Saw Watchmen last night. Let me start here by saying that while I really, really liked this movie, I did not love it.

Let me also say that this is not a spoiler free review. You have been warned. I’m also assuming that you have read the graphic novel. If you haven’t, and you haven’t yet seen the movie film, do yourself a favor and read the GN first. You can find probably hundreds of copies in any Barnes and Noble, and you can get some coffee and read it for free before you decide to buy it, which you should.

If you decide not to heed my advice on the reading, take note: This is not your father’s Oldsmobile.

In other words, this is not a traditional Superhero Story. This is a costumed vigilante story, in which the costumed vigilantes, for the most part, are sociopaths, psychotic and really seem to enjoy hurting people in the name of justice. I have no problem with this. But if you are expecting to see the Dark Knight, Iron Man, Superman or Spiderman, you might want to stay home.

Wisely, the movie takes place during the same years as the book. It’s 1985, and the world is a very different place than it was where Bowling for Soup reached for their inspiration.

Forty years earlier, some people decided it would be a good idea to get dressed up and beat the shit out of criminals. This has changed the world somewhat, but not as much as the creation of the sole super-powered hero, Dr. Manhattan.

Dr. Manhattan was once Jon Osterman, until a misadventure in quantum mechanics quite literally took him apart, forcing him to put himself back together again. Upon doing this, he now has the powers that place him in a very godlike status. And since he’s American, that means that the rest of the world now has a very good reason to fear America.

Dr. Manhattan wins the Vietnam war, and Nixon’s use of the covert violence of The Comedian against Woodward and Bernstein,  enable Nixon to maintain enough popularity to be able to repeal term limits and get elected to the oval office five times.

In 1977, Congress outlawed the costumed adventurers. Edward Blake (the forementioned Comedian), and Dr. Manhattan work for the Government. The other heros retired, with the exception of Rorschach, who has gone a bit off  the deep end.

I wasn’t planning on outlining the story here. So I’m going to stop.

The movie opens with the history of the costumed hero and how it has changed America, in a beautifully well done bit of film set to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A Changing”.  Much of the rest of the film is plucked directly from the graphic novel, much in the way that “Sin City” and “300″ were.

The violence is turned up a couple of notches. It’s more graphic in the film than it is in the book. Bones are broken and people are seriously fucked up. There were scenes that made me literally wince, and I usually have no problem with violence in movies unless it involves “curbing” somebody, or fucking with their fingernails. Most of the violence was like the curbing in American History X. But I’m not really complaining about that. It did a fine job of underlining the fact that these costumed vigilantes aren’t just “biff” “pow”ing criminals and putting them in jail. They are seriously fucking these people up, and even killing them to keep the rest of society safe.

Is it any wonder that society called for them to be outlawed?

One of the flaws I felt that the movie had when compared to the book, was the inner monologue of Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan. They had more weight as written words than they did as spoken. Though I thought that Jackie Earle Haley (Rorschach) and Billy Cruddup (Dr. Manhattan) both sounded exactly as they should and how I heard them in my head.

I’ve read complaints over Cruddup’s softspoken Dr. Manhattan. And that’s fine, if they expected this god to have a booming voice. But for me, Manhattan was always softspoken. He didn’t need to boom. Didn’t even need to raise his voice (often). He could take Superman apart (literally) in the blink of an eye. Booming about it would just be showing off.

I’ve also heard complaints about the end of the movie. This is really, really spoiler time. At first, even I was disappointed to hear that the giant squid would not be making an appearance. I mean, c’mon! You have to have Ozymandias’ alien squid monster! It has to somehow kill millions of people and make the world behave! Right? That was the whole fucking point of the book (in the sense that this is the plan that lies behind the plot)!

Having Manhattan’s power signature be faked so that he takes the blame for the millions of deaths was actually a saving grace in the movie. The giant squid would have come off as mildly retarded and a bit confusing without adding the subplot of the squids creation. And even with it, it would have come off as mildly retarded, no matter how well it worked in the book.

If I was a star giving reviewer. I would give this movie film 4 out of five stars. I might have given it five had I not been a fan of the graphic novel. It’s a very, very well done movie. A great adaptation as far as adaptations go. Faithful enough for most fan boys/girls (most of whom I know personally seem to love it), possibly too faithful for people who think they’re seeing something along the lines of a “darker X-Men” (Hi Jen!), and are disappointed to find that these heroes are just seriously flawed human beings.

Oh, and lots of glowing blue penis. Dr. Manhattan is definitely more well hung in the film than in the book.

Enjoy.

AB

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