Watchmen review

So here is the deal. I paid 9 bucks to see a movie. NOT to read a comic book. I’ve never read the comic this is based on, and I shouldn’t have to. Simple as that. Also, it’s not a graphic novel; it’s a fracking comic book. Graphic novel “sounds” better in the advertising, as if people will take it more seriously than if you call it a comic book, kinda like how everyone calls Silence of the Lams a “psychological thriller” even though it’s straight up HORROR!!! Sorry, tangent there. ANYWAY, so let this put things in perspective. I never read From Hell but LOVED it. I never read 300 but loved it as well. I never read Lord of the Rings and those three films are in my all time favorite LIST!!!! My point being that even though a film may be based on pre existing material, it MUST stand on it’s own as a film, and this is Watchmen’s fatal flaw, one that it can not, no matter how much more running time added, no matter how faithful to it’s source material, it can not over come.
The film opens with a murder of a masked avenger, the comedian. We are painfully slowly introduced to his old gang, one by one, and flashbacks clue us in on how he was kind of a jerk, but also a good guy at heart (cept for that rape scene, but we’ll get to that) So right off the bat we have problems. Here’s a HUGE pet peeve I have with recent comic book films. You can go two ways. You can go the Dick Tracy/Sin City rout where you stick with the source material, making it VERY over the top and a literal translation. OR, you can set it in a heightened reality, where the laws of physics apply, where they bleed. An example of this would be any of the x-men or new batman movies. Wolverine isn’t wearing tight yellow and blue spandex like he was in the comic, but he would look silly. And The Dark Knight took it one step further, making it closer to a crime drama than a superhero movie at all. Watchmen can’t decide what it is. There are really goofy slapstick moments, like with characters throwing a punch and the victim goes FLYING down the street, or when the Silk Specter flips out of a flying hovercraft and lands in a super cheesy but undeniably cool pose. But then these fantastical elements sit next to others, like a very ugly and rough rape scene. What was the point of that rape anyway? It has a payoff at the end with a daughter and mother, but why was that subplot in there? Maybe in comic form it helped with the character arc. But here it LITTERALLY had no place. Was I supposed to Sympathies with the Comedian for being a Dick and raping people, or was I supposed to hate him. I’m all for gray area, and flawed characters, but I’m sorry that rape had no place. It stopped the movie cold.
The movie takes its SWEET time, not helped by the fact that everything is in slow motion, and I mean EVERYTHING!!! People get the mail in super slow mo!!! I’m not making it up!!! But anyway, all these characters are introduced, but are they REAL superheroes? None of them seem to have any legit super powers, except for Dr. Manhattan, who’s kind of like a god, but not GOD himself. And the last act of the film has a lot to deal with someone setting a horrible disaster up and making it look like he did it, to frame him. Here’s the best part, his character can see his own future, so he already knows it, and comes to terms with it, and accepts it. Sooo…….um, where’s the drama in that? No lie, there’s a scene where he has a conversation with his lover, but since he can see the future he literally TELLS her what she’s going to say and then responds to it. It was probably the most laugh out loud bad moment this year. Right next to Mark Walberg talking to a plant in The Happening. And then it ends on a really sappy high note, with a huge innuendo to a sequel, even though everyone I’d spoken to say the book ended bleak and final. Go figure.
SO I’m not REALLY sure what the Plot per say is. It just kind of starts, and then 3 hours later stops. The acting was all really intense, and there were some cool moments, but they weren’t earned. They were empty. Zack Snyder dropped the ball. He forgot that he was making a movie, and instead made a lazy, incoherent mess. He made something so inaccessible to the average filmgoer, it’s a shame. I feel there’s a really good message, in fact several, all of them interesting and thought provoking one’s. All of them I’m sure coming across much better on the printed page than spoken here, willy nilly as characters jump from Antarctica to Egypt in every other scene for NO logical reason. A sloppy mess, that may get better with a directors cut explaining everything a bit more. But even then, why have a bunch of pseudo super heroes standing around for 3+ hours explaining whets going on. If you can’t just show it, why bother.