The Hall Way

Going into the movie I had literally zero expectations. I had never heard of the graphic novel till the movie was practically done, and after hearing all the hype and finally all the disappointment from people I wrote it off as another comic book movie. So I will say because I had no hopes of excellence I was decently impressed with the movie… well more like I didn’t think it sucked.

So first the good things: I thought the first half of the movie was quite excellent; it was well paced, established the past and present clearly and effectively and you got to know and enjoy the characters. I thought the opening montage was one of the best I have ever seen in a movie, and it was probably the highlight of the entire film. I thought the visuals were decent and seemingly relevant to the graphic novel (I have yet to read it so I don’t know) I also felt that the ending, while not necessarily the most desired outcome, was quite satisfying and something that you rarely see in a movie. Rorschach was one of the coolest comic book characters I have ever seen and he greatly effected  my opinion of the film. I felt that if the over all goal of the movie was to make me want to read the book it accomplished its goal, for I am really considering taking a look at it sometime soon. 

Now the Bad things: The first thing that comes to mind when I think of the question, “What didn’t you like about the movie?” would be the over abundance of blue wang. I mean it establishes Dr. BlueJunk’s separation from humanity and what not, but as I understand it, in the graphic novels his ‘fortitude’ is seldom featured. I felt that it was odd that ‘The Watchmen’ were supposed to be human yet they constantly broke the laws of physics. Generally the coolest thing you could do as a human ‘super’ hero would be to snap someone’s arm like it was made of balsa wood, yet this was a common occurrence. I know it was a comic book movie but still, if you go through the trouble of establishing they are simply human why would you instantly throw it out the window at the first sign of confrontation. I felt that the last half of the movie got really pretentious and tried to be way too philosophical. While I think their whole stream of logic was flawed I did enjoy the final outcome of their efforts. With the exception of the opening song I thought their music selection was awful, it was like a playlist at a frat party, and it was as though each song was literally what was occurring in the movie. Also whoever chose the music has a major hardon for Bob Dylan, being that the first, middle, and credit songs were all written by Bob. Generally when you go to see this type of movie you expect the sound to be overwhelming and awesome but I honestly can’t remember any thing about the sound. I thought the previews before the movie did a better job with sound than they did. Finally why was Nixon’s face melting, it was distracting, and added nothing to the story.

All things considered I would probably give The Watchmen about a 6.1 or so out of 10. I do look forward to reading the graphic novel though.