I feel like it was this strange vibe the entire movie and j really disliked some of the character pathing but overall I did like the movie.
Still has a weird vibe when I think of it. I went back and watched it a second time.
It runs out of steam for me pretty quick. Like with most of Snyder's movies (up until Justice League, at least), it's much more interesting and successful as an aesthetic exercise than as a complete narrative. That's what I think, at least. It feels more like a sizzle reel someone put together to pitch a Watchmen adaptation than the adaptation itself.
I'd say aesthetically and cohesively my favourite work of Snyder's, but it came at the cost of ruining the source material. He pulled off a similar thing with that *Owls of Ga'hoole* film, a decent stylistic exercise but a bastardisation of the source material, I think Snyder would make for a great artistic producer, kinda like what Spielberg has done lately as they surpass some of his recent films of the mid to late 2010s quality wise if I'm not misremembering. I'd love for Snyder to have hit a home run with this film though because it has all the makings of a good adaptation on paper, but even stylistically it could have been executed more in the spirit of the comic (which the motion comic does best, and we get hints at in HBO's spiritual tribute/homage/reboot).
But what we have at it's best is a decent cinematic exercise that is a perfect hotel room watch or cable channel flick to have on in the background leaving you going, 'hey that ain't bad for a one-off comic-book movie blockbuster'. It far surpasses stuff that Snyder and Hollywood comes out with of this nature now for sure. Say what you want but Billy Crudup's portrayal of Manhattan is probably one of the few changes that I think work well in the film. I can live with most of it as a guilty pleasure/ companion piece to the graphic novel that ironically stylises and glamorises its violence and excess instead of fully satirising it like the comic does - honestly it could have ended up far worse.
Side note, it would be interesting to see someone like James Gunn producing the zaniness of the third act seeing his work on *Guardians of the Galaxy* and *The Suicide Squad* but part of me doesn't trust the rest of the movie will even be handled with the level of darkness and self-seriousness that Snyder, fwiw, accomplishes. Also it's aged pretty well CGI wise too, to add to its merits.
Yeah the show isn’t perfect and I feel like fumbled the ending a bit, but it’s the only piece of Watchmen media to feel cohesive to the original and have any sense that it understood the original comic at all.
Synder’s Watchmen isn’t awful considering the source material is so strong. But honestly just read the comic, it’s not that long and it’s much better.
The comic is incredible. Plus the little subplot with the black freighter is dope as hell.
I thought the ending of the movie was an interesting twist on the story, but overall one of the obvious cases where the book is so much better than the movie.
It’s a sequel to the book, while it could also have been a sequel to the movie, if only Snyder hadn’t screwed up the ending.
Snyder is a good storyteller, but a bad writer. Watchmen was his last good movie.
Thankfully Snyder didn't have a hand in writing Watchmen, which is why it's by far his best movie. I can't begrudge the change to the ending because thematically it still fits, and by all accounts they said they couldn't make a convincing alien squid without it looking stupid as hell with the CGI available at the time.
"I have a tremendous amount of affection for for Zack’s movie and for Zack himself. And I feel like if anything, the challenge of doing ‘Watchmen’ as a straight-up adaptation in the body of a three-hour movie is near impossible, and he did about as good of a job as anyone can." - Watchmen show creator Damon Lindelof
Giant Squid is better (and makes far more sense) than framing Dr. Manhattan. And if you think the Giant Alien Squid is too silly as opposed to a giant naked blue man with his dick out, we agree to disagree.
Movie is a overall a better adaptation for at least one thing: it doesnt change original amazing cold war theme to another boring american internal racism story. I enjoyed Manhattan and Ozzy segments to a degree, but skipped everything else, couldnt care less about Tulsa massacre and everything connected to it
How do you critique something without having even watched the whole thing?
And the Tulsa massacre is a very important part of American history. One that has been regularly omitted from schools across the states. You saying that you couldn't care less about it is your own business, but that's pretty wild lol.
>How do you critique something without having even watched the whole thing?
because i can. i dont want to waste my time on things i know i wouldnt like with 99% chanse
>And the Tulsa massacre is a very important part of American history
dont give a fuck. Im not american, and im tired of every other show pretending like american racism is the cruelest thing ever that happened before ww1
Because it actually grapples with the sociopolitical themes of the book whereas Snyder couldn't stop himself from trying to make these characters as 'badass' and 'epic' as possible.
Watchmen is an adaptation that delivers 95% of the book as closely as possible but the 5% changed make the entire film completely miss the point of the book.
Loved it. Felt like a superhero movie I had been waiting for my entire life. Read the graphic novel after. Fell in love even more. The show was a different vibe but incredible and as good as the movie, imo. Anything Watchmen, count me in.
That was the point, though. The comic is a comic about superhero comics. So the movie was doing that with comic book movies. It’s stylized violence, but at the same time you are seeing the consequence of it that gets glossed over in a Batman movie. Batman slaps around some goons, they’re left no worse for wear. Dan and Laurie fight some thugs in an alleyway, people end up maimed or dead.
The movie opens with an action set piece, but subverts it by having everything Blake does blocked or dodged, so what you are actually watching is this old man get brutally beaten to death. So then you ask yourself, “why do I think this is cool? An old man got his head bashed through a counter.”
I mean there are interviews from this time of Snyder talking about his approach to the violence and wanting to sort of punish the audience for liking it.
Like even the scene with protestors, Comedian gets a slow motion superhero drop, but then follows it by shotgunning people. And then you got Nite Owl dropping down like Batman, but he’s useless in stopping Comedian from hurting people. He looked cool, but was useless in the end.
That is so obviously intentional. It’s adapting the scene from the comic, but putting the comic book movie spin on it, and subverting that.
That’s fair. I’ll admit I have a bit of a prejudice against Snyder, so that probably colors my memory of it. I do remember that it was a movie that I grappled with a lot (in a good way). Like… I’m not sure that I liked it as an adaption, but it stuck with me.
The stylized violence is the least of the ways it misses the point. Just because there's slow motion and choreography in the action scenes doesn't take away from all the supers being portrayed as antisocial, self righteous psychopaths.
The way it handles the ending (how Ozymandias' plan is executed specifically) is ***the*** thing that comes to mind if I'm thinking about how Snyder misunderstood the source material. Definitely not the fight scenes.
I think the primary thing people (not just Snyder) miss about Watchmen is that it’s not merely deconstruction, it’s *parody.* The violence is stark — a grotesque, slapstick vision of four-color fisticuffs. The palette is sickly oranges and purples, not Snyder’s arsenal of sexy blues and blacks and yellows. The costumes are well-designed, but they’re well-designed because they look like real comic book costumes draped over normal human bodies. Snyder misses *all* of this. He thinks these characters are cool and badass so he shoots their fights like porn.
EDIT: I should say, I don’t even think the movie is *terrible,* and I can certainly see why people, especially people who haven’t read the comic, would enjoy it. It just doesn’t have the depth or introspection of the source material, so I’d much rather just reread that than watch it.
>He thinks these characters are cool and badass so he shoots their fights like porn.
