I for one was glad that at least the movie delivered a CGI Dr. Manhattan that looked great and did big stuff. I would have hated a blue-suited man.

There was not particular reason why this had to be a mega-budgeted 4-Quadrant movie, it could have been done cheaper and aimed at a smaller niche, something like HELLBOY or THE FOUNTAIN.

This doesn’t make sense. You’re saying of course they need to compromise because they did.

‘The audience’?

With comic book movies, the one thing they will always have over the comics is motion. Spider-Man in motion. Superman in motion. Night Owl in motion? When what you’ve got is dialogue, motion isn’t necessary, the only thing Watchmen in film form gives us that the comic doesn’t give us much better, is Dr. Manhattan, who was pulled off great visually. Huge Dr. Manhattan, that’s something for the big screen, but the dialogue between Rorscach and Dreiberg, those – like 99.8% of Watchmen – were deliberately meant for the page.

I’ll have to fail this one.

It was quite shocking to see so many parents with their kids at this movie, even a father with his mongoloid kid. It tells me that they have absolutely no idea what they are watching and think every super hero film is like Batman or Iron Man.

@It knows the notes but doesn’t hear the music.

That’s it. That simple sentence is everything I have to say about the movie.

I mean as far as Watchmen goes. Not in general.

Snyder missed the point of a lot of the key character moments, and forgot to include them here, or changed them 180 degrees. The jist of the story carries through, but the characters ring false. Rorschach, The Comedian and Manhattan make it out mainly unscathed though…

@Kurt regarding music cues and camp – there was nothing camp about it in the book. The use of lyrical quotes in the book came at a time very different from our own. These songs hadn’t become quite so overused. The filmmaker should understand this and create a mis-en-scene accordingly.

@Kurt again, regarding departures. Similar to the Ozymandias departure, we have Night Owl II and Silk Spectre II as Kung Fu crazy violent minded maniacs. In the comic they are nothing like this. I wouldn’t mind the amping up of the violence if it had no impact on the story or the characters, but it does. In the book, Night Owl has an upper hand on Rorschach because of his consistent attempts to abstain from violence. However, we have this one scene where everything is broken – we see Snyder’s true colors. He has no sense for the subtleties of the book. He’s a bit of an idiot, I think.

There is so much subtlety in the original book that Snyder misses. He works so hard to put his “trademarks” on it but misses the beauty in the characters and the tragedy. It’s obvious that he turned some product out in an attempt to please a dumb audience. And he didn’t even succeed at that.

If you got what you wanted from the film, nothing I can take away from that. I think I neither wanted much from the film or quickly realized about 10 minutes into the first act that I didn’t care.

I can’t even imagine that. It’s so broad and cartoony it may as well be Finding Nemo. Plus whats the point of “faithfully” recreating the comic only to put underroos on Yellow Bastard? Set the rest of it on fire, that’s the only part worth keeping.

Afraid I don’t have anything illuminating to say about Watchmen either, it left me cold, empty. I mean it was a decent enough film, with some gorgeous moments and as close as you could get to faithful adaptation to the graphic novel but I dont know I feel like it cheapens the source material, Moore was right. I cannot imagine being able to do this better than it was done by Snyder, I really think everything works but towards what is the problem.

The film works as panels, you remember and admire the panels, but in sequence, as a story unfolding, it lumbers.

still I see where you can love it, but I’m not quite there