I’m sure I can put together a lengthier, more thoughtful review when I’ve had time to reflect on it, but this is my initial take after leaving the theater:

The special effects are great…

…and that about says it all when it comes to Hollywood’s adaptation of a book that is mostly conversations.

Spoilers ahead; I’m assuming you’ve read the original.

Much of the psychological depth of the book is gone.  Nite Owl’s impotence and his kink for costumes, Rorshach’s perspective affecting his psychiatrist, the mocking of the very idea of dressing up in costumes to fight drug dealers and pimps, is all downplayed because that would get in the way of the moviemaker desire to show cool superhero fight scenes.  When you reread Watchmen, notice how there aren’t any?  Nite Owl and Silk Spectre battle a gang while out of costume, and other than that they try to avoid confrontations (though in one scene they dispatch two prisoners while not breaking conversation).  Dan Dryberg is downright squeamish at the actions of Rorshach, which makes his later outburst in a bar all the more noticeable; in the movie, Dan and Laurel both delight in breaking bones and even stabbing opponents.

In packaging Watchmen as a movie, they up the violence on all the characters, removing the divisions between the extreme Comedian and Rorshach and the more mundane Nite Owl and Silk Spectre. Silk Spectre even enjoys beating up a guard, whereas she and Nite Owl were appalled at Rorshach’s brutality towards the police in the book.

Nite Owl, with his Batmanesque costume, comes off much sleeker and meaner.  I may be focusing too much on this, but it says a lot about what’s wrong with the movie version.  Nite Owl is supposed to be a tad gimmicky, with a costume that is stylish but plain.  He’s not supposed to look awesome and impressive, he’s supposed to look like an out of shape 40-something guy whose paunch is covered by a grey shirt.  Sure, he’s still got some moves for beating up teenagers, but when he tries tackling Veidt he gets dispatched with ease.  Instead, there’s this protracted wire-fu fight.

I know that the inevitable comeback will be that it had to be made to work for film.  But if you can’t keep the mockery of some of the silliness of superheroes because it gets in your way of making your superheroes awesome, you’ve lost the point of the book.

Superficially, this is an amazing adaptation of the original work.  Scene after scene is copied from comic panel after panel as if it were a storyboard, a la Sin City and 300.  There is much to applaud in the technical achievements, in style and costuming.  Archie the ship looks fabulous.   Patrick Wilson is perfectly cast as Daniel Dryberg/Nite Owl, and Malin Akerman makes Silk Spectre come alive as well.

I know, not everything from the book can make it into an adaptation.  I miss some scenes, such as Rorshach bursting from the fridge, and the first Nite Owl being murdered and the effect it has on Dryberg.  The mystery of Rorshach’s identity and the revelation that he is a street kook that we’ve been seeing all along, that’s pretty much gone.    But I understand.  (Chuck Dixon related at one of his Chicago Dixon Dinners that when they were attempting to turn “Way of the Rat” into a movie, director Chuck Russell said there was no point in including the mystery of the Silken Ghost’s identity because identity mysteries don’t work anymore.  Asked why, he said that you can work very hard to keep the secret through the whole movie, and then someone in marketing will give the whole thing away in the trailer for the film.)

What the movie ditches unnecessarily, however, is the smart cutting back and forth.  The scenes which transition to a matching shape on Rorshach’s mask, for instance.  Why lose that when it could make a great visual effect that would have the audience thrilling at how neat that was?  In the book, while Rorshach is in the men’s room (shoving Big Figure into a toilet — that’s WATER on the floor, not blood, as it is here.  What kinda dwarf has that much blood in him?), Nite Owl comments about losing a criminal because he had to pee and he hadn’t built a fly into his costume.  It’s a hilarious bit which humanizes the superhero.  Here, there’s ample time to include that dialogue, but it’s not there… probably because, as I said, that would make him uncool and we can’t have that in an awesome superhero movie.

Similarly, the dialogue which has the effect of commenting on action in the following panel, or narration on a TV about Veidt’s gymnastics which serve as commentary about a love scene we aren’t shown (“Look at those hands go! This is a man in his 40s, ladies and gentlemen.  And now, a perfect dismount!” etc.).  Here, the double-meaning dialogue is included without the visuals which were probably the reason for that dialogue in the first place, and we are shown the love scene much more graphically while the TV simply gives news reports about war.  It seems to purposely avoid depth and artistic skill that could have been included without any loss to the marketability of the movie.