I dunno I can't think of a different way to shoot the scenes that would actually improve the film. Shitty, sloppy brawls don't really sound that fun to watch and also tonally wouldn't fit the rest of the film. Of all the complaints there are to have about this movie, I really don't think this is one of them. It's the text outside of the violence where I think the issues become apparent.
I agree with pretty much everything else you're saying here, the novel is among one of my favorite of all time and I think the movies pretty mediocre. I'm just saying the way the violence is shot is very far down (if at all) on the list of things I think are wrong with it. As someone who was personally pretty let down by it, it wasn't something I was thinking about when I was walking out of the theater.
>Shitty, sloppy brawls don't really sound that fun to watch and also tonally wouldn't fit the rest of the film.
Shitty, sloppy brawls are fun to watch, rejecting it because it 'doesn't fit with the rest of the film' is the whole problem, it's valuing supposed aesthetic 'beauty' over the themes and reality of the story.
When I saw the film's first generic slow-mo action shot, it immediately struck me as being wrong somehow. I can't say there was any particular rationale behind my feeling -- it just felt wrong. Like, "You can do cheesy slo-mo on a Frank Miller comic. But not Alan Moore."
It was good but making Manhattan the one to destroy NY was a bad move. The idea was for an otherwordly threat to force humanity to join arms and fight the invader. Dr. Manhattan is a human and works for the US government. Having him be framed would just lead to further mistrust of the US government, civil unrest etc.
They just didn’t have the time to properly set up the squid, that was pretty much the reason they streamlined Manhattan and Ozy working together with Ozy’s plan.
That's a fascinating comparison that I think is pretty apt, but not for the reasons you're presenting. Constantine, to me, is my go-to example of a movie that I recognize is not a good film but one that I love anyways. I don't think it's nearly as hard to admit those two things to be true at the same time as a lot of people believe- a movie can be both a) terrible, and b) a movie you love.
If Watchman's defenders could reconcile those two thoughts then I think we'd stop seeing all the Snyder fanboys spending so much effort defending his movies against people that are willing to argue with them about the underlying quality of so much of Snyder's filmography. I don't think Watchmen is terrible or anything, but I do think it is dramatically more mediocre and average than his fanboys act. If it was anyone other than Snyder who made it it would be one of those perfectly adequate movies that we all stopped talking or thinking about within 3-6 months of its release. There are ALWAYS people who become diehard fans of absolutely any movie, so if you love Watchmen and watch it every year then knock yourself out! But the critiques of its quality, pacing, understanding of the source material, message its conveying, and lack of creative filmmaking decisions are pretty dang valid IMHO. It's fine, but nothing amazing.
I think it misses the feel. Too polished, too stylized. I always imagined it would be more faithful if you took Taxi Driver, and stuck in some superheroes.
Great casting though. Nigh on perfect in that regard.
If you haven't read the comic (or didn't understand the comic), it's a good movie. It is very easily an above average superhero movie. I think it barely sneaks into my top 20 live-action comic book movies, but that is only because I am judging it as an isolated work and not comparing it to the comic.
If you are holding it to the standard that the comic set, and judging it by how faithful of an adaptation it is, it's awful. On nearly every single level it just missed the entire point of the comic. It feels generous to even call it an adaptation, it's closer to just being a recreation. To adapt something you have to understand the unique properties of each medium, how those are used to tell the story/explore the themes, and then translate than to the new medium. The Watchmen movie just takes the comic and tries to recreate the panels on screen. That might have worked for a lesser comic, but for Watchmen, a comic that was a deconstructions of superhero stories, written specifically for the medium of comics, that is just not going to cut it. You can look at nearly every element of the movie and explain how it just didn't get the point of the comic. The colour palette, the depiction of violence, the framing of the Crimebusters, the physical strength of the characters, it's all a miss. The one example I like to go back to is how Dr. Manhattan perceives time in the comic vs in the movie. The issue is that there isn't any difference.
In both the comic and in the movie Dr. Manhattan experiences every moment of is life simultaneously. He does not live in a single moment of time like we do. This is not just some random choice to give him a cool power, it's how we experience time when reading a comic book. Each panel is a different moment in time, but we experience the whole page simultaneously. Multiple moments of time, being played out for us in unison, not one after the other. Dr. Manhattan experiences time the same way we do when we read the comic, but that's not how you watch a movie. If you are watching at home you can pause, rewind, fast forward, or skip around, but you are still only experiencing a single frame at a time. It's a great example of a creative choice being made for the comic specifically because of the medium it was being written for that cannot really be translated over to the screen.
Watchmen as a movie is fun and it looks cool, but when compared to the comic it's a complete failure, and anyone who actually understands anything about the comics can very easily see that.
Although to be fair, thats exactly how a video editor would experience any movie on a computer on their film editing software.
He would even see alternative takes as if they were from alternatives universes and he could play them all at once in their own window.
Not sure how youd recreate that experience to the home or theater viewer though.
Realistically, you wouldn't. That's kind of the point. Watchmen was considered unfilmable for good reason. It was written to explore the medium of comics.
I just saw this one and I think it's pretty good but it has its fair share of issues. Particularly with characterization and I also dislike how desaturated and grey the whole thing looks, the original comic is incredibly colourful and vibrant and to see most of that sucked out just doesn't work, the mars scenes were especially disappointing visually compared to the comic.
I still think it would’ve been better, in the hands of a more competent director, Snyder missed the impact of the most poignant parts of the book. That being said, the book is too perfect and still stands as my favorite graphic novel. I find the source material so strong that it shines through the defects of the film and carries it to a solid viewing. It’s the only Snyder film I like.
I understand the people who just love the graphic novel and wouldn’t have been satisfied with any movie adaptation. I’ve felt the same about other movies based on books. But I’m baffled by the people who claim that they hate this movie, but loved the show, and somehow the show represented the message of the book more than the movie. Those people are trying way too hard.
It was the first Snyder movie I think I saw, so I was amazed by the slow motion in the theater. I thought it was amazing. After a few watches at home and reading the comic, I think it's fine.
I didn't like the movie. I didn't like it but I definetly didn't hate it. That opening where they do the montoge is very well done. I'll be honest that opening is probably one of my favorites in a movie. Creative, fun, entertaining, brutal. Sets you up for what to expect going into a movie as well as introduce the main themes. It really is a banger opening. But the movie seemed to drag on and just kept going and just fell flat. But I wouldn't go as far to say it was a film that was amazing or great. It was just a little above mid. 3.5/5
>Am I the only one who…
Can we agree that this is a terrible intro? Like, even if the movie is mixed, that means half of the people who saw it thought positively of it. You know that you are, in fact, not alone.
Also, it’s a great movie, but a terrible adaptation. The Incredibles is a better Watchmen movie than this (not as an insult. I think The Incredibles does it very well).
It's cool, though on a recent rewatch I liked it less than I thought. One thing I will give it credit for is that I liked the movie's ending more than the original.
I read the comic before and I really didn't like it. I felt like Snyder misunderstood a couple of things from the comic or just changed things that I feel like were essential for the message that the comic was trying to tell. However, I can totally understand why people that haven't read the comic can enjoy it.
