Watchmen is a great movie

[JBatmanFan05]

The comic was a masterpiece. And this adaptation is...a HUGE missed opportunity but at the same time (given such a terrible track record) the best we could have hoped for from Hollywood on Watchmen.

The biggest problem IMHO is that, as one reviewer put it: "[Zack] Snyder's Watchmen is mechanical, heartless and, tragically, hollow." Also Snyder took a HBO-type of drama and made it a ridiculous action flick (and I'm somebody that grew up loving action flicks). And no, I didn't care for the changed ending from Moore's super pulpy original ending. Also, I personally didn't care for Matthew Goode's Ozymandias.

(300 was a great example of Snyder doing adaptation right (with perhaps material more suited to his innate sensibilities) vs Watchmen which he was ill-suited for except for his superficial respect for its visual aesthetic)

[Lightning Rider]

The comic was a masterpiece. And this adaptation is...a HUGE missed opportunity but at the same time (given such a terrible track record) the best we could have hoped for from Hollywood on Watchmen.

The biggest problem IMHO is that, as one reviewer put it: "[Zack] Snyder's Watchmen is mechanical, heartless and, tragically, hollow." Also Snyder took a HBO-type of drama and made it a ridiculous action flick (and I'm somebody that grew up loving action flicks). And no, I didn't care for the changed ending from Moore's super pulpy original ending.

What would you have changed? I feel like most of the meaningful conversations in the book were had in the film and well acted. I don't see this gap between the way the characters' stories are told in the book versus the film.

[JBatmanFan05]

What would you have changed? I feel like most of the meaningful conversations in the book were had in the film and well acted. I don't see this gap between the way the characters' stories are told in the book versus the film.

It'd probably take endless hours to think up all the things I might have changed about it. One is that I'd have gotten a better actor for Ozymandias and his crucial role, Goode just didn't do it for me at all. But a more lazy answer is that I (in a desperate attempt) might have paired up Zach with an HBO team or the Coen brothers as co-directors and hoped for a film that embraces not only the comicky visual aesthetic but that Watchmen is a slower quieter artsy drama about little moments done by stellar compelling actors.

Snyder and Moore just don't mix, but Snyder and Miller...mix a little better.

(I don't mean to say you totally can't do Moore in a more actiony way...V for Vendetta I thought was significantly better than Watchmen, had some real heart to it which made its deviations and artistic license way more palatable)

[Soubhagya]

I can see what you mean about Ozymandias being more subtle and not so blatantly evil early on, though facial expressions are hard to kind of transpose like that. But in terms of making them cool, I think Snyder still had to show that they were effective heroes. He may have gone overboard but I never got the impression reading Watchmen that these guys were losers playing dressup, they went to Vietnam and were trusted with government missions and had an authorized organization and everything. They were superheroes. Flawed ones set in a dystopian future, but still functional crimefighters.

Yes you are right. They were supposed to be competent but flawed. That is the correct way to put it. Not guys playing dress up. While using those slow mo shots he was in a sense glorifying them. Yes he should have shown them competent. Yet using the slow motion shots and those poses is problematic. That is just like using splash pages with hero striking a pose. For example:



Such shots and these splash page serve a similar purpose. The hero is larger then life. Someone aspirational even. But i don't think the Watchmen characters are larger then life.

Ozymandis role would definitely be criticized. He appears and acts like a standard villain. That was my impression when i watched the movie. The picture is simply a representation of that.

Acting was a bit uneven. Ozymandis and Silk Spectre were poor. Rorschach and others were good.

I simply called it an improper adaptation due to this. And its a fact that people will always criticize the film because the novel is legendary. I don't criticize unnecessarily. It is a good film. But i did not feel that its a great movie. Its like you know a film is great by watching it. I have watched 'Seven Samurai'. The Kurosawa epic. Shot entirely in black and white with a foreign language and a run time of 3 hours. Subtitles was necessary to understand it. Yet i was glued to the screen from beginning to the end. Brooklyn is another example. I usually don't like dramatic films. But that movie was so great that it kept me enthralled.

I agree that it receives unfair criticism. But i don't think its a great movie. Or a good adaptation. All based on what i have posted here. If i could somehow see that character's nuances were captured(imo Manhattan was done well) and the themes properly handled i am ready to change my opinion. I guess another viewing is in order. As of now i call it good but not great.

[CliffHanger2]

I think it was a great movie. Snyder is one of those directors who ppl think it's the "cool" thing to hate on so they'll give undue criticism. Usually going in with their minds made up that they aren't going to like it.

[Midvillian1322]

Imo Snyder movies go

1.Dead remake
2.300
3.Watchmen

I liked watchmen but its not as rewatchable for me as 300. 300 is silly and it embraces that. Watchmen is self aerious as it should be but didnt nail the drama down enough to justify that. The cast was great for the most part though

[JBatmanFan05]

Snyder's Watchmen and other superhero films I really don't like or even hate, and 300 I absolutely really like. Very perplexing to me, I can only conclude 300 is some perfect storm of elements, of Snyder adapting a simpler Miller piece and having Butler and doing enough to give it some heart.

[shades of eternity]

I honestly don't think a watchman movie can be made better without destroying the budget and having virtually nobody watch it.

[Kirby101]

I liked it a lot. i own the director's cut DVD. An excellent adaptation. Maybe not a great movie, but certainly very good.

[Totoro Man]

Yup. It also made someone like Rorschach look like a good guy when in the original book he was just a few steps away from being a fascist. The movie was far better than it deserved to be but the nuance and context of the original comic didn't carry over at all. I don't think it would've been possible because Watchmen was created to be a comic and it showed with the film adaptation. Parts that worked fine with boxes, bubbles, and art didn't work nearly as well as a movie and one of the more interesting parts (the pirate comic) had to be turned into a separate cartoon.

