Not bad...as long as you haven't read the novel.

Rating: 7/10 (3 July 2009)

"The Watchmen" is a movie adaptation of what many consider to be the best graphic novel of all time. The differences in mediums immediately makes this process extremely difficult, but also makes the comparisons become somewhat less important. A movie must not be compared with a book even if they share so much in common and as such it must be said that "The Watchmen", while a failed adaptation, is an above average movie that presents the story in a comprehensible and maybe even in an enjoyable way.
Unfortunately, this reviewer has read the novel. This reviewer also noticed from the very beginning that the director wanted to be faithful to the book. Scene after scene we are shown animated copies of the book, dialog included. Impressive from a technical point of view that they are able to reproduce all that wonderful and rich imagery. The problems however became apparent soon after. Even if most of the scenes follow the book, that becomes irrelevant since so much of what adds the book its value is missing from the movie. Furthermore, the movie's visuals, even if impressive, didn't require any creative input from the crew since they are copies. All the creativity of value is mostly technical. Worse, the few creative changes that are seen in the movie are all in the purpose of showing more violence or sex or whatever commonplace sentimentality feelings they want the characters to express.
In the end, "The Watchmen" is a good movie, but mostly because it doesn't stray from the novel much and has some of it's value. If you want the full vision and experience, then you're going to have to read the novel.
Snyder may have pulled "300" off, but "The Watchmen" required a more thoughtful approach on adaptation; decisions and choices would have to be made so that, instead of keeping the visuals, the movie could have kept the ideas and feelings of the novel.
7/10. Good movie. Terrible adaptation.