Watching The Watchmen

Who watches The Watchmen? Quite a few people I imagine, this week, I know I did. For the most part I have tried to steer clear of the movie, choosing not to read a lot about it's development. Kept on the changes, the law suit, but kept trying to hold off so I could dig out my 23 year old comics and read them for the first time in, well 23 years.

Well I never did drag out the comics, but I plan to this weekend. Now that I have seen the film and read some other opinions today, I still can't quite put my to mind what exactly I thought of the film. But here goes with the attempt.

My Twitter sized review: Bloody yes, music some good and some bad, acting uneven, visually stunning, pacing solid.

As a film, I was entertained. All 2.5+ hours of it, I was never bored, I was happy with how the story was drawn out. Thinking about it after, I could only come up with a few places where I felt the film dragged.

Ala 300 the film was quite bloody with the slow motion pummeling of body parts, and a few other graphic sequences that were as gratuitous as the blue dong. Yes the blue dong was distracting, I kept thinking, really, really? You couldn't have Ken dolled Dr. Manhattan or something?

We saw the film in digital theatre, are they all this way now? Honestly, I don't go to the movies much any more, usually only go when it's for free. Sometimes, not even then. But visually the film was amazing, I imagine it is one you will be able to watch many times and always spot something new in many of the sequences.

I love the opening credits, they were interesting and I felt did a good job of setting up the film. Overall the music was either dead on or dead wrong, the lack no score was only apparent, to me, in the one sequence where they did actually have some.

So overall, it entertained. I was not blown away by the film, ready to declare it a masterpiece. But overall I think I enjoyed it, this one will require another viewing at another time to be sure. I think Zach Snyder did an amiable job, I did love 300, but I am a bit biased towards that film as we saw it in an incredible setting that lent itself the film.

Our Watchmen crowd was a bit tepid, only showing any kind of real emotion at Rorschach's prison mess hall sequence. I really can't say what the audience thought overall, maybe they like myself, are still digesting it.