As close an adaptation we could ever get

Rating: 10/10 (8 March 2009)

Watchmen has often been referred to as the "unfilmable text", the comic so complex, so full of ideas and so intricately written that it could never realistically be filmed. To some extent I did agree with this, I only read the graphic novel last Novemember, but immediately I fell in love with it, and questioned how they could ever do the story justice. Well when I left the cinema last night, and for most of today, I have been questioning the film. When I left I acknowledged how amazing a movie it was, but I needed time to think on it. How the cuts of the novel worked, how the slight changes worked, and how the storyline flowed as a whole. It's literally only in the past hour that I have come to love the movie version as much as I do at the moment. Watchmen the movie is the closest adaptation we could ever hope for, realistically it could never be done to perfection, but to have something so close just shows how special a movie this is. I'm not saying this is as good as The Dark Knight, personally I will be amazed if I ever regard it to be as good, but what it is is the best superhero movie bar Dark Knight. Overlong it may be, slow it may be, but I wouldn't want it changed for the world, and I cannot wait to see the extended cut and watch this numerous times in the cinema.
Let me go onto the acting, as Watchmen in my eyes has always been a group effort in terms of characters. I will start with the best by far, Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach, whom was always my favourite character in the novel. Haley is perfect, there is no other word for it, I'm talking Ledger as Joker levels of perfection, arguably more so. He simply is Rorschach, both in and out of the mask. In fact his scenes in prison are probably some of my highlights. The voice is how I always imagined it, but the emotion in the character is something I never expected. I don't come close to crying in cinemas very often, but his very final scene, goddamn it had me damned close. Patrick Wilson as Nite Owl was pretty brilliant, never liked the character too much though to be honest. Malin Akerman is awful as Silk Spectre, no other way to put it. I dislike the character, but she's not a good actress. Matthew Goode is the biggest surprise for me, he looks nothing like Ozymandias, and really shouldn't work in the role (though they make his involvement too obvious), but the voice and his monologuing scenes are actually perfect. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is good, but amazing, as Eddie Blake, though he does feature in one of the best scenes. Billy Crudup is incredible as Manhattan, I'm not sure how much was effects, and how much was the actor doing motion capture, but the voice itself was brilliant for the character.
Now Watchmen is bigger than the characters, its all about the ideas and story in my eyes. The action is very much left to the background, that isn't to say there isn't any, in fact my slight moan is that they have amped some action up a tad too much. I disliked the Comedian's death at the beginning, the fight went on far too long and felt unnecessary. Some quick inter-cutting flashes of what happened would have more than sufficed. Thankfully the ideas still survive in the movie, and this of course brings me onto the ending. Here I forewarn you that there will be SPOILERS. Still reading? I'll assume you either want it spoiled or have seen the movie. Well there is no squid, not a bad move in my opinion as I always feared it would seem to bizarre for the average viewer. No instead we get an explanation of Manhattan being the alleged cause, which actually really works. In fact I loved the ending a lot, especially the aftermath, until we have one scene with Nite Owl and Ozymandias, which I absolutely hated. I mean I pretty much sat there screaming at the screen I hated it so much. But considering that was the one scene that really annoyed me I was pretty impressed with how they did the ending.
Any scene with Rorschach truly is a highlight of the movie, his final scene as I said it truly amazing how it is done, and his line "You're trapped in here with me" still remains my firm favourite of both the comic and the movie. Manhattan's scenes on Mars are truly beautiful, especially his final speech with Laura "turning air into gold". But arguably my favourite sequence in the entire movie happens in the first ten minutes. In fact it's the opening credits, done to Bob Dylan's "The Times are A Changin". For non-fans it might be meaningless, but for fans it will basically give them a geek-gasm.
Overall Watchmen is simply incredible, it does have issues, but I need to watch it over and over again to see how noticeable they really are. If you loved the novel you should love this, and if you don't then you need to understand that the novel can never be truly filmed scene for scene. This is the closest thing to the perfect Watchmen movie we will ever get, much as The Dark Knight is the closest thing to a perfect Batman movie we will ever get. This is a smart movie, and one that requires thinking and patience, if you can do that then prepare to be truly amazed.