Watchmen 2009

I love the Watchmen. It is definitely one of my favorite books ever. But.. I strongly disliked this movie. Honestly, there are just a few major problems that ruin the whole thing. First, it tries to be too many things. The book wasn't an action movie. The insertion of these dramatic fighting sequences, that for the most part hardly even took place in the original work, completely trash the story's integrity. Second, the story is not intact. In the movie, the direct plot line of the book is made into a motion picture. None of the details are present. So many things happen that make no sense to the viewer because details were left out of the adaptation. Things that are shown to have great meaning are really just shallow pieces of garbage compared to the strong deepness of the writing. Third, the movie just can't portray the darkness of the book (especially, Snyder's direction). Watching Rorschach kill the murderer's dogs and then kill the owner and seeing the rape scene and watching Rorschach pour the oil on the man's face just looks stupid in the movie. The graphic violence doesn't come across as dark or moving or anything like that. The real, true darkness of the book lies in the words. The actual events are what scars your mind and makes you think and re-read what just happened. Fourth, the acting is terrible. Aside from a few choice actors all of the acting in the film is cheesy and stupid. I know it is hard to adapt comic book style dialogue and movement to film but these actors do not do it justice at all. Also, before I move a little more in depth, (old) Sally's make-up was terrible.

Now I will just say a few things I felt about this movie and its production. Zach Snyder is a great director. I loved his Dawn of the Dead remake and 300. When the production started for this, for some reason, I thought he was the perfect director for the job. Now that I've seen it, I know better. He is a dramatic, action-movie, 300 adapting, CG kind of guy. I'm not going to call him big-budget Hollywood just yet because I think he is going on to make much smaller movies currently. However, this is a big-budget movie and that is a main reason that it is so bad. The action scenes don't fit. The story is too shallow (similar to the Lord of the Rings adaptations). If Darren Aronofsky had actually made this (as he was earlier alleged) it may have been much better. Aronofsky has style, like Snyder, but he doesn't have to have over the top action scenes. He doesn't need huge amounts of CGI. This movie could have been a much more story-oriented intellectual film instead of a Blockbuster Hollywood action movie like it turned out to be.

I have so much to say about this but really not that many people read this blog and those who do probably didn't even read the small amount I did write. Overall, I was disappointed. But now that I think of it, I don't know what I expected. It just all makes sense now. Big budget = corporate input = action scenes and story cuts.

Plus, no tentacle monster? Come on!