Watchmen

When I was a teenager, I spent a lot of time in my room. So much that if my dad wanted to talk to me, he had to knock on my door. And one day he did.

"The book club said this was a good comic book. Here." And he handed me Watchmen. Over the last twenty years I've read it twelve times. It's not a book I love, it's book I awe. So there's no way I could sit through three hours of the movie and not compare it to the book.

It's a good adaptation. Probably as good as anyone could do. Terry Gilliam would have had more inspiration, but it would have been a mess. Darren Aronofsky would have been humorless and navel gazing. Zach Snyder does the same job he did on 300, treating the word balloons as a script and the art as storyboards.

But there's things he missed. And some of them I miss. I don't like the handling of the females. The book had women. This movie has girls. Carla Guigino is the perfect woman and she can't save her gender here. Dr. Manhattan seems pissed rather than clueless of humanity. And I have some trouble with the new ending. It makes more sense for the cinema but it's got a glaring logical hole.

Rorshach is the stand out. He was my favorite character in the book and he is here. I haven't seem Jackie Earl Haley since "The Bad News Bears" and he's gotten way better. Snyder felt the need to take the most violent scene with the character and make it way more violent. He amps up the gore without increasing the impact. I don't see why.

"Watchmen" is the greatest comic book ever made. Any attempt to adapt it has to be phenomenal or it will be seen as a disappointment. This movie is a disappointment. But it's not a failure.