I finally got around to seeing Watchmen last night. I'd heard the movie was long, but I didn't realize how long. Two hours and 45 minutes. It's a good thing they didn't try to fill out some of the missing pieces of that movie. It would have been six hours long. I read somewhere that the director's cut DVD will be even longer, with over an hour of extra footage. I'm not sure if that's with or without the Black Freighter stuff woven into the movie. Frankly, I'm too lazy to look it up.
I can't help but be disappointed by Watchmen. Sure, there are significant parts faithful to the original text. Plenty of little things bugged me, but the ending just killed it for me. So here's some brief, day-after thoughts (and spoilers) after the break...
I've placed these off the main page in case one of my two readers haven't seen the movie.
1. I don't mind so much that they replaced Veidt's homemade space squid. I'm not sure how well that would have worked on-screen.
2. The part I hated the most was the way Nite Owl acted in the end. In the comic, Nite Owl agrees to keep quiet and, basically, walks off to fuck Silk Spectre. He doesn't chase after Rorschach and witness his death. In fact, he expresses very little concern for Rorschach other than telling him it's too big to be hard-assed about. He doesn't rough up Veidt. These changes, I think, fundamentally change Dreiberg. He gives up the fight, right or wrong, and focuses on Silk Spectre. In the end, there was only one kind of potency Dreiberg was concerned with.
3. This may seem minor, but I was disappointed with who delivered the "Nothing ever ends" line and to whom it was delivered. In the movie, Laurie Juspeczyk delivers the line to Dreiberg, hypothesizing what Dr. Manhattan might say. In the comic, Dr. Manhattan delivers to Veidt. Why does this matter? It makes a difference when a guy who can see the future tells delivers the line to Veidt after his apparent "victory." It leaves Veidt with doubt over his actions, which is important, as it keeps with the ambiguity of "superheros'" actions. It's clear, in the comic, that Veidt's solution is at best temporary.
4. They did a good job with Rorschach in the movie. But, I didn't like how they compressed the psychiatrist scene. I also didn't care for the way he dispatched the child killer. The hacking scene with the dog and his isolation of that moment as his transformation from Kovaks to Rorschach allows him to burn the killer alive. Losing as his shit on the killer's head with the butcher knife seems to lessen the meaning and impact of the scene to me. Also, the dynamic between Rorschach and the psychiatrist seemed off to me, though I'm guessing that's due to time constraints. Otherwise, I thought Rorschach was depicted the best.
5. Laurie Juspeczyk didn't seem bitter enough. Or maybe it was just me.
6. Dr. Manhattan's blue dong. Honestly, if it made that big of an impression on you, you were probably focusing way too much on the blue penis. It's not like there were close-ups or it was focal point of any scene.
I had some other thoughts, but I've been sidetracked.
And I've forgotten where I'm going with this.
I bet I missed a bunch of typos too.
I'm bored now.