A good effort at making a difficult movie.

Rating: 7/10 (1 February 2016)

The Watchmen film adaptation is both helped and hurt by its cool trailer and its source material. The trailer was amazing enough to encourage those with no previous knowledge of the graphic novel (like me) to check it out before the movie was released. Unfortunately, this only served to raise my expectations a bit higher than they would have been if I would have gone into the experience completely fresh.
Taken for what it is, Watchmen is a laudable effort. While a few key scenes and important plot points ended up on the cutting room floor, that's more of a reflection of how well-written the source material is, rather than gaffs by Zack Snyder.
The narrative and overall flow suffers the most from the necessity of having a reasonable running time. At times the movie just feels like it's a string of cool events that are taken directly from the comic frames, separated by a bastardization of the rest of the story. But then again, once I think of how complex the story is to begin with, it's easier to give credit to it being handled the way that it was.
The acting was OK for the most part, by the end of the movie I had basically accepted everyone in their roles. Dr. Manhattan, Laurie and Dan took some adjusting too, while Rorschach, Adrian Veidt and Edward Blake were more of a natural fit. Some of the dialogue that works so well on the printed page seemed a bit clunky on the screen, but that's to be expected. Watchmen was written as a comic book, not a play.
I think that open-minded newcomers who watch Watchmen stand a pretty decent chance of liking it. It works fairly well as a superhero movie, even without all its depth and complexity. Watchmen veterans, on the other hand, will just have to come to terms with the fact that while the movie wasn't perfect, it will be very difficult to make a better version of Watchmen. Perhaps we should enjoy what we have, changes and all, and just be grateful that this movie was even made. Don't expect perfection from the Watchmen film adaptation, that's what the graphic novel is for.