Rorschach is also the character that frames much of the narrative. so it's hard for people NOT to treat him like the hero. (we have shows where the protagonist would have been the main villain 20 years ago... and it doesn't stop people from rooting for them)

Rorschach wouldn't compromise on his convictions and help cover up Veidt's crime. by doing so he would essentially be condoning genocide that was for the 'greater good'. while he did some cold-blooded and evil stuff he DID have a line he was not prepared to cross. the fact that all of the other surviving characters at that point DID choose to compromise will make him look heroic by comparison even if he IS a violent, reclusive, mentally-unbalanced vigilante.

honestly, it seems like the only people that DON'T think of him as the hero are people who have read interviews with Alan Moore stating that this was contrary to his wishes. literally ever person I have ever met who has read the book thought of Rorschach as the main hero. if Alan Moore is upset that people think this way then he only has himself to blame. he could have written things differently.... but, honestly, he probably couldn't have done so without diving head-first into melodrama.

if Moore had wanted to make Veidt's gamble more sympathetic he SHOULD have shown people getting killed in armed military conflict or made the presence of the military more direct. as it stands, if you weren't raised with that profound sense of Cold War paranoia Veidt's plan doesn't make nearly as much sense. even though I was raised with it, and familiar with the idea, I didn't buy it. if there was going to be some full-scale nuclear annihilation it seems like it would have happened already. you could argue that both the Soviet Union and the United States were both decadent super-powers more concerned with preserving and expanding their power, prestige, influence, and wealth at a global level. nuclear war would act against all of those interests. I never bought into the idea that Reagan was some lunatic who would blow up the world. if he was truly as evil and cowardly as people said he was he wouldn't go that far.

consider the fact that the ONLY people in the narrative who ever kill in the present are costumed vigilantes or the people they directly interact with... the threat of nuclear war is simply too abstract for the younger generations of readers. sure, you have nods to Vietnam... but that's just background material. in order for Veidt's plan to seem viable people had to be dying in large scale battles in the present. there needed to be a sense of desperation that would make the use of nuclear weapons seem appealing by contrast. we never get that.

so, yes, a lot of people walked away from the comic thinking that Rorschach was the closest thing to a hero the book would ever have. when you can't get a varsity player junior varsity will have to do.

[Za Waldo]

If that piece of **** Watchmen movie is great the criteria for greatness sure is pretty low. If it's great then I guess basically everything that comes out is great too.

The Watchmen movie is an interesting example of someone copying most everything about the thing they're adapted while still getting everything wrong about it. Although that isn't why it's not a good movie, even on its own terms it's terrible.

[Za Waldo]

Yup. It also made someone like Rorschach look like a good guy when in the original book he was just a few steps away from being a fascist. The movie was far better than it deserved to be but the nuance and context of the original comic didn't carry over at all. I don't think it would've been possible because Watchmen was created to be a comic and it showed with the film adaptation. Parts that worked fine with boxes, bubbles, and art didn't work nearly as well as a movie and one of the more interesting parts (the pirate comic) had to be turned into a separate cartoon.

He's a "good guy" in the comic too. Only thing is the movie removes everything unsavory about him, can't have the hero be "unlikeable", even if being unlikeable is what's so interesting about him.

Watchmen would be incredibly easy to adapt, and it'd be pretty easy to adapt it in a number of different ways. What was made is kind of interesting in it has no clue at all how to go about adapting it. It has no idea what it wants to be. It wants to focus on Rorschach but it takes some of his scenes away. It wants to do the mystery thing if the comic, but it removes all the stuff that play into the mystery of who is Rorschach. who killed the Comedian, and why it happened. It wants to be totally fateful to the comic but it changes everything about it beyond the setting and surface elements. It wants to have things unfold like the comic but Snyder seemingly couldn't reconcile this with having it unfold like a normal movie so structurally the movie is one of the biggest messes I've ever seen. It's trying to be everything and in the end it's nothing.

[AJBopp]

It's rather like Star Trek The Motion Picture. Big, grandiose, recognizable but missing so much of what it draws from. Creators seem to not care if you like the film, so long as you are overwhelmed by it.

The beats were there, it contained the things it was supposed to, but ultimately was far less than the sum of its parts.

[Za Waldo]

I liked it a lot. i own the director's cut DVD. An excellent adaptation. Maybe not a great movie, but certainly very good.

That Director's Cut cut is even dumber than the normal movie. What the hell was up with that scene of Rorschach with the cops at the start of the movie? What was up with all the new scenes that have no basis in the comic? Hell, what the hell was up with any of the new scenes in that movie? It's like everything that added back in added to nothing in the movie besides its runtime. If that actually is the cut the director wanted, then it's an example that the studio stepping in sometimes helps. Although it seems a bit more likely they were just some scenes shot to slap on a Bluray so they sell another version of the movie.

[Za Waldo]

It's rather like Star Trek The Motion Picture. Big, grandiose, recognizable but missing so much of what it draws from. Creators seem to not care if you like the film, so long as you are overwhelmed by it.

The beats were there, it contained the things it was supposed to, but ultimately was far less than the sum of its parts.

It's not really like Star Trek The Motion Picture at all. That movie, of all the Trek movies, is probably the most like an episode of Star Trek. It's an episode of Star Trek 10 years later, post-2001, with a $46 million dollars budget and a feature length.

With the Watchmen movie the beats aren't there, if they are they're played wrong, and it doesn't contain the things it was supposed to. The Watchmen movie is a completely different thing masquerading in a Watchmen skin, that only seems like Watchmen at a glance.