Last night at the midnight showing of Zack Snyder's Watchmen in downtown Disney, I attending the semi-crowded theater with six other people in my group. I was excited to see this film during the last couple weeks, but when I first saw the preview, I wasn't too ticked to watch it. Since I like to think that I'm a connoisseur of movie trailers, it wasn't executed that well. The trailer, like the movie, was all over the place.Needless to say, as I sat in the theater for the first few minutes and opening credits, I thought to myself, "oh shit, this is going to have some GREAT action scenes." And I was right. The action scenes were amazing and visually amazing. Also, the BEST soundtrack I've heard to a superhero movie. And I loved the theme of the decaying superhero. It was something that we need to be exposed to, kind of like an homage to the old Batman comics in the 1930s, where instead of being given this perfect Superman, we have a dark ordinary man with a terrible past who's more of a vigilante than a hero. Watchmen does just that. It exposes the corruption of the masked men humanity trust their lives to. However, near the end of the movie we get a lot of background story (A LOT) and it gets more philosophical and kind of silly with the intensely vulgar sex scenes (which we could have done without.)
After watching the movie, I usually go onto imdb to see what people have thought. And I believe Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times stated it perfectly, "an adaptation that is more a prisoner of its story than the master of it." I believe Zack Snyder tried to keep true to it's fandom by keeping all the details and intricate background. I haven't read the graphic novel so I couldn't state that for sure, but it felt like it. I think this is the biggest fault of the film. Also the fact that I was sitting there and near the end was dying to look at the time because I felt the movie ran for over 4
hours. I usually never get that feeling...so it's not a good sign.I give this movie a 7 out of 10, mostly because the action scenes were badass and because Rorschach was just the coolest person ever. However, they lose brownie points for being 3 hours long.