Speaking of “graphically”, it’s amazing that Alan Moore’s gritty book full of curse words, nudity and violence now looks remarkably chaste.  The movie has more foul language, a protracted full orgasm love scene and the camera makes love to every wound, of which there are many, many more than in the original.  Dr. Manhattan obliterates so many people onscreen that his doing so to a certain someone at the end is a bit anti-climactic.  As for the love scene, here’s what’s wrong with it: In the old movies, a couple would go into a clinch and the camera cuts away to show  a fireworks display or a flower opening, etc.  Modern movies, of course, show the whole humpty-humpty goings on without any need for metaphor, just some shadows or foreground objects obscuring the particulars.   If you’re going to show a soft porn scene, you don’t need to then follow it with a train going into a tunnel.  Moore and Gibbons had a single shot of semi-disrobing during a kiss,  and then a cutaway to the accidentally-triggered flame-thrower symbolising climax.  In the movie, we see a long love scene, and then the flame-thrower anyway.  It gets some laughs, sure, but it doesn’t play out the same way.

Similarly, Big Figure’s attack on Rorshach.  The arc welder is now a saw.  Perhaps this makes more sense to explain why the fat guy blocking the lock has to die.  Or maybe it’s just for a gorier visual.  But we still have Rorshach standing on his bed.  In the book, this is a wily attack, as he uses a sudden burst of water to fry the guy.  Here, he just jumps on his attacker.  Well, wouldn’t the guy be expecting Rorshach to beat him up?  This is why Rorshach uses his smarts instead of just beating the guy, in the book.

Maybe this is what’s bugging me.  Rorshach’s just a plain ol’ murderer in this book.  He doesn’t creatively kill the kidnapper of the little girl, he just whacks him with a butcher knife.   I suspect they didn’t do it like in the book because all the 17 year olds in the audience would think they stole it from “Saw”.  However, Rorshach’s cold-blooded murdering, like the Comedian being the assassin of J.F.K., go too far with the characters, making them unsympathetic and beyond redemption through other actions.

There are needless homages to Apocalypse Now and Dr. Strangelove which hamper the movie’s ability to stand as its own creature.

I never thought I’d say this, but Alan Moore is much kinder to Nixon.  In the book, Nixon and his advisors going over nuclear war scenarios are frightened and resigned; in the movie, the generals are chuckling about maybe coming out the winners.  Again, the desire to ape Dr. Strangelove gets in the way.

Other thoughts:

The penis doesn’t work onscreen.  Every time that blue penis is shown in frame, people are giggling throughout the theater.  It’s understated in the book, but here it’s shown in full high-def.  Just think: some CGI person spent a month rendering the penis.  That was probably his title in the special effect department.  Poor fellow.

Ozymandias is the weakest link in the movie.  Obviously trying to do a young David Bowie (why does everyone think David Bowie is a supervillain?), his accent is distracting and detracts from some of the more powerful dialogue.  His character is the least-explored.  His genetically-engineered lynx, Bubastis, is there without any explanation whatsoever.  Most of the book’s Ozy scenes are cut from the movie… which, given his motivations drive everything, seems like a bad choice.  His costume, another Batman-esque redesign, begs the question of why he must catch a bullet if he’s wearing kevlar.  Like the inclusion of the Outer Limits when the reference is cleansed of all meaning, it’s one of many elements left in the movie just because it’s in the original book even though it no longer works.

Before seeing the movie, the big question is: will it work?  How do you sell Cold War hysteria to people born when the Berlin Wall fell?  How do you create that imposing sense that there is no way out of nuclear armageddon except for Veidt’s solution when the real world ended up showing that there was another outcome?  It’s not as if Alan Moore was trying to set up a scarier 1985 that was closer to the brink because of Dr. Manhattan and Nixon being in office; that was how he saw the world at the time, he was just throwing superheroes into the mix.   After all, Nixon took us out of Viet Nam and opened China while Reagan was pursuing M-X missiles and S.D.I., so it’s not as if Moore was trying to say, “Aren’t we glad we have Reagan instead of a fifth-term Nixon?”  No, it was simply that if Dr. Manhattan existed and he ended Viet Nam, Nixon would have remained in office.

Given all of this, I don’t know if it does work for today’s audience.  It’s an adaptation of a 24-year-old book that should have been made into a movie in the late 1980s.  It’s  set in 1985, but an alternate 1985.  Judging from my niece, the movie-going throngs know diddly-squat about 1985, let alone the 1960s.  Maybe this is why there is so much more action and special effects.

I know, I’m an uncharitable fan-boy and the epitome of the “book was better” snob.  However, in this case, I think it’s warranted, because this movie doesn’t seem to have been made for anyone else.  Final verdict:  It’s very disappointing in many respects, it’s also amazing and impressive in others, and it’s certainly not a travesty like LXG.  I can’t give you a “go or no go”; everyone will have their own opinions.

And I’m not even touching on the big change in the ending. That’s worth a whole ‘nother discussion.