Watchmen

WATCHMEN (2009) - Mar. 7, 2009
Though thankfully not quite the disaster I was fearing it would be, Watchmen the movie was still an enormous step down from Watchmen the comic. Despite a running time of almost three hours, it still felt condensed -- it kept all of the broad strokes (and remained remarkably faithful to the source material, other than a puzzlingly different -- and inferior -- ending), but it lost so many of the small details and side-characters that made the comic so special. It feels generic, which is the last thing I'd say about the comic. The performances were all pretty good (Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach and Patrick Wilson as Nite Owl were definite standouts), though the decision to make Dr. Manhattan entirely CGI was pretty much disastrous. Zack Snyder's stylized visuals weren't nearly as distractingly bad as I thought they'd be -- the film looked decent enough, for the most part. That's not to say that I've gained any respect for Snyder, however; it takes a special kind of talent to take something so amazingly awesome and turn it into something so middling. **1/2