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Chapter 4 Page 22 - Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Vorg?

Evil Emperor Nick

on March 5, 2009

I was told I might be forced to work this this weekend, so I went and saw the midnight showing of Watchmen as I might not get a chance to see it this weekend. Sorry to all the various parties whom I had hoped to see the movie with tomorrow.

The movie is not as bad as I feared but, shocking as this might be coming after the 300, the movie lacked subtlety.

The movie tells the narrative of the Watchmen well, but since it is really all about the characters this isn't always enough. I think the movie would have done better to expand more of the charter dialog. Also the should have cut down the special effect to higher some better actors for certain rolls. Often time the actors sound as if they were confused by the own dialog and some lines made little sense without the fuller context.

I though they did a good job with the setting both Jupiters, Night Owl and Rorschach, the Comedian was mostly good too but the very soft spoken Adrian Veidt and Dr. Manhattan fell very flat with me. Veidt had more in common with a manga Bishi then the American super hero he was supposed to both personify and deconstruct. The man was supposed to have presence, strength, style and charisma and this version has little of those traits coming of closer to a spoiled but precocious child then a virtual demi-god. Likewise the good doctor is always under spoken rather then in the booming voice of an alien god I always read him as, he sounds like a vulcan extra on a bad episode of Star Trek.

Some scenes were completely dead on capturing the spirit of the original graphic novel but other strangely fall completely flat seemingly at random. Fans though will find easter eggs and nods to the original work almost everywhere. Almost all of Moore's more subtly and deliberate vagueness within the characters however is gone.

In the end Watchmen does a good job of telling the narrative story and can be enjoyed for what it is, however if fails to capture the richness of the characters with their layers, philosophy, warped spirits, often nihilistic spiritualism and deep never stated motivations. I wish I could give more specific examples of where layers were stripped away and careful deliberate ambiguities and subtleties were lost but I don't want to give spoilers.

In short Watchmen was always doomed to fall short of its source material, but the movie can be enjoyed for what its. If you go see it I suggest just enjoying the good parts, enjoy discussing the movie with people afterwards and letting the rest slide.