Based on the trailers, I thought Watchmen was going to be all flash and no substance. Well I was somewhat right, the movie looked great and the story was more involved than I thought. It was enough to keep my attention. It’s not the greatest comic movie but I’d certainly recommend it for its style and action scenes.
Watchmen is set in New York, circa 1985, where U.S. and Russia are close to nuclear war. Superheroes have been outlawed and Nixon is running his fifth term. The movie starts with superheroes Nite Owl and Rorschach investigating the murder of their ally and violent friend, The Comedian. Along the way, the sexy Silk Spectre joins the investigation. A boring and montone Dr. Manhattan also gets involved. Dr. Manhattan is the only superhero with real powers – he can teleport, zap people to death, grow as big as he wants and stop nuclear missiles. The rest of the superheroes just kick ass and nothing else. As the story progresses, the superheroes learn that there’s a major force at work behind The Comedian’s assassination.
The movie ran a quick 2 hours and 40 minutes. Director, Zack Snyder (300, Dawn of The Dead Remake) did a great job of pacing the action scenes with the story. The highlights for me are the intro (Snyder also had a great intro for Dawn Of the Dead) and the fight scenes. The fights are well choreographed and very brutal. None of that soft wire-fu.
I wish there was more explanation behind the heroes origins. In the movie, they are already established but I want to know how and why they became superheroes. It’s weird seeing Rorschach walking the streets with his mask on and the people not caring about it. I thought the society hated superheroes. I’m sure the 3 hour cut that’s coming out on home video will explain most of my questions. But the theatrical version lacked character development and explanation.
Overall Watchmen is a good movie but the characters weren’t well established. I’m still recommending it for it’s art direction and the hand to hand combat that reminded me of Equilibrium.
Grade: B
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Reboot
Mar 9, 2009 -
Great review!
The only reason i could think of for a lack of character development is that in reality for the average movie goer to get and/or understand the back story to each character the movie would probably end up 4 to 6 hours, lol.
I have no problem with that! And im sure they will be releasing special back story dvd’s or added as a bonus feature on the DVD release.
I just pray it has a commentary, Dark Knight let me down there…
Cricket
Mar 9, 2009 -
That’s what I heard about the running time. People would get bored with it if they covered everything.
I think the DVD will have plenty of extras. Zack Snyder loves bonus features. He had extra segments just for the DVD for Dawn of the Dead. In the HD DVD for 300, there was a picture in picture showing you how it was shot in blue screen while watching the movie.
coffee
Mar 14, 2009 -
Watchmen is a visual and psychological cornucopia — definitely worth watching
Magnus782
Mar 15, 2009 -
”Watchmen” was just okay in my opinion. The film itself didn’t fully live up to the hype that it was generating upon its release. I only liked Jackie Earl Haley’s performance as Rorschach and the slow-mo fight scenes.