Nate's Programming Blog

I went and saw the midnight showing of Watchmen last night. I’ve been highly anticipating this movie for over 6 months now. I have been following it through the ups and downs (Fox lawsuit) and was extremely excited to see it last night. Going into the movie I had very high expectations. I had been hearing reviews of how true it was to the original novel. I had watched all the trailers and was extremely happy that I was able to place every scene in the book. So here is what I thought of the movie.

Right off the bat I could tell that it was going to be very tightly coupled to the original novel. They started out the movie in the exact same place that the book started out. It even had a lot of the inner monologue journal entry content that Rorschach provides. As I watched the movie it was apparent that they basically used the graphic novel as the story boards for the movie. It followed the time line and series of events to a T. It reminded me a lot of the format and presentation of Sin City on the big screen.

There were a few things that were omitted, but this was expected. There was just too much information to fit into the movie, but the items that they omitted I felt were the best items to omit without affecting the overall story line.

I do have to warn people that they kept with the same adult themes. This is not a movie you want to take your 6, 7, 8 year old to. There was a lot of talk and anticipation from the audience of the blue genitalia and the movie did not disappoint. There was only one sex scene that was omitted that was in the novel (I imagine in order to keep its R rating).

Overall the only problem I had was the loss of the emphasis on the public perception of the political landscape. The book conveys the fear of communism very well through the back office discussions in the frontiersman. This is almost completely missing from the film.

Another item that I’m still on the wire whether I am ok with is the choice and placement of music. The selection and placement of the music felt extremely cheesy. Now the reason I’m still on the wire about it, is because it is a movie based on a graphic novel, so there is a bit of cheesiness associated with that, but does it flatter the artistic style of the movie, or is it just way over the top.

All and all I felt the movie met my expectations. I plan to see the movie again in IMAX format probably sometime next week. I’m glad that they decided to keep it true to the original story and did not create a Hollywood fluff movie that seems to be the standard these days.