Review: Watchmen

Who watch the Watchmen? I did. After a couple of fail attempt to watch it with a friend, I decided to take a day off and watch this must watch movie for me. Yeah, watch it alone, so what?

This is Alan Moore's writing with Dave Gibbon's art cinematic but unfilmable graphic novel, brought into life action by director Zack Snyder, the one who brought us 300. While 300 is based on a Frank Miller comic that has less detail drawings and less complicated plot, how good is Snyder in tackling Moore's masterpiece?

Just imagine the original being a tree, and the movie trimmed it to make it still looks like the original tree, but yet it is not hard to spot the difference.

For a start the original line up of the contemporary hero has seven characters. In the movie, Captain Metropolis has been eliminated. He does not have an important role in the comic anyway. His role in the plot has been to a certain extend, fill by Ozymandias.

Original comic with Captain Metropolis in red.

No such loser here.

Costumes look cooler.

Running for 162 minutes, close to three hours the director tried to be as faithful as the source work. He goes to the extent of using the comic as the main source of storyboard. Apart from some more realistic and aesthetic alteration of the costumes, nothing much has change in terms of the look. Just that being a comic, the source has more vibrant color which can't be realistically replicated in the real world. Thus, in the comic, you can feel it's the 80s but the movie is rather timeless.

Movie To Comic Comparison: The Comedian's Fall

The comic is rather mundane, the reading experience is not controlled by the usual 7 panel per page but all are made up of 9 same size panels and the action depicted in the comic has a bit of manga style. It has a lot of monologues from the characters, narration and it certainly does not have half a dozen of thought balloons.

Movie To Comic Comparison: The Riot of Police Strike

In short the it takes a long time to finish the book and most of the main characters are given ample exposure to reveal their back story, their mentality and thus we are more sympathetic to them. This, is something rather hard to achieve in movie. Those interesting side story, the mysterious disappearance of the writers, the black boy reading pirate theme comics in the newsstand as well as all those random chit-chats are all gone.

Movie To Comic Comparison: Rorschach's Escape

So, for those who read the comic before, this almost 3 hours long movie is like a combination of various clips for the comic. If all panels and side stories are made in to film and not omitted or presented in video form like the comic Tales of the Black Freighter and documentary / book Under the Hood this movie is just like a overlong trailer.

Movie To Comic Comparison: Archie's Flight

Despite of its length and a tiring watching experience, I left the theater hoping that I get more. There is a lot of things missing. Things other than the story and writing that made the comic so fun to read and reread.

Movie To Comic Comparison: Mars

There's quite a number of changes as well, in terms of plot, of scene and even the order of event. The comic starts with the police investigation of The Comedian's death but the film explains how he died in the beginning. This, while is more dramatic, does not creates the same impact as the original order. All those 'cinematic' elements in the comic that is praise by all are omitted. What the filmmaker use is only the framing of a shot.

Movie To Comic Comparison: Ressurection of Dr. Manhattan

If it really a 100% faithful to the panels, then the first scene must be something like this:

Ext, night:

Extreme close up of The Comedian's badge lying on pool of blood from a bird's eye view. Rorschach's journal begins. Camera slowly zoom out, revealing a cleaner trying to wash away the blood, and Walter Kovacs walks by with his "The End Is Nigh" sign. Zoom out continues and stop when the detective's head is visible. He is looking out through the broken window. We can see the street is busy below and the blood still visible as tiny red spot.

Detective:
Hmm..That's quite a drop.

Movie To Comic Comparison: Vietnam War - The Comedian

Watchmen is a journey that I believe all emotion, drama, tension and plot have the be build and reveal slowly. Like drinking Chinese tea. A sip at a time and indulge in the complexity of its taste.

Although this trimmed version end up longer than most movie, but I can't help but to think the pacing is still a bit fast.

Movie To Comic Comparison: Vietnam War - Dr. Manhattan

Overall, it is still a very good and powerful comic book movie. While not as powerful as The Dark Knight, but it has its own place. It will be a treat to the fans of the original comic, far better than 300 which is nothing that mindless slashing, where a 70s slasher thriller is far more fun.

For those who never read the source material before, you must be warned that this is not the usual superhero movie like Batman, Superman, Spiderman flicks. It is NOT The Dark Knight with popular well known characters where you can get your mindset tuned in and grasp the character in short time. All those characters in Watchmen, although inspired by some old superheros, but they are still purely original.

So don't go to this film thinking to watch some mind blowing special effect fighting with evil villain trying to take over the world. Watch is as a drama, with elements of science fiction and action will be better. Overall, this is a good film, must watch film in 2009.

For me, I'm sure going to get the companion DVD set to released when the film is in theater, just hope that they won't reissue them with the film's DVD in an ultimate pack or something. Ha~