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I was, originally, going to wait until I had seen this movie again, to be able to appreciate it on multiple levels, before I started writing this review of sorts on the movie. However, I decided that the best course of action would be to talk about it now, and get it out of the way.

I have said, before, in concurrence with people, I feel there is an inverse relationship between the amount of material for a given story and how said material is used. In using Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta we see that there were a lot of instances removed. Possibly for time, possibly for reasons I neither know nor care about. I’m going for the latter, personally. Watchmen is less than fifteen standard issues long. It’s slightly longer than V, but still falls victim to the same kind of constraints of time and medium change that it’s predecessor went through.

But is it a good movie? Or is it bad?

I’m not going to bother going through the entire plot of the comic book. Odds are, if you know it’s a comic, you’ve read it by now. If you haven’t read it yet, you have no room talk about anything about it. You can talk about its merit as a movie, but you’re certainly missing out on a large number of things that take place within the comic and the movie that are simply overlooked.

The movie doesn’t start at the same moment as the comic. The comic starts immediately with Edward Blake’s death. The movie starts with Edward watching television, flipping channels, and a montage of the golden age Minutemen of the comic. One of my main complains was how the majority of the events involving the Minutemen were cut, even from instances where they didn’t need to be. Hollis Mason was a particularly important character who was only shown once and then only referenced, vaguely.

Hell, he was killed directly as a result of the Rorschach being sprung from prison. They completely removed that and the connection Hollis and Dan had. It was a disappointing change, but I understood it.

From there, the movie keeps the majority of the things the same. There was a shocking, pleasingly high about of dialogue taken directly from the comic book, some with only the smallest amount of alteration. The opening monologue by Rorschach was essentially the same. They added bits from other journal entries that were subsequently scrapped, but that’s nothing really I can complain too much about. Dialogue alterations mainly existed because of plot problems that I’ll discuss later, and the span of the movie.

There were some instances where lines were given to different people, or the lines were changed because the circumstances in which they happened changed. Most of these took place with Rorschach’s journal entries, which were the only form of out-of-body narration in the comic book.

One of the main things with comic book translations is the costume alterations. Some would argue that, especially in the case of a comic like Watchmen you wouldn’t exactly need anything much in the way of changes, except for things that maybe have to be changed for the sake of practicality– thinks like Nite-Owl’s massive head-cloak-thing. I felt that the costume alterations were, by and large, BETTER than the original drawn by Gibbons. Gibbon’s outfits were generally loose, and bulky, and felt a little too impractical in some aspects to be used as proper outfits.

However. There were also a surprising number of costumes that were more or less unchanged. Specifically the Minuteman costumes, though Sally Jupiter’s costume was changed significantly (as was the character in general) it wasn’t done in any way that I can really complain. The Comedian’s first costume looked a bit more defined, and that was about it. The original Nite-Owl’s costume, as well as the others, was spot-on.

Ozymandias’s costume, as well as Dan’s Nite-Owl costume, I feel, are better in this movie than the comic. Dan’s costume, also, I felt could be applied to a Batman costume– specifically the cowl– so we don’t have to deal with helmets and body armor as much.

I didn’t really like Laurie’s Silk Spectre costume, but I never really liked Laurie in the book, either. The character really just kind of… exists and doesn’t serve any real purpose in the story. She’s just the love interest who would serve no importance outside of that. The character has no real depth other than her dislike of The Comedian and general annoyance at her mother for having her gone into comic books. Of course, it could be entirely possible that I’m missing something.

One of the things that was done that I didn’t particularly like was the use of Dr. Manhattan’s abilities. Manhattan has the ability to see, essentially, all of time. The book doesn’t really go into too much detail about just what it is that he does, and what he can see, but it’s understood by some conversations that he is aware of several events. He was fully aware of the assassination of JFK, but did not prevent it because “everything is predetermined” he says in the book, “even my actions”.

In one of the pinnacle parts of the book, he talks with Laurie, who is frustrated with the detachment, and he responds with “We’re all puppets Laurie. I’m just a puppet who can see the strings.”

This kind of thing is taken, and ran with, in the movie in a way that made me uncomfortable. No one, ever, asked Jon to actively look into the future. Especially Rorschach on their first meeting in the book. In fact, that entire scene– which also gave away the ending for me– was altered heavily so that less emphasis was placed both on the ambiguity of situations and a number of other things that were changed for the movie.

The majority of scenes involving Dr. Manhattan were altered in a way that I found a bit unsavory as someone who has read the book regularly for several years now.

Despite my dislike of the changes, I felt that the actor was fantastic, as was the others for all of the other characters (save Laurie, but, again, dislike of the character in general). Rorschach looked and felt more like Rorschach than I would have imagined someone being able to do. Dan was bumbling, awkward, and worked fantastically. They felt like they knew the characters well, and it was a refreshing change. As a result of this, I’ll also probably be reading Veidt with an accent, which I never did before.

One of the other major changes was the use of ridiculously long fight scenes. These scenes, combined with superhuman feats of strength, broke the flow of the movie for me, and also made me lose some immersion in it. Outside of Manhattan, these people are all normal humans. None of them ever are suggested to have super powers, yet they can all break bones severely with a single punch, and do a number of well choreographed punches and kicks to a group of people who come at them one at a time.

Most of the fighting in the comic was done by Rorschach via breaking hands in a bar.

Also, I’m under the distinct impression that Zack Synder really digs having lengthy, slow motion sex scenes that never actually take place to that extent in the book.

So… the ending. There is a message that goes with the ending. Without spoiling the ending, because people don’t like when you do that, I feel I can say that the message of the ending was kept. Even if they did take several liberties in just what WAS the ending, I feel like it works for what it is. Not my favorite alteration in the book, but it was still one of the more interesting ways to go about it.

On the whole, despite what I may have said here, it was a very good movie. I have every intention of seeing it a few more times, and at least one of those will not be me as a guy who’s been reading this comic regularly, and am very picky about what I want to see with regards to this movie. The actors, costumes, and setting all felt like the comic. Even if the costumes were a little different. I really couldn’t have gotten a better movie, I feel.

Moore doesn’t write movies, he’s said that countless times before. The book has been said to be impossible to film, just because of everything that takes place. However, while there were a lot of things cut, the idea behind the book was still there, and I think it’s definitely the best adaptation of an Alan Moore comic book that we’re ever going to see.

That said, I think Zack Synder should go back in time, kill the Wachowski Brothers, and make V for Vendetta.

And Christopher Nolan needs to get to work on the third Batman movie.