Not as good as the book, but still worthwhile

Rating: 7/10 (7 March 2009)

After watching the watchmen on opening day, I have to say that this movie is good, but it's no "Dark Knight" as some fanboy's would have you believe. The first thing that I have to say is please don't take young children who love comics and super heroes to this movie, this is like "300" meets a much darker and more explicit version of "the Dark Knight", along with a large amount of frontal nudity.
I'll start with the great and gradually move down to the ugly. One of the things that I like the most about this movie is it's amount of respect to the original novel while still giving the story it's own spin. As many of you have probably heard, the ending has been changed, but in the way it has been changed does not hurt the story, but helps it. The new ending makes more sense and also fits in better with the plot. I also believe that the casting was spot on, when you look at these characters from the novel, and then look at them from the movie, you can't really tell the difference. I was amazed that when I looked at these people I saw the Comedian and Silk Spectre instead of actors playing them. I also thought that this movie had beautiful design, direction, and cinematography. When it comes to cinematography, 10/10.
Although Watchmen had great casting for the most part, one character bugged me just a bit, and that was actually Silk Spectre II, or Laura. At times the writing made her dialogue come off as cheap and flat. However, for the most part this did not happen, just in a few scenes. I also thought that Snyder added a little to much gore, which is why this movie reminded me a little to much of 300. Gore was even added in places that it wasn't needed such as in a fight scene that takes place in an alley. I also thought that Snyder added a little to much nudity to this movie, not that it bugged me, but it got kinda annoying and pointless when we got to see a 2 minute long sex scene, I didn't know if I was watching a movie or a porno.
There is really very little that I can say is bad about this movie, beside from some of the makeup being to obvious (Sally Jupiter). To be honest with you the only character that didn't come off as spot on was Nixon, especially with a giant fake nose on his face that made him look like a cartoon character. The only other thing that I can think of that hurt this film was it's lack of central plot. I know that I'm about to get ripped apart by fans and non fans alike, but after reading the graphic novel a few months ago, I could already tell you what this movies downfall would be. What works in a comic book doesn't always work in a movie. I could tell that people in the audience didn't like that the movie would have about 10 different subplots running at the same time, and then suddenly, at the very end we would jump back to the original plot.
So, in my opinion, watchmen was a good film, besides it's lack of clear storyline. Most of the Dialouge and casting was great, loved the drama/action parts. However, this isn't going to be 2009's Dark knight box office record breaker, if we even have one.