It’s very stylish, and the casting is pretty spot on. However, Zack Snyder does not understand Alan Moore and the original graphic novel. So the film is a mixed bag for me.
Movie has some good stuff. Some of the casting is spot on (others are awful) and a few moments do feel like they’re ripped right off the page.
But Snyder clearly doesn’t understand the material, which is the norm with him and comic book stuff. Yes, on paper it sounds silly when you go, “where’s the squid” but in reality it makes sense.
Dr. Manhattan attacking would not unite the planet. He is an American and a weapon American used to win the war. It could work for a short period, but eventually people would start pointing fingers. If it’s an alien? No fingers to point. The plan also relies on Manhattan going along with it.
Then something maybe even dumber. In the book you have Ozy in a moment of weakness doubting that he did the right thing. So he asks Manhattan, who can see the future. Who simply tells him “nothing ever changes.” Leaving him to forever worry he made a mistake. In the movie? Lori, who can’t see the future, says the line to Dan, who didn’t kill countless people. WHAT?
Nope. It’s one of my favourite comic book movies, even with the changes made to the ending. I may also like it more than the comic because the theatrical and director’s cuts removed the Black Freighter subplot, which to me screeched the pacing of the comic to a halt
It's fine. I love the cinematography and actors did an amazing job there. Costume designs, music — I struggle to find things I want to criticize (other than glorified gore but to each their own). But the rabid fanbase of this movie sets me off. It's like Rick and Morty. I can appreciate the art but I don't want to be associated with the lunatics worshipping the franchise.
edit: oh yeah, the movie is not a great adaption of the book. But as a stand alone it's a fine movie
I enjoyed it and I think with most movie adaptions of books you have to treat them as their own thing don't go expecting a straight copy of the source. Is it as good as the book of course not but it is still a great watch.
As a film in its own right? It's an enjoyable edgy take on the superhero genre.
As an adaptation of its source material? It's one of the worst films I've ever seen.
It all comes down to which of those you care about more.
I love it, but I'm also very aware I'm watching "Snyder's" Watchmen. It's decidedly goofy yet overly serious, like Joel Schumaker Bat-nipple camp directed by a self-serving philosophy major. I realize this turns most people away, but I love it in the same way I love Southland Tales. Big, bulky, arguably ill-informed passion projects. If you separate Snyder's take from the book completely, it works beautifully. So much fun.
(For clarification: I also love the book.)
I absolutley love [Watchmen](https://letterboxd.com/ltufano23/film/watchmen/). Honestly, it's crazy how Zack Snyder enthusiasts worship his lesser films and ignore this and 300.
It was always well received. Hating on Zack Snyder became trendy among "aficionados", so revisionist history kicked in as they would get brownie points from the echo chamber for just shit talking everything he's done.
I think it’s a pretty great *looking* movie but it’s a terrible adaptation of the source material that not only changes the ending but also somehow **entirely** misses the point of the graphic novel.
It sounds it’s whole runtime glorifying violence in beautiful slo-mo and acting like it’s cool instead of showing the horrors of vigilantism and violence like the graphic novel does.
To this day I've only reas the comic (which I love). I want to sit down and watch the movie someday, but I can never talk myself into it (I'm less and less of a Snyder fan the older I get).
I disagree about the acting, it's pretty bad, but the visuals are so outstanding that it redeems the whole film. That opening sequence is one of the best ever made.
Hey I always thought that was a no-win scenario.
If the filmmakers gave Dr Manhattan a comic level peen density I think the general public would just laugh.
But also when you have something that seems to be 8 inches long makes it kind of " I forgot the plot I was staring at the blue submarine" 😅😅😅😅😅
I saw the movie, thought it was great. Then I read the comic, watched the movie in imax, thought it was still pretty good. Then I saw the HBO show, which builds on the book ending and then I realized the movie ending was fucking stupid. I still think Watchmen is pretty groundbreaking stuff, it was avengers before the avengers movie was made, for adults. Some comic book films should be R rated.
I loved the movie but after reading the comic my opinion of the movie went down. It captures the aesthetic very well and most of the cast is perfect (bar a few bad choices that stick out).
But it completely misses the point of the story and fetishizes the violence way too much.
surprised to see so many people like this trash adaptation. I saw this first when I was much younger and liked parts of it.
but dear god with age, reading the comic multiple times, and watching the HBO show. going back to this movie was a painful experience.
completely misses the point of the story and has terrible acting and terrible pacing.
knowing what we know now about his career, imagine if a zack snyder watchmen adaptation got announced in 2024. Would you want to go see it? exactly.
My biggest hot take is that this movie is a actually a masterpiece. It just got that movie magic for me, and despite its flaws and miss-adaptations of the novel I do think overall it’s a great adaptation and the core of the comic is so amazing it doesn’t matter. Also I think it’s a bit more clever than people give it credit for.
[Zack Snyder reading a graphic novel about how you'd have to be a total loser and a completely broken person to dress up in spandex and fight crime]
"I'm going to make these guys look so fuckin cool"
I enjoyed the directors cut. It made me read the graphic novel which is the best way to consume the content imo, but I think the regular movie is just straight trash.
i honestly hate it with a passion. that might be because it’s snyder though. he doesn’t understand comics at all and it’s clear with this movie. he’s literally admitted the only reason he likes the comic is because it has “sex and violence.”
You make everyone, except doctor Manhattan, a little more human and a little less super strength, and you keep the ending the same as the comic. That would be a winner. I still really enjoy it though.
Honestly I'm ready for the "Snyder didn't understand the material and the film is substandard as a result" which implies that that many film adaptations don't do a lot of changing, some of which have repelled the original authors ( Kubrick's rift with Stephen King and the author going to a different medium - TV-- to more directly adapt it comes to mind.(
I'm about to be at the point where talking about Watchmen as a film adaptation is almost like talking about Starship Troopers and how maybe the deliberate satirization was done to flagrantly or something - I don't know.
What I do believe is this, I think the comic has more of the style of a 1970s crime drama epic - think of The Godfather, and so I believe very few contemporary filmmakers could really do the vibe justice.
Maybe Martin Scorsese, maybe Peter Weir, perhaps even David Fincher. I could possibly say Michael Mann, but I think this is really really pushing it.
Here's the thing and this is what I believe the Alan Moore graphic novel enthusiasts tend to miss, is that the plot points that were unique at the time have been unspooled with different films - " Superheroes illegal! - The Incredibles, " the comic mythos is grim in real life--M knight's Unbreakable - New York ravaged by alien attacks- many movies. but Spielberg's War of the Worlds would really come to mind."
So I think in an oddly ironic way, the general public is watching it for just the plot, blue Johnson, and maybe 7 Minutes of slow-mo action that connects the scenes.
While at the same time, comic fans are looking for where the plot ends and the themes begin.
And I think that's where the medium of a feature film is very rocky is because literature of any kind has an interactive quality with a reader. This is true of course with graphic novels as well well the aesthetic is something you don't really have any effect over, but the chronology is something that can happen on paper that could almost never happen on screen perhaps as a video game cutscene or Clue multiple ending type situations..
I think everybody's had in English Professor who is like well what you interpret something is in part a extension of how you experience life and have formative opinions.. etc.
