Watchmen, the film adaptation of the beloved graphic novel, was released last week. The film is directed by Zack Snyder.
Watchmen had a nice balance between scenes that were line for line from the book and scenes that were reinterpreted to be better for the screen. I thought the casting and acting were great, except for the Silk Spectre II whose acting didn’t stand up in some scenes.
Just like with any translation of beloved material it took me a little while to adjust to hearing lines I’ve heard in my head said by someone else. Sometimes the actor delivered it slightly differently than I imagined. But, after 30 minutes or so I got over it.
One of Alan Moore’s criticisms of trying to translate Watchmen into a movie was that there is so much detail in every panel that the reader needs to be allowed to absorb the material at their own pace. Clearly, a movie cannot do this. I definitely felt that in some scenes, too. Although the movie is almost three hours many scenes felt rushed to get all the narrative in. This could be a problem for people who aren’t familiar with the story and characters and I can see how easy it’d be to get lost.
My biggest complaint was the soundtrack. It’s like “Scoring a Movie for Dummies.” Every song was either obvious and overused for the situation or completely inappropriate. For example, “Ride of the Valkyries” for a Vietnam War scene, really? Or how about “The Sounds of Silence” for a funeral?
The ending of the film is slightly different than in the novel. For me the tweaks seemed reasonable and kept the full weight of the ending. The ending of Watchmen asks the question “Do the ends justify the means?” and this question came through clearly.
It’s received mixed reviews and it’s not hard to see why. I imagine the experience between someone who is familiar with the material and someone who is not will be vastly different. For me it was as good as could be hoped for and I’ve already set aside $30 for the super-awesome-extended Blu-Ray edition.
