Thursday, March 12, 2009

Review: Watchmen


"Beneath me, this awful city, it screams like an abattoir full of retarded children. New York. Somebody knows why. Down there... somebody knows. The dusk reeks of fornication and bad consciences. I believe I shall take my exercise."


It was absolutely amazing. I went in with very low expectations, which may contribute to my opinion of it, but honestly, I don't think I've seen a better comic book/graphic novel adaptation ever. The casting was spot on. Everyone looked like they were supposed to. Especially Rorschach. They did an AMAZING job in casting him. And, since I'm sorta shallow and, well, me, Ozymandias was HOT. Every time he was on screen, I was like, "Mmm, girl." Even the change in the ending didn't bother me as much as I thought it would, since they did it in a way that worked well. It wasn't just an "Oh, we'll do this and see how it plays out" type of thing.

The fight scenes were gorgeous, as I knew they would be. That was my one selling point to people seeing it, and to Jordan in a conversation I had with him; "If anything, it'll at least be visually stunning." Say what you will about '300', but it was absolutely gorgeous. My favourites were when Ozymandias was fighting off the assassin. You can see part of it in the trailer, when he swings the pole at the assassin, and his arms come back behind him. I don't know why, but I effing LOVED that shot.

BAM!

Also, the attempted mugging scene on Dan and Laurie was fantastic. And the Rorschach/police fight was great. The way it was shot made it feel like you were actually reading the novel still in about 60% of it.

A few quibbles though:

-The sex scene was WAY too long and graphic, though since this is by the same guy who did '300', I wasn't that surprised. Too much thrusting bothered me, but again, he did '300'.
-Ozymandias went from having pretty much no accent in the beginning, to slipping in and out of a British one towards the end. And his hair never moved! Unless he was actually fighting, it stayed stock still. Not a hair out of place by a breeze or anything...like normal human hair would have been.
-They showed Walter Kovacs way too much in the background, and almost interacting with the main characters, especially during the funeral scene, which was kind of weird.


On a whole, I give it an 'A', especially since for what I was expecting, I got a whole lot more. I was pretty much enraptured by the opening sequence, which so rarely happens.

Grade: A