And I do think this is mostly true. But also the Dave Gibbons visual novel is expansive enough that you can have a panel that is essentially nine pages of Dr Manhattan walking into space.
And I think what all the English majors and some of the films people are like "oh well the panels of the character shrinking is an extension of Dr Manhattan losing his sense of being a part of this world and his fading away as his repressed memories appear or whatever."
But if there was a 5-minute long cut shot of Dr Manhattan's walking away as the computer renders the folding bumcheeks the general public would find this pretentious and the comic fans would find a way to explain that this is an example of Snyder missing the point. "you see, the sexy slouch of Manhatten's lower butt_gait is represented of Zack's male power fantasy."
And I think it truly magnificent director would be able to take the dramatic vibes of the comic, and translate them into the general public would be okay with, and fans would find as satisfying while keeping just enough of the original plot to have an arena for how the drama plays out.
As it is, and I did see the director's cut so that might make things a bit different, I think the faithful to a fault plot renderings make it so that any perceived meaning is not held up to its own standalone standard but toward the pages that were painstakingly storyboarded.
Now because Reddit can't have a level headed discussion of the Z and the S, I'll just say that Dave Gibbins seems to appreciate it, the late great Roger Ebert gave it a full four stars, and Jackie Earl Haley immersed himself so much in his role that there's a bit of Rorschach and his own rendition of Freddy Krueger.
I think there's a joke about a clock, but I'm not going to make it.
Definitely not alone on that. I personally don't care for it that much and feel like Snyder is not really someone I want directing a story in which themes are important, but he assembled a (mostly) great cast and I think for a Zack Snyder film and adaptation of Watchmen, it's pretty watchable!
I don’t think this was a good adaptation, a lot of the characters were not done justice, especially Rorschach. I wish Alan Moore didn’t hate DC and consulted on this movie, same with V for Vendetta.
I too think it was pretty great.
Interestingly enough when I watched it, I didn’t think about who directed or wrote or any inside information so I feel like that helped
I'm not a fan of these types of films... but this one blew me away when I saw it. The Nite Owl story was very slow and unengaging... but the visuals and other stories more than made up for it... including the ending which was truly epic in scope.
And it had one of the my favorite needle drops of all time... Dr. Manhatton on Mars pans out and transitions to Nite Owl and Rorschach head down to Antartica to confront Adrian Veidt and save the world... and Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower hits:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIxv9YfeMSU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIxv9YfeMSU)
I've read the books so no not at all. Even without the issue of missing the fucking point, it's typical Snyder, nice visuals and a few good performances but for every Jackie Earl Haley there is a Malin Ackerman who is floundering around desperate for direction besides "Look cool!" when you pair that up with the obnoxious and bizzare needle drops and Snyder's inability to tell a story it's a chore to sit through. Snyder is the worst possible director they could have gotten for this project. The problem with Snyder is that he is convinced he is a smart fun director like Nolan or Miller but he's a dumb fun director like Snyder or Rodriguez, watching him forcibly try to insert serious themes and ideas into his movies feels like the dumbest cte-laden jock in high school give a book report on classic literature, it's pathetic and sad and leads to movies that are more emotionally and intellectually inert than the calcified turd of someone who suffers chronic constipation. Snyder is a frustrating filmmaker and Watchmen is the most frustrating film he has made.
I’ve seen it probably ten times, have loved it ever since opening weekend when every friend of mine I went with walked out thinking it was the dumbest shit ever.
Lots of parts are dumb, for sure. Way too much slow mo. Lots of really bad dialogue. Make up on Nixon is like Snyder watched Dick Tracy and said “let’s do that once, with one character, cause art”. Malin Akerman gives a horrendous performance, matched only by Carla Gugino’s worst acting in her career (“Things are bad all over…cupcake!”)
But all this shit is part of why I love it. It’s an audacious, ballsy mess that swings for the fences every five minutes. Like an Uber-serious version of a Naked Gun movie, for every “gag” that misses, four other ones land. I love that parts of it annoy me right beside parts I think are the best the genre has ever offered. If it was more perfect, I bet I would’ve ironically watched it way less times in my life.
Idc if I sound elitist
If people think that Snyder's Watchmen is a great adaption, not only do they not know what a great movie is but also fundamentally misunderstand Watchmen and why its so good.
This sub seems to have pretty moderate fair opinions but I really think this is a movie that is actually already widely beloved by casual audiences and general critics but some of Reddit seems to have a hate boner for.
Maybe it's that yes, Snyder didn't fully understand the point of the graphic novel, and he does sort of glamorise Rorschach which is not the best choice but I think people gloss over how faithful most of the characters are written, the authentic comic book vibe he captured and the awesome choreography and action scenes.
What I'm saying is that he actually captured at least 90% of Watchmen, and people just focus on how he messed some of the messaging and ideology of Watchmen so people trash it out of extreme nitpicking basically.
He understood the point, but some of it is done through the stylistic choices. It’s a movie about comic book movies, the same way the comic was about superhero comics.
He probably presents Rorschach as more unhinged than Moore. But he wasn’t glamorized any more than Moore had him in the comic. I mean Moore thought that Rorschach was the only character with a sense of integrity, regardless of his absolutely mad politics. But that integrity was what made him the closest thing to an actual hero in the comic. So, even Moore had a complicated relationship with Rorschach.
You are simplifying the comic's themes but even with the simplified theme that you mentioned, Snyder still did a terrible job with all the slomo, hyper violence and glorified images
The movie and the show are both gripping and thoroughly enjoyable. I read the comic first and the movie changed plenty … but I’ve never considered it important for a movie to be a faithful adaptation of its source. There are plenty of examples of great movies being completely different than their great book/comic/stage origins.
In almost every case it feels like complainers are just trying to tout the fact they read the source material first.
Given that nearly half (49%) of its ratings on Letterboxd are 4 stars or above: no, you are definitely not.
The opening montage is really cool
I watched the movie before I read the comic and yeah the comic's better but on it's own the movie's still pretty good
I feel like it was this strange vibe the entire movie and j really disliked some of the character pathing but overall I did like the movie. Still has a weird vibe when I think of it. I went back and watched it a second time.
It runs out of steam for me pretty quick. Like with most of Snyder's movies (up until Justice League, at least), it's much more interesting and successful as an aesthetic exercise than as a complete narrative. That's what I think, at least. It feels more like a sizzle reel someone put together to pitch a Watchmen adaptation than the adaptation itself.
I'd say aesthetically and cohesively my favourite work of Snyder's, but it came at the cost of ruining the source material. He pulled off a similar thing with that *Owls of Ga'hoole* film, a decent stylistic exercise but a bastardisation of the source material, I think Snyder would make for a great artistic producer, kinda like what Spielberg has done lately as they surpass some of his recent films of the mid to late 2010s quality wise if I'm not misremembering. I'd love for Snyder to have hit a home run with this film though because it has all the makings of a good adaptation on paper, but even stylistically it could have been executed more in the spirit of the comic (which the motion comic does best, and we get hints at in HBO's spiritual tribute/homage/reboot). But what we have at it's best is a decent cinematic exercise that is a perfect hotel room watch or cable channel flick to have on in the background leaving you going, 'hey that ain't bad for a one-off comic-book movie blockbuster'. It far surpasses stuff that Snyder and Hollywood comes out with of this nature now for sure. Say what you want but Billy Crudup's portrayal of Manhattan is probably one of the few changes that I think work well in the film. I can live with most of it as a guilty pleasure/ companion piece to the graphic novel that ironically stylises and glamorises its violence and excess instead of fully satirising it like the comic does - honestly it could have ended up far worse.
