Watchmen

I will admit that my expectations for Watchmen were high (for reasons unknown, because Zack Snyder is a hack). However, I have never been so disappointed in an adaptation in my life.

Everything added into the film that was not in the source comics was either awkward, completely out of character, or just useless. Whereas there were literally hundreds of little details that were absent which made the film hokey. Some were small details that make a huge difference and could have easily been put in (for example, in the comic, Laurie reverts to the last name Juspeczyk to distance herself from her mother and her image. That is a minor detail that says A LOT. Yet in the movie they were lazy and had them both with the last name Jupiter.). Details like those are great and the fact that they were removed bugs me.

But even bigger than those, what makes Watchmen so fantastic is that there are a hundred characters and all of them are important to everything in a way, and all of these hundreds of threads come together so perfectly. The film gets rid of the dozens of interesting minor characters, and the ones they keep get their lines trimmed. Hell, even the main characters get shafted on their character development. Dr. Manhattan gets boosted to the front because of the CGI used to make him, the Silk Spectre/Silk Spectre II dynamic is pushed aside, the original Minutemen are all but forgotten, Nite Owl's struggle is not shown but told in boringly blatant terms, and Rorschach, the most attractive and morally immobile character in the story, has his interesting backstory cropped and his later scenes butchered.

And don't even get me started on the changed ending.

One of my favorite characters in the comics was Hollis Mason, the original Nite Owl. In the film he gets almost no screen time and his part isn't significant at all. This really upsets me because not only is he the one real, logical, reliable guy from the Minutemen, but he also published the book Under the Hood, which is the source of all the history, and his take on it is so unique. Another opportunity wasted.

The writers of the script squandered so much great material and now I can understand why Alan Moore wanted nothing to do with the film, and refuses to see it.

This rant is already longer than I intended. I will write in more detail as more people see the film. But honestly, if you have not read the original graphic novel, you must. It is so, so superior to this film in every way. Do yourself a favor. Trust me on this one.

Rating: 4/7