Never compromise, Not even in the face of Armageddon!

Rating: 9/10 (13 April 2009)

So last year in 2008 after seeing the spectacular super-hero movies Iron Man and The Dark Knight you could only worry that the next super-hero movie, Watchmen, could live up to the expectations that the fanboys like me craved. So yeah i'm a watchmen fanboy. And its finally here on time after all the court debates. So Watchmen the movie is essentially like Watchmen the graphic novel but played out in motion. It's like Sin City in that it is the perfect adaption, all dialouge and scenes are pretty much intact or unchanged which is good. Zack Snyders reach doesn't exceed his grasp he knows what hes doing it and does it for the fans. He knew whether or not to change certain things or expand on them. The cast was something of a mystery. When the first photos of the characters were released i looked rather bewildered. The only really recognisable name in the credits was Jeffery Dean Morgan. But the cast choices (like all comic book adaptions) were very spot on. Matthew Goode was okay as ozymandias and Nite Owl was okay too. Malin Akerman, aside from her obvious good looks, was pretty good and could handle her role well enough. But special acting merit really go to Jeffery Dean Morgan, Jackie Earl Haley and Billy Crudup. Rorscach is my favourite character from the book and you cant help but worry that an actor might screw up your favourite character (ryan reynolds if you screw up deadpool i will kill you) but Jackie Earl portrayed rorscach the way the fans know him. Jeffery Dean Morgan as the comedian was an excellent choice, he really captured the craziness and instability of the character.And Billy Crudup as Dr.Manhatten. Dr.Manhatten is an odd character, he is never actually with the humans he sees outside the human realm of existence in a sense. And Crudup managed to capture the characters sense of "out of the box". The book was never action packed. But the trailers kind of made the film out to be. How disappointed the lesser minds would have been. Zack Snyder, like i said before, knows what hes doing, he added in action scenes where necessary and didn't blow them completely out of proportion. And in watchmen the book the story and characters are just the bones of the greater fiction, the meat of the book is the themes and messages of humanity and vigilantism and how they affect us in modern society. These themes and messages remain unscathed. The one problem i had with the film was the changing of the ending. While the change wasn't amazingly drastic and kept in the same vein of the book it was still quite a departure. I don't see why they couldn't have kept the ending from the book anyway. At around 3 hours long it has good pacing and builds and creates its scenes well and doest waffle around with unimportant plot devices. So all in all this is a great movie for the fans but even my friend who hasn't read the book loved it so it may even appeal to some total wacthmen n00bs. Peace out