Review: Watchmen

Watchmen is the movie adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's landmark graphic novel, which attempted to make superheroes serious and realistic; Watchmen, along with The Dark Knight Returns ushered in a new era of grim and gritty superheroes. Due to the violent nature of the graphic novel, it should be expected that Watchmen is also the first mainstream superhero movie to earn an 'R' rating.

The R-rating is due to the amount of violence and nudity within the movie, and it is easy to see that director Zack Snyder really wanted to remain faithful to the graphic novel; while there are changes to the movie, it is easy to see how the graphic novel served as the storyboards for the film -- many of the shots for the scene are laid out exactly as they were in the book, leaving very little out. It reminds me a great deal of the first Harry Potter novels, where the director loved the books too much to dare cut out a single event or scene, but without some amount of editing, the movie, as faithful as it is doesn't feel right as a cinematic experience.

The movie is long, coming in at 2 hours and 45 minutes, which could have (and should have) been pared down for relevance. The dialogue too, seemed to be taken word from word from the comic, which may help explain the length of the movie. While most of the events within the movie originates from the book, I certainly got the feeling that the movie could have been edited down and still have kept much of the impact of the overall story arc. As it had been nearly 10 years since I last read Watchmen, I had forgotten just how dark and bloody the graphic novel was, and the movie follows most of those bone-chilling moments to a tee. The movie is a visual treat, with plenty of visual effects and eye candy, but at the same time, due to the length and the content within the movie, I just can't see this movie being a blockbuster superhero hit, but at least it'll beat out Hancock.