Review of Watchmen (2009) by Pur__0_0__ — 20 Apr 2021

I learnt about Watchmen when I was in my first year at college. One of my friends had recently received the graphic novel as a present and he would often bring it. I was curious to know what the graphic novel was about, so I looked it up, and that's how I discovered this movie. I wasn't much into superhero genre before this, so I decided to take a look at it. Back then I thought this was a great story, and after having read the original graphic novel, I think it's a great adaptation.

In the opening scenes the Minutemen are summarised with the song "For the times they are a-changin'" playing in the background. It was so cool to watch. It doesn't matter whether you like Zack Snyder's movies or not. One thing you do have to admit is that his opening scenes are always awesome. And this one is the one that absolutely nails it.

The costumes have been made either very faithful to the comic book counterparts like those of Silk Spectre II and The Comedian, or have been improvised as in the case of Ozymandias and Night Owl II. Dr Manhattan's "thing" is surely a bit distracting, but I was able to ignore it after a while. Rorschach was my favourite character in this movie. The one criticism this movie gets is that he was portrayed to be a badass dude instead of a self centred hypocrite that he was in the graphic novel, and I completely understand this. But I also like this interpretation. Since most of the story is centred over Rorschach figuring out about The Comedian's death, he has to look as interesting as possible in order to keep the audience engaged.

Another criticism this movie often gets is that it was unable to capture the visual essense of the graphic novel, which I completely disagree with. The graphic novel has an 80's styled drawing. Why would you want this movie to be made with that style? It is a good thing that this movie didn't go for the same visual style. This criticism is the equivalent of "why Wolverine doesn't wear his comic book costume in the movies". Dude things have to be changed in order to be adapted on the big screen. It's also the reason why the giant squid was replaced with a nuclear bomb. A giant squid sounds very funny instead of serious. No country would take any big action in case that happens.

If you're watching this movie for the first time, I'd say you should try the Director's Cut first. If you have no problem with the length of the movie and you can see and understand everything that you see in complicated movies, I'd say you should go with the Ultimate Cut. I watched the Ultimate Cut. Initially I was bored because of how the story was dragging on, but slowly everything started to make sense. I really like all the action scenes in this movie, and often go back to watching it just for the old time's sake.