3/11 update – I took the opportunity to re-edit and expand this piece a bit as more occurred to me; also, let me apologize for the obvious headline. However, I feel I deserve at least partial credit for the original latin.

I caught a showing of Watchmen this afternoon after work. I almost saw the IMAX version, but the timing of shows just didn’t work out, so it was regular old projection. Oh well.

My comments further on here are really only in reference to the way the movie worked; not making any particular comment on the nature of the plot or source material; I’m taking it as read that the source material is a deconstruction (perhaps even Swiftian satire) of the superhero genre (the movie tends to run with this, adding some decronstructive elements of action/superhero movie tropes, and it works rather well). It’s bleak, morally abiguous, and challenging material; there’s a reason this comic book so regularly ends up on “great novels of the 20th century” lists; it’s not a simple capes and masks yarn, and it’s all the better for it. It also goes without saying that it ain’t for kids; beyond the complex mature themes, there’s tons of violence, sex, generally inappropriate for pre-teen stuff, and of course copious, if blue, male full frontal nudity.

The verdict? I liked it. A lot. It was (with a few exceptions that I generally agree with) a tremendously faithful adaptation of the graphic novel I’ve read over and over for the last decade or so. The look was damned near perfect (one highlight? Dr. Manhattan’s origin story was superbly rendered), and in most cases, the cast really worked, particularly Jackie Earle Haley as Rorshach and Patrick Wilson as Nite Owl; those two walked right off the page. Also, like every other reviewer in existence, I thought the opening credits were amazing.

One thing that (surprisingly)jumped out at me was the use of music; sure, using “Sound of Silence” as the backdrop of a funeral scene where nobody has any dialogue (but serves as a branching point for several flashbacks) seems like it would be ham-handed, but works really well to set mood, as do most of the other musical choices. But none are as perfectly placed as the musak subtly playing in that one scene in the Veidt industries lobby.

For a property that’s so heavy, dense, and brutal (in fact, sometimes scenes in the movie are way more violent than their equivalents in the book – I suspect that’s mostly the director’s blood-n-guts signature; see 300 for examples of this tic writ large) that it’s been consistently described as “unfilmable”, director Zack Snyder did an excellent job doing exactly that. It’s way better than anyone could have expected, and certainly more effective at accurately adapting the source material than the studio system normally lets anyone get away with.

Yeah, the ending’s changed a bit from the books, though just different means to the same end, and it works within the context of the film. Many of the numerous side plot journeys in world-building aren’t there, but I expect that a lot of them will be re-inserted in the director’s cut we’ve already been promised. Still, it clearly feels like Watchmen, and includes plenty of little details jammed in there to hint at the larger world readers are familiar with, but that shouldn’t be distracting to those unfamiliar with the property.

That said, the film as it stands now has a few weird hanging threads that needed some explaining, such as the sudden appearance of Bubastis, the genetically altered lynx (sounds ridiculous, but makes perfect sense in context), toward the end . There’s simply no explanation for her on the screen; she simply shows up during the film’s final act. One guy at my screening loudly uttered "Okay, now where the f**k did that come from?", and given the way the film’s laid out, one unfamiliar with the source material would have exactly that question (though given the changes to the endgame, I wonder how they’d do it) Still, it looks cool, and they’d already spent the money in effects rendering, so the cat stays in the picture, and probably gets her explanation restored in the director’s cut.

Oh well, I enjoyed the hell out of it. As it should be, it’s dense and violent, with no clear heroes or villans, and the ending’s downer ambiguity is intact. It communicates the major themes of the source material aptly. Most importantly, it’s not this; though it easily could have been. It’s as close as we’re probably ever going to get to the dreams of two decades’ worth of fanboys. I’m ready to watch it again.