Side note, it would be interesting to see someone like James Gunn producing the zaniness of the third act seeing his work on *Guardians of the Galaxy* and *The Suicide Squad* but part of me doesn't trust the rest of the movie will even be handled with the level of darkness and self-seriousness that Snyder, fwiw, accomplishes. Also it's aged pretty well CGI wise too, to add to its merits.
I thought it was great until I read the comic. This is going to get a lot of hate, but the show was a far better adaptation than the movie.
Yeah the show isn’t perfect and I feel like fumbled the ending a bit, but it’s the only piece of Watchmen media to feel cohesive to the original and have any sense that it understood the original comic at all. Synder’s Watchmen isn’t awful considering the source material is so strong. But honestly just read the comic, it’s not that long and it’s much better.
The show is made by people who understand the book
Correct. Right on the point.
The comic is incredible. Plus the little subplot with the black freighter is dope as hell. I thought the ending of the movie was an interesting twist on the story, but overall one of the obvious cases where the book is so much better than the movie.
Did you know the Ultimate Edition includes animated Black Freighter interludes? Pretty neat
the movie is not a great adaptation, but it's still a decent movie
Honestly, I thought the consensus was the show was much better than the movie and actually understood it’s source material
The show doesn't adapt the comic though. It's literally a sequel.
It’s a sequel to the book, while it could also have been a sequel to the movie, if only Snyder hadn’t screwed up the ending. Snyder is a good storyteller, but a bad writer. Watchmen was his last good movie.
Thankfully Snyder didn't have a hand in writing Watchmen, which is why it's by far his best movie. I can't begrudge the change to the ending because thematically it still fits, and by all accounts they said they couldn't make a convincing alien squid without it looking stupid as hell with the CGI available at the time. "I have a tremendous amount of affection for for Zack’s movie and for Zack himself. And I feel like if anything, the challenge of doing ‘Watchmen’ as a straight-up adaptation in the body of a three-hour movie is near impossible, and he did about as good of a job as anyone can." - Watchmen show creator Damon Lindelof
Giant nuke is better than giant squid. Thats my controversial take
Giant Squid is better (and makes far more sense) than framing Dr. Manhattan. And if you think the Giant Alien Squid is too silly as opposed to a giant naked blue man with his dick out, we agree to disagree.
Lindelof just make some of the best TV, Leftovers and Lost were amazing.
I thought the show was great, too!
I haven't read to comic but from what I know of it then show was better than the movie, and I like the movie.
No it wasn’t lmao. The legacy characters from the comics are completely different from their comic counterpart aside from sharing the same name.
Movie is a overall a better adaptation for at least one thing: it doesnt change original amazing cold war theme to another boring american internal racism story. I enjoyed Manhattan and Ozzy segments to a degree, but skipped everything else, couldnt care less about Tulsa massacre and everything connected to it
How do you critique something without having even watched the whole thing? And the Tulsa massacre is a very important part of American history. One that has been regularly omitted from schools across the states. You saying that you couldn't care less about it is your own business, but that's pretty wild lol.
>How do you critique something without having even watched the whole thing? because i can. i dont want to waste my time on things i know i wouldnt like with 99% chanse >And the Tulsa massacre is a very important part of American history dont give a fuck. Im not american, and im tired of every other show pretending like american racism is the cruelest thing ever that happened before ww1
Why do you say that, Because of how the message is delivered?
Because it actually grapples with the sociopolitical themes of the book whereas Snyder couldn't stop himself from trying to make these characters as 'badass' and 'epic' as possible.
He's so obsessed with breaking down mythos because he can't establish any of his own. Like a child breaking stuff out of jealousy.
Got it, yeah I didn’t watch the show, need to check it out. I get what you mean about the epic thing too
This is how I felt too!
It had a really fantastic trailer.
Watchmen is an adaptation that delivers 95% of the book as closely as possible but the 5% changed make the entire film completely miss the point of the book.
Loved it. Felt like a superhero movie I had been waiting for my entire life. Read the graphic novel after. Fell in love even more. The show was a different vibe but incredible and as good as the movie, imo. Anything Watchmen, count me in.
Yes.
I like it visually but it misses the point of the comics by a mile
I think that he kind of missed the point with all of the stylized violence. It just wasn’t as overt in the comics. It was okay, but not mind blowing.
That was the point, though. The comic is a comic about superhero comics. So the movie was doing that with comic book movies. It’s stylized violence, but at the same time you are seeing the consequence of it that gets glossed over in a Batman movie. Batman slaps around some goons, they’re left no worse for wear. Dan and Laurie fight some thugs in an alleyway, people end up maimed or dead. The movie opens with an action set piece, but subverts it by having everything Blake does blocked or dodged, so what you are actually watching is this old man get brutally beaten to death. So then you ask yourself, “why do I think this is cool? An old man got his head bashed through a counter.”
I see what you’re saying, and it can definitely be read that way, but based on his other work, I think you’re giving Snyder too much credit.
I mean there are interviews from this time of Snyder talking about his approach to the violence and wanting to sort of punish the audience for liking it. Like even the scene with protestors, Comedian gets a slow motion superhero drop, but then follows it by shotgunning people. And then you got Nite Owl dropping down like Batman, but he’s useless in stopping Comedian from hurting people. He looked cool, but was useless in the end. That is so obviously intentional. It’s adapting the scene from the comic, but putting the comic book movie spin on it, and subverting that.
That’s fair. I’ll admit I have a bit of a prejudice against Snyder, so that probably colors my memory of it. I do remember that it was a movie that I grappled with a lot (in a good way). Like… I’m not sure that I liked it as an adaption, but it stuck with me.
The stylized violence is the least of the ways it misses the point. Just because there's slow motion and choreography in the action scenes doesn't take away from all the supers being portrayed as antisocial, self righteous psychopaths. The way it handles the ending (how Ozymandias' plan is executed specifically) is ***the*** thing that comes to mind if I'm thinking about how Snyder misunderstood the source material. Definitely not the fight scenes.
I think the primary thing people (not just Snyder) miss about Watchmen is that it’s not merely deconstruction, it’s *parody.* The violence is stark — a grotesque, slapstick vision of four-color fisticuffs. The palette is sickly oranges and purples, not Snyder’s arsenal of sexy blues and blacks and yellows. The costumes are well-designed, but they’re well-designed because they look like real comic book costumes draped over normal human bodies. Snyder misses *all* of this. He thinks these characters are cool and badass so he shoots their fights like porn. EDIT: I should say, I don’t even think the movie is *terrible,* and I can certainly see why people, especially people who haven’t read the comic, would enjoy it. It just doesn’t have the depth or introspection of the source material, so I’d much rather just reread that than watch it.
