Saw Watchmen this evening. I thought it was a really good flick, with caveats:
If you have not read the book, you probably shouldn’t see the movie. It’s a baffling story at the best of times … and it requires time to percolate. One of the great things about the book is how it forces the reader to back up, re-investigate things in earlier chapters, and generally sit with it for a bit. Since that’s impossible in a movie’s inexorable forward march – you really need to do that work ahead of time.
Further, if you did not like the book, you will probably hate the movie. It’s a very faithful screen adaptation, in which they only did away with pieces that would have taken another whole movie to fit in. The end product – a long-ass (remember the row about Dances With Wolves and how it was three hours long?) and beautiful tribute to the book.
I had a good time. It was loud and long and sexy and violent. BOOM.
