Watchmen

Just saw Watchmen. Great movie. Here's my two cents' worth of opinion:

• What they cut and what they changed I generally agree with. You have to make some changes to take a comic to the screen, and they made some pretty good calls.
• Night Owl in the movie is a lot more buff than his comics equivalent. Way to retire. Then again, they kept most of the characterization anyway, so you don't lose much.
• There's a lot of music in this movie. I found it a bit distracting at first, as they are very well-known pieces (even Bob Dylan's "all along the Watchtower", which some of you may know from its recent featuring on the new Battlestar Galactica, is in there). Of course, they all fit the time-frame. Still I'd recommend you prepare yourself for lots of pop music, then it won't throw you out.
• They dialed up the violence in a few scenes. While I don't really care, it took the impact off the more violent scenes the comic does have. It's kinda preparing you, instead of reproducing the impact it had on one character.
• The ending is different, but in the same vein as the comic book. No objection to the changes they made. Though I have to say that, storytelling-wise, one scene kinda takes the oomph out of the ending. Some more clear delineation and one cut or so would have greatly helped a pivotal scene.

A good movie. Not fantastic, but it doesn't disappoint, and captures the source material just fine. Just one thing to keep in mind: It's not a superhero movie, it's a movie that tells a story about humanity, war and peace, using an alternate history with superheroes.

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Dan Gelder writes: I've seen people complaining about Nite Owl's NOOOOOO!!!, is that what you meant by taking the oomph out? I saw the movie first, thought I'd be 'different'. There's nothing wrong with dereferencing NULL pointers, you know. I had a scheme once where there was a single 'empty' instance of every struct, and you used Foo.NULL instead of NULL and had to deference.

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