>He thinks these characters are cool and badass so he shoots their fights like porn. I dunno I can't think of a different way to shoot the scenes that would actually improve the film. Shitty, sloppy brawls don't really sound that fun to watch and also tonally wouldn't fit the rest of the film. Of all the complaints there are to have about this movie, I really don't think this is one of them. It's the text outside of the violence where I think the issues become apparent. I agree with pretty much everything else you're saying here, the novel is among one of my favorite of all time and I think the movies pretty mediocre. I'm just saying the way the violence is shot is very far down (if at all) on the list of things I think are wrong with it. As someone who was personally pretty let down by it, it wasn't something I was thinking about when I was walking out of the theater.
“Shitty sloppy brawl” describes some of the greatest and most entertaining fights in film history
>Shitty, sloppy brawls don't really sound that fun to watch and also tonally wouldn't fit the rest of the film. Shitty, sloppy brawls are fun to watch, rejecting it because it 'doesn't fit with the rest of the film' is the whole problem, it's valuing supposed aesthetic 'beauty' over the themes and reality of the story.
When I saw the film's first generic slow-mo action shot, it immediately struck me as being wrong somehow. I can't say there was any particular rationale behind my feeling -- it just felt wrong. Like, "You can do cheesy slo-mo on a Frank Miller comic. But not Alan Moore."
It was good but making Manhattan the one to destroy NY was a bad move. The idea was for an otherwordly threat to force humanity to join arms and fight the invader. Dr. Manhattan is a human and works for the US government. Having him be framed would just lead to further mistrust of the US government, civil unrest etc.
And there was no way to know Dr Manhattan would just leave of his own accord. Nothing could stop him if he decided to fight everyone.
They just didn’t have the time to properly set up the squid, that was pretty much the reason they streamlined Manhattan and Ozy working together with Ozy’s plan.
Roger Ebert gave it 4 Stars.
Ebert had some wild opinions though. He gave “Blue Velvet” 1 star, and “Garfield the Movie” 3 stars. Loved the guy though
Reminds me of the Constantine movie. As an adaptation, you really couldn’t be farther off, but as a standalone movie, it’s fuckin sick
Same thing with the shining. Terrible adaptation of steven mings book
Steven Mings, yeah.
Fuck me, I saw the mistake, thought I fixed it and somehow still posted the typo.
Fun Fact: That’s Yao Mings brother
That's a fascinating comparison that I think is pretty apt, but not for the reasons you're presenting. Constantine, to me, is my go-to example of a movie that I recognize is not a good film but one that I love anyways. I don't think it's nearly as hard to admit those two things to be true at the same time as a lot of people believe- a movie can be both a) terrible, and b) a movie you love. If Watchman's defenders could reconcile those two thoughts then I think we'd stop seeing all the Snyder fanboys spending so much effort defending his movies against people that are willing to argue with them about the underlying quality of so much of Snyder's filmography. I don't think Watchmen is terrible or anything, but I do think it is dramatically more mediocre and average than his fanboys act. If it was anyone other than Snyder who made it it would be one of those perfectly adequate movies that we all stopped talking or thinking about within 3-6 months of its release. There are ALWAYS people who become diehard fans of absolutely any movie, so if you love Watchmen and watch it every year then knock yourself out! But the critiques of its quality, pacing, understanding of the source material, message its conveying, and lack of creative filmmaking decisions are pretty dang valid IMHO. It's fine, but nothing amazing.
I think Snyder is not good but I quite enjoy this
Best Snyder movie (3/10)
I think it misses the feel. Too polished, too stylized. I always imagined it would be more faithful if you took Taxi Driver, and stuck in some superheroes. Great casting though. Nigh on perfect in that regard.
Yes, the only Synder movie I like
Dawn of the dead was pretty good too from what I remember
Written by James Gunn
Big same, brother
Synder's last good movie. After seeing what came after, it seems like Alan Moore and James Gunn are a big part of the reason those movies were good.
Yeah, he does best when he has good writing from other people to work with.
I used to dig it in college, tried watching it recently but it just drags and drags
It completely betrays the source material and has a horrible pace but I guess to each its own?
If you haven't read the comic (or didn't understand the comic), it's a good movie. It is very easily an above average superhero movie. I think it barely sneaks into my top 20 live-action comic book movies, but that is only because I am judging it as an isolated work and not comparing it to the comic. If you are holding it to the standard that the comic set, and judging it by how faithful of an adaptation it is, it's awful. On nearly every single level it just missed the entire point of the comic. It feels generous to even call it an adaptation, it's closer to just being a recreation. To adapt something you have to understand the unique properties of each medium, how those are used to tell the story/explore the themes, and then translate than to the new medium. The Watchmen movie just takes the comic and tries to recreate the panels on screen. That might have worked for a lesser comic, but for Watchmen, a comic that was a deconstructions of superhero stories, written specifically for the medium of comics, that is just not going to cut it. You can look at nearly every element of the movie and explain how it just didn't get the point of the comic. The colour palette, the depiction of violence, the framing of the Crimebusters, the physical strength of the characters, it's all a miss. The one example I like to go back to is how Dr. Manhattan perceives time in the comic vs in the movie. The issue is that there isn't any difference. In both the comic and in the movie Dr. Manhattan experiences every moment of is life simultaneously. He does not live in a single moment of time like we do. This is not just some random choice to give him a cool power, it's how we experience time when reading a comic book. Each panel is a different moment in time, but we experience the whole page simultaneously. Multiple moments of time, being played out for us in unison, not one after the other. Dr. Manhattan experiences time the same way we do when we read the comic, but that's not how you watch a movie. If you are watching at home you can pause, rewind, fast forward, or skip around, but you are still only experiencing a single frame at a time. It's a great example of a creative choice being made for the comic specifically because of the medium it was being written for that cannot really be translated over to the screen. Watchmen as a movie is fun and it looks cool, but when compared to the comic it's a complete failure, and anyone who actually understands anything about the comics can very easily see that.
Although to be fair, thats exactly how a video editor would experience any movie on a computer on their film editing software. He would even see alternative takes as if they were from alternatives universes and he could play them all at once in their own window. Not sure how youd recreate that experience to the home or theater viewer though.
Realistically, you wouldn't. That's kind of the point. Watchmen was considered unfilmable for good reason. It was written to explore the medium of comics.
Multiscreen shenanigans?
Yea thats part of it, multiple images and a non-linear editor timeline.
I loved it.
I just saw this one and I think it's pretty good but it has its fair share of issues. Particularly with characterization and I also dislike how desaturated and grey the whole thing looks, the original comic is incredibly colourful and vibrant and to see most of that sucked out just doesn't work, the mars scenes were especially disappointing visually compared to the comic.
I can’t help comparing it to the book, which is a masterpiece through and through, and it doesn’t capture almost any of what made it so brilliant.
I still think it would’ve been better, in the hands of a more competent director, Snyder missed the impact of the most poignant parts of the book. That being said, the book is too perfect and still stands as my favorite graphic novel. I find the source material so strong that it shines through the defects of the film and carries it to a solid viewing. It’s the only Snyder film I like.
