Way better than I expected!

Rating: 9/10 (6 March 2009)

I'm so used to my favorite books being destroyed as movies, so my expectations were pretty low. Obviously, no movie can ever top it's original book, especially such a psychologically complex book like Watchmen. As I sat down to watch the midnight premier, I braced myself. I was so surprised! The movie stays very faithful to the novel (even keeping in some of my favorite quotes), which is a huge plus for me. The actors brought all the characters (especially Rorschach, my favorite) to life just how I pictured them. Well, I didn't really care for Laurie. Besides her, the acting was dead on. The special effects were brilliant. And I'll say this as someone who usually falls asleep during action movies... the action was intense. I actually WATCHED it (something rare for me). I do wish they had cut back on the fight scenes just a little to focus more on the characters, but I'll forgive it since it IS a movie. The graphic sex scene was torturous, probably my biggest complaint of the movie. The ending was altered, but it was so slight that I don't feel it really mattered. Yes, the psychological complexity of the story and the character development was often overlooked (but not as much as I had feared). Let's face it, if people whine at a nearly 3-hour movie (please, is it so hard to sit still for that long?) then no way could the movie be all that the book was. As someone who almost never likes movies-from-books, I think it could hardly have been better. Except maybe more of Rorschach :]