Great Rendition of the Novel, but lost its appeal

Rating: 7/10 (11 August 2009)

I read Watchmen 6 years ago, and absolutely loved it. I had heard through the websites that the movie was going to be made, but never thought that it would happen. Then I saw the preview at "The Dark Knight", and I knew it would be pretty close to the novel.
Now I've finally seen the movie, what I can say is this: Great rendition of the novel, but the appeal that the graphic novel had is still lost on screen. Watchmen the novel took what we who read comics knew as convention and spun it on its head, while taking a piece on how superheroes would function in "the real world", and presented the adult themes in comics, with a lot of "annotations" and symbolism. Watchmen the movie pretty much took the functionality part of it, while portraying superheroes as semi-flawed (which the novel does); however, these ideas have already been made into movies (maybe not good ones, but it's been done). The result is the audiobook equivalent of the graphic novel--one person's abridged interpretation of a masterpiece. Now, to give the movie credit, the effects are beautiful, and the acting (esp. Jackie Haley as Rorsharch) is good; heck, even the climax/end is more plausible/convincing than the novel's. However, as I watch this movie, I think that if this had been made 20 years before, it would have been to movies what the graphic novel was to comics. Definitely nice watch, but not earthshattering.