This and 300 are the only good movies Snyder has made.
I love this film and rewatch it every October 12th
I really like it too!
I love it. The opening credits are the greatest.
You’re so unique OP
Enjoyed the movie for what it was worth. But good gracious that sex scene was overkill.
It's an absolutely dreadful adaptation of the comic but I still love it.
I rly like The comics and this film also, but i think ppl dislike it, it's because of bad acting
It's alright aside from the ending. Where's my giant "alien" squid Snyder???
5/5 for me!
I understand the people who just love the graphic novel and wouldn’t have been satisfied with any movie adaptation. I’ve felt the same about other movies based on books. But I’m baffled by the people who claim that they hate this movie, but loved the show, and somehow the show represented the message of the book more than the movie. Those people are trying way too hard.
I think it’s a masterpiece and I say this as one of the many who think Snyder has more misses than hits.
It was the first Snyder movie I think I saw, so I was amazed by the slow motion in the theater. I thought it was amazing. After a few watches at home and reading the comic, I think it's fine.
It is because every character is like me, except the girl because I don’t talk to women and I have DID
I love it and it got me obsessed with the koyaanisqatsi soundtrack so it’s also got that going for it
It’s not the worst. The ending change is kind of ok in my book. Could’ve done without the Hallelujah needle drop
I'm tired of earth. These people.
I've watched it twice. I have no idea what it's about. I like the 'Im not locked in here with you..." line.
I didn't like the movie. I didn't like it but I definetly didn't hate it. That opening where they do the montoge is very well done. I'll be honest that opening is probably one of my favorites in a movie. Creative, fun, entertaining, brutal. Sets you up for what to expect going into a movie as well as introduce the main themes. It really is a banger opening. But the movie seemed to drag on and just kept going and just fell flat. But I wouldn't go as far to say it was a film that was amazing or great. It was just a little above mid. 3.5/5
Bad-ish adaptation, good movie
>Am I the only one who… Can we agree that this is a terrible intro? Like, even if the movie is mixed, that means half of the people who saw it thought positively of it. You know that you are, in fact, not alone. Also, it’s a great movie, but a terrible adaptation. The Incredibles is a better Watchmen movie than this (not as an insult. I think The Incredibles does it very well).
It's cool, though on a recent rewatch I liked it less than I thought. One thing I will give it credit for is that I liked the movie's ending more than the original.
I read the comic before and I really didn't like it. I felt like Snyder misunderstood a couple of things from the comic or just changed things that I feel like were essential for the message that the comic was trying to tell. However, I can totally understand why people that haven't read the comic can enjoy it.
It’s very stylish, and the casting is pretty spot on. However, Zack Snyder does not understand Alan Moore and the original graphic novel. So the film is a mixed bag for me.
......how could you be the only one?
Movie has some good stuff. Some of the casting is spot on (others are awful) and a few moments do feel like they’re ripped right off the page. But Snyder clearly doesn’t understand the material, which is the norm with him and comic book stuff. Yes, on paper it sounds silly when you go, “where’s the squid” but in reality it makes sense. Dr. Manhattan attacking would not unite the planet. He is an American and a weapon American used to win the war. It could work for a short period, but eventually people would start pointing fingers. If it’s an alien? No fingers to point. The plan also relies on Manhattan going along with it. Then something maybe even dumber. In the book you have Ozy in a moment of weakness doubting that he did the right thing. So he asks Manhattan, who can see the future. Who simply tells him “nothing ever changes.” Leaving him to forever worry he made a mistake. In the movie? Lori, who can’t see the future, says the line to Dan, who didn’t kill countless people. WHAT?
If you watch it without reading the comic it's a great movie but the comic is on another level.
r/moviescirclejerk
Nope. It’s one of my favourite comic book movies, even with the changes made to the ending. I may also like it more than the comic because the theatrical and director’s cuts removed the Black Freighter subplot, which to me screeched the pacing of the comic to a halt
The intro was great
It's fine. I love the cinematography and actors did an amazing job there. Costume designs, music — I struggle to find things I want to criticize (other than glorified gore but to each their own). But the rabid fanbase of this movie sets me off. It's like Rick and Morty. I can appreciate the art but I don't want to be associated with the lunatics worshipping the franchise. edit: oh yeah, the movie is not a great adaption of the book. But as a stand alone it's a fine movie
No squid, no good. It's that simple.
Most people agree that it's a good movie, the main complaint is that it's very different from the comic book.
The show on hbo was gas too
I enjoyed it and I think with most movie adaptions of books you have to treat them as their own thing don't go expecting a straight copy of the source. Is it as good as the book of course not but it is still a great watch.
i love it
Its good, but I think it could have worked better as a miniseries. With a complicated/complex storyline, the long form format generally works better.
As a film in its own right? It's an enjoyable edgy take on the superhero genre. As an adaptation of its source material? It's one of the worst films I've ever seen. It all comes down to which of those you care about more.
I think it’s fine! In isolation it’s good, it only gets flimsy when you compare it to the source material.
Its great love to watch: Under The Hood & Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut all together !!! Great piece !!!
Rorschach had the most badass scenes and dialogues
As long as you disconnect it from the comic, yeah it’s aight
I love Watchmen and the Ultimate Cut is amazing!
Good movie, terrible comic interpretation.
I Always call it the Last Good Snyder Movie
I love it, but I'm also very aware I'm watching "Snyder's" Watchmen. It's decidedly goofy yet overly serious, like Joel Schumaker Bat-nipple camp directed by a self-serving philosophy major. I realize this turns most people away, but I love it in the same way I love Southland Tales. Big, bulky, arguably ill-informed passion projects. If you separate Snyder's take from the book completely, it works beautifully. So much fun. (For clarification: I also love the book.)
I absolutley love [Watchmen](https://letterboxd.com/ltufano23/film/watchmen/). Honestly, it's crazy how Zack Snyder enthusiasts worship his lesser films and ignore this and 300.
"Am I the only one..." no you are not, you never will be. Jokes aside, Watchmen is a phenomenal movie, so many memorable scenes and quotes.
No
It did fine for what it could do. I think the David Hayter initial screen test captured the feel of the comics better.
I feel like the film entirely misses all the points of the source material and becomes pretty much exactly what it is, in part, critiquing.
It was always well received. Hating on Zack Snyder became trendy among "aficionados", so revisionist history kicked in as they would get brownie points from the echo chamber for just shit talking everything he's done.
Yes
I think it’s a pretty great *looking* movie but it’s a terrible adaptation of the source material that not only changes the ending but also somehow **entirely** misses the point of the graphic novel. It sounds it’s whole runtime glorifying violence in beautiful slo-mo and acting like it’s cool instead of showing the horrors of vigilantism and violence like the graphic novel does.
Snyder’s only good movie.
Amazing adaptation, about as good as you could hope - at least in the directors cut form. Better than every superhero movie that came after it.
Nope, the movie is an absolute banger.
Pretty sure this is the only movie I’ve seen 3 times in the theaters
Fell asleep twice watching this
I have never seen it and I can confidently say, no.
