I watched the Watchmen- A review

It’s not every movie that makes me jump on to the blog and write out my thoughts. But I would blame that on my mood and something that hasn’t happened before. The lax-ing of the Censor board in India. But more on to that later.

Watchmen is a movie directed by Zack Sydner. You would remember him from the wonderful movie 300, where the visuals were mind blowing, the script tight and the flow great. He kept the visuals part of that equation intact and floundered miserably on the the other two. This is based on a comic book and you know how seriously I take such movies where the rendering of the movie/character/hero has to bear some sort of resembalance to the whole thing right? Right.

The story starts about an ex-superhero being killed and a murder investigation then starts by a current hero. This current hero is the coolest character in the movie and goes by the name Rorschach. He is convinced that there is a larger plot, but how large is revealed as the movie goes on. This is a complicated intrinsic plot from the looks of it and many events occur together which are loosely pieced in the end.

So how was the movie?
In one word : disappointing. There were many useless scenes and the only reason I would give it credit is allowing full frontal nudity in Indian theatres. Apparently sex on the Indian screens is not really taboo. But that’s not the point. The point is this movie was patched together for lack of a strong story line. I haven’t read the watchmen comics but I know from what I have heard (from my friends and in particular Arvind and Tvac) that it holds a lot more depth and is hailed as one of the best “books” written. Not just a comic, but a book. Why would they want to screw it up in a movie? Largely because of the lack of being able to convey emotions that are abound in books and art. You cannot really express many things that you could in a book in a movie. And this is where the attempt failed. Scenes where miss.jupiter and nightowl fight and save some people from a burning house showed that they were as good a team so they had to do it to celebrate. Epic Fail.

It is important to understand that this concept of Watchmen was brought at a time when the readers in the 80′s and 90′s thought about a new understanding of the concept of a “super hero”. The understanding is that they use them and these superheros work together to prevent nuclear war destruction which was a large threat between Russia and the USA. The super heros start to question their roles in the whole equation and start to develop their character. There is a God in it who goes by Dr.Manhattan who has so many powers endowed and cannot age or die and can see into the future. How does he deal with it? What about the roles played by lesser godly heros who give into the dark temptations of man (Greed, Power and Lust). These are concepts that were explored and brings about a concept that is largely on the minds of people. Are Superheros more human than we think? Do they crumble?

These concepts should have been explored in a better way rather than focus on meaningless trivilaties. So many scenes like the Jailbreak, the love making scenes between the heros and heroines were largely useless in the story telling, but necessary to appear commerical. The reason this movie failed was trying to appeal to a commercial audience by roping them into the visual awe and forgetting that many people sometimes need

End Result: Movies at 5/10 mostly for visuals. But it’s a far better tribute paid to Alan Moore than that effin idiot who killed the Batman. Watch it for seeing how far we have progressed in visual effects in Cinema, but read the book if you want some deep meaning into this. As far as I can tell the movie is good for those that don’t expect anything, don’t read between the lines and don’t expect to go in with prejudged thoughts.

{UPDATE} – Thanks to Pegu I now have the Watchmen comics with me so as is customary, I shall read it and add a follow up. My score of the movie, by itself without comparing, still stands.

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