Never intended for mass audience consumption

Rating: 3/10 (18 March 2009)

I think one of the most beautiful ironies in recent memory is how the Psychologist in Watchmen was driven insane by digging into Rorscarch's psyche, just as normal American families were driven insane because they went to Watchmen with their kids not knowing they were entering the mind of Alan Moore. Thats something that most people are not ready for/never will be ready for, and its the biggest reason a Watchmen movie could never work as a mass audience film especially when literally interpreted from the source. Alan Moore goes to dark places when he writes, he asks tough questions, and his writing is both shocking and disturbing on many levels, and it contains a whole lotta truth. If there is one thing the average person cannot handle and does not want ANY part of, its the truth, in any form, and especially not in their 'entertainment'.
There was no way Watchmen could ever be 'dumbed down' enough for it to appeal to a wide audience, thats not was it was ever intended to do. This movie is true to the book on some levels, it has truth, its dark and its disturbing. So why did Hollywood try and market it as just another super hero movie like the Dark Knight, as if to say it might be something you could take your kids to see? I have no idea, it is probably the biggest movie marketing blunder I have seen in a long time.
This movie fails because it does not capture the essence of the characters, the only one it gets close to doing so with is Rorschach, (and you just know that Hollywood execs are right now trying to figure out a way to make a Rorschach prequel movie, PG rated of course.) But so little time is spent on character development for the rest of the characters that they come off as flat as a cardboard cutouts.
I'm not saying the movie is a disaster, but it doesn't do what the book did in terms of the way it made you think and feel, and isn't that the point? If they could not translate that to film, then the other alternative should have been considered which was to make the Watchmen into an ordinary superhero team and give them an adventure to go on like the Avengers or Justice League. Quite frankly, much as that would have been a bastardization of the source material, it would have been more entertaining than what we ended up with.
All the slo-mo action in the world could not smooth over the problems associated with a 'book to film' project like this, but I'm sure thats how Zack Snyder and co sold the idea to the big wigs. Only someone as young and inexperienced as Snyder could have the ego to think that making a movie like this and have it appeal to a wide audience was a realistic goal. I suspect he will be far more careful and 'Michael Bay' like in choosing his projects in the future.