Dan's Spoiler Free Watchmen Review

Keeping this spoiler free is pretty easy. I think the story works fine. I didn't really miss anything they took out. I thought the changes they made work to serve the story best as a film. There are minor things I would change. I agree with a review I read where they said they'd prefer Nixon removed and only seen on television.

What works?

Rorshach, of course. Totally badass. Hard not to love everything he does in this movie. The ultimate badass being ultimately badass. He has one line in a prison lunch line that literally had the audience cheering.

All the characters are well cast. There wasn't any point where I felt they weren't doing their character justice.

The fight sequences are solid and fun. I had reservations against Snyder's visual style, and while I'm still not sure a Watchmen movie should be this 'cool' and stylized, I think it actually works pretty well for this film.

Anytime the movie is being dark and gritty, it works. It feels right. It feels Watchmen. It doesn't shy away from violence, nudity, sex, gore, and hard-to-watch situations.

The moral grey area of the comic is intact. That was hugely important to me, as I felt losing that would betray the entire story.

What doesn't work?

Tonally, it's all over the place, and that was hard for me to deal with. Some scenes are very comic booky, almost goofy. Nixon plays like a charicature. This movie is far too aware that it's a comic book. It goes big and over the top in some scenes, then wants to be taken seriously when it gets down and dirty in others.

There are musc cues in here that are laugh-out-loud funny, and I'm not entirely convinced they weren't meant to be. It's almost like Snyder said 'well, no one will take this seriously, so I'll make it funny instead.' One scene in particular is played almost completely for comedy set to one of the funniest musical cues in the movie, and while I don't remember that scene in the comic being overly serious, the humor feels wrong here. Instead of it being inherently funny within the story, the scene and play as though Snyder himself is making the joke.

Am I biased because of the comic? Possibly, but I don't think I would have liked this scene in it's present form even if I hadn't read it.

It's a 'cue the music' movie.

Melodrama. Some dialog, particurlarly dialog between love interests, just feels cheesy, staged, lacking the weight they should probably have. Snyder knows how to stage action, but it seems he needs some work with actors. A score dips in at all the 'right' moments to try to illicit more emotion, but it's noticable. It adds to the odd tonal inconsistency.

It's a fun movie. I enjoyed it. At this point, it's hard to tell if it will have mass appeal outside of the comic's fans. Do I think it could have been better? Yeah, but I wasn't too disappointed, either.

I'm curious to see what others think once they've seen it.

Click on this awesome comic strip to read - Thanks Janet.