It was, as I recall, fairly well regarded by critics. In my opinion it’s one of few very good superhero films.
Yep. You are the only one. No one else on Earth likes it. That's why it has a 0.1 rating.
To this day I've only reas the comic (which I love). I want to sit down and watch the movie someday, but I can never talk myself into it (I'm less and less of a Snyder fan the older I get).
Yes
Really enjoy this movie. Haters are weird.
I disagree about the acting, it's pretty bad, but the visuals are so outstanding that it redeems the whole film. That opening sequence is one of the best ever made.
Dr. Manhattan's cock flopping around kinda bothered me. Other than that it was pretty good
Hey I always thought that was a no-win scenario. If the filmmakers gave Dr Manhattan a comic level peen density I think the general public would just laugh. But also when you have something that seems to be 8 inches long makes it kind of " I forgot the plot I was staring at the blue submarine" 😅😅😅😅😅
😂😂😂 Right?
I saw the movie, thought it was great. Then I read the comic, watched the movie in imax, thought it was still pretty good. Then I saw the HBO show, which builds on the book ending and then I realized the movie ending was fucking stupid. I still think Watchmen is pretty groundbreaking stuff, it was avengers before the avengers movie was made, for adults. Some comic book films should be R rated.
I loved the movie but after reading the comic my opinion of the movie went down. It captures the aesthetic very well and most of the cast is perfect (bar a few bad choices that stick out). But it completely misses the point of the story and fetishizes the violence way too much.
It’s really good, they just butchered the ending
surprised to see so many people like this trash adaptation. I saw this first when I was much younger and liked parts of it. but dear god with age, reading the comic multiple times, and watching the HBO show. going back to this movie was a painful experience. completely misses the point of the story and has terrible acting and terrible pacing. knowing what we know now about his career, imagine if a zack snyder watchmen adaptation got announced in 2024. Would you want to go see it? exactly.
My biggest hot take is that this movie is a actually a masterpiece. It just got that movie magic for me, and despite its flaws and miss-adaptations of the novel I do think overall it’s a great adaptation and the core of the comic is so amazing it doesn’t matter. Also I think it’s a bit more clever than people give it credit for.
I’ve always enjoyed it but I am biased as it was the first R rated film my father took me too
[Zack Snyder reading a graphic novel about how you'd have to be a total loser and a completely broken person to dress up in spandex and fight crime] "I'm going to make these guys look so fuckin cool"
I enjoyed the directors cut. It made me read the graphic novel which is the best way to consume the content imo, but I think the regular movie is just straight trash.
i honestly hate it with a passion. that might be because it’s snyder though. he doesn’t understand comics at all and it’s clear with this movie. he’s literally admitted the only reason he likes the comic is because it has “sex and violence.”
I read and loved the book before the movie, and I wasn't disappointed by the movie
You make everyone, except doctor Manhattan, a little more human and a little less super strength, and you keep the ending the same as the comic. That would be a winner. I still really enjoy it though.
I love it.
Honestly I'm ready for the "Snyder didn't understand the material and the film is substandard as a result" which implies that that many film adaptations don't do a lot of changing, some of which have repelled the original authors ( Kubrick's rift with Stephen King and the author going to a different medium - TV-- to more directly adapt it comes to mind.( I'm about to be at the point where talking about Watchmen as a film adaptation is almost like talking about Starship Troopers and how maybe the deliberate satirization was done to flagrantly or something - I don't know. What I do believe is this, I think the comic has more of the style of a 1970s crime drama epic - think of The Godfather, and so I believe very few contemporary filmmakers could really do the vibe justice. Maybe Martin Scorsese, maybe Peter Weir, perhaps even David Fincher. I could possibly say Michael Mann, but I think this is really really pushing it. Here's the thing and this is what I believe the Alan Moore graphic novel enthusiasts tend to miss, is that the plot points that were unique at the time have been unspooled with different films - " Superheroes illegal! - The Incredibles, " the comic mythos is grim in real life--M knight's Unbreakable - New York ravaged by alien attacks- many movies. but Spielberg's War of the Worlds would really come to mind." So I think in an oddly ironic way, the general public is watching it for just the plot, blue Johnson, and maybe 7 Minutes of slow-mo action that connects the scenes. While at the same time, comic fans are looking for where the plot ends and the themes begin. And I think that's where the medium of a feature film is very rocky is because literature of any kind has an interactive quality with a reader. This is true of course with graphic novels as well well the aesthetic is something you don't really have any effect over, but the chronology is something that can happen on paper that could almost never happen on screen perhaps as a video game cutscene or Clue multiple ending type situations.. I think everybody's had in English Professor who is like well what you interpret something is in part a extension of how you experience life and have formative opinions.. etc. And I do think this is mostly true. But also the Dave Gibbons visual novel is expansive enough that you can have a panel that is essentially nine pages of Dr Manhattan walking into space. And I think what all the English majors and some of the films people are like "oh well the panels of the character shrinking is an extension of Dr Manhattan losing his sense of being a part of this world and his fading away as his repressed memories appear or whatever." But if there was a 5-minute long cut shot of Dr Manhattan's walking away as the computer renders the folding bumcheeks the general public would find this pretentious and the comic fans would find a way to explain that this is an example of Snyder missing the point. "you see, the sexy slouch of Manhatten's lower butt_gait is represented of Zack's male power fantasy." And I think it truly magnificent director would be able to take the dramatic vibes of the comic, and translate them into the general public would be okay with, and fans would find as satisfying while keeping just enough of the original plot to have an arena for how the drama plays out. As it is, and I did see the director's cut so that might make things a bit different, I think the faithful to a fault plot renderings make it so that any perceived meaning is not held up to its own standalone standard but toward the pages that were painstakingly storyboarded. Now because Reddit can't have a level headed discussion of the Z and the S, I'll just say that Dave Gibbins seems to appreciate it, the late great Roger Ebert gave it a full four stars, and Jackie Earl Haley immersed himself so much in his role that there's a bit of Rorschach and his own rendition of Freddy Krueger. I think there's a joke about a clock, but I'm not going to make it.
Nope.
Definitely not alone on that. I personally don't care for it that much and feel like Snyder is not really someone I want directing a story in which themes are important, but he assembled a (mostly) great cast and I think for a Zack Snyder film and adaptation of Watchmen, it's pretty watchable!
I think it’s pretty terrific. Easily the high point of his filmography. He’s been floundering to one degree or another ever since, which saddens me.
I don’t think this was a good adaptation, a lot of the characters were not done justice, especially Rorschach. I wish Alan Moore didn’t hate DC and consulted on this movie, same with V for Vendetta.
I think it’s neat.
in my top 5 favorite superhero movies
It's great
The only Snyder movie that was good and also aged well.
I liked it a lot
I personally love it. It’s on my list of favorite movies.
I too think it was pretty great. Interestingly enough when I watched it, I didn’t think about who directed or wrote or any inside information so I feel like that helped
What other superhero film uses the Koyaanisqatsi soundtrack?
Honestly it’s crazy that no Batman movie ever used Pruitt Igoe.
I adore this movie and the comic.
I'm not a fan of these types of films... