Manhattan not simply restoring the cities to their pre-destroyed states. Too often, you get god-like characters in a story (like Hiro Nakamura or Peter Patrelli in Heroes) which put inexplicable and unreasonable self-imposed limits on the use of their powers.

I actually didn't think the other Watchmen possess super strength. Some of the feats they done could be accomplished by a high trained martial artist (which seems to be the case with all of them) or a Parkour practitioner (Rorschach's agility).

By the way, I don't know if it's just the sound system in my theater, but did anyone else like those various sound effects in Watchmen every time the characters hit someone or crack someone's bones? The sound effects felt really satisfying; they give all those punches and kicks an extra omph factor.

Yes, the sound effects were meaty. The IMAX screen helped as well.

I wanted to mention in my review above, but forgot: I really think this would've been 100 times better as an HBO 12 part mini-series that was absolutely panel for panel a recreation.

http://www.thefilmchair.com/wordpress/index.php/2009/03/08/watchmen-title-credits/
so apparently the company that did the title credits released it online, and this makes me want to see it now

Yeah, that's where I saw it. It's so good. I love how iconic and historical it feels. It's funny, beautiful, nostalgic, terrifying, brutal, and sad. It's everything every movie wants to be, and it's only 5 minutes long.

Lol the whole way in we were saying stuff like, "So this is Heath Ledgers last performance, Im so excited to see him play the joker tonight" and pretty much just mixed every superhero movie into one.

Wait, what?

LOL QUOTED THE WRONG ONE.

That is the right one now. lol whoops

yes! with short documentaries at the end telling hollis' story and such!

Seriously?
The movie made perfect sense, I would suspect the intelligence of anyone who left that movie confused.

Yeah, I agree w/ Deadman. Never read the comic, really liked/appreciated the plot (or at least how it was constructed/told).

Make sure you get The Black Freighter, it includes stories from "Under the Hood."


But yeah, I've seen it twice. amazing movie. the changes they made were needed for an adaptation to the screen, and actually added to the story while keeping the heart and soul intact.

rorschach couldn't have been cooler. "When are you people gonna learn? I'm not locked in here with you, YOURE LOCKED IN HERE WITH ME!"

and yes, title sequence was amazing. mars looked awesome as well, especially when he first went there, his blue glow on the surface

all around really solid. Zack Snyder said that if all he did was make an advertisement for the comic where people leave the theater and think "wow, thats awesome... i gotta go read that" then he's done what he set out to do. i think his hard work definitely showed. especially if you read about what Warner Brothers originally wanted the story to be when he was brought on board. we owe Snyder a lot for keeping this story 99% intact.

Just got back from seeing it. Funny thing is, lots of parents walked in with their children expecting a comic book movie, like superman and such. Hilarious as they walked out when they realized that blue dicks and sex scenes to inconsistent music were dominating too much screen time. Other than that, I thought the movie was fantastic.

All in all, I give it 8/10 (too much blue dick made me literally feel sick).

Visually speaking, the movies is awesome. The pace is good, the development of characters is great. I had no trouble following and understanding the plot. That being said, I haven't read the comic, so I have no idea how close it is to the original. I liked very much this movie, but seriously, whats up with the blue dicks, and oh I dunno, constant sex scenes.

Don't take me wrong, I have nothing against sex scenes, and people who have blue dicks, but there were times when I was wondering whether or not this was a hentai adaptation rather than a superheroe comic book adaptation.

Im sick of people complaining about Dr. Manhattan being nude. Yes you see his weener a few times, but its not distracting or anything. Its there and happens to be glowing blue.

If youre going to complain about the watchmen, at least bring up a legitimate argument.

It onscreen probably for a good 30 mins around the whole movie. I wasn't expecting a blue dick popping on screen so often ... I mean, a couple times I have no problem with it. But that often and frequent starts to really get on your nerves.

Nice, I like it Ford.

Crap, double/quick reply problem: Yeah, the dick this is getting stupid. You see his dick nearly every single panel of the comic. It's supposed to be a pure image of man. He's Godlike and unashamed, etc etc. The immaturity of the penis is annoying.

But yeah, I forgot to talk about how hilarious all of the kids and parents were. Sex scenes, extreme gore and violence with bizarre and scary things happening that could **** a kid up for life. I saw 6 year olds and toddlers. They HAD to KNOW it was rated R. The theater can't let them in without making them KNOW it's R.

30 minutes? are you absolutely crazy? you see it for maybe two minutes in total and i think thats rounding up.

Stop exaggerating, get over it, and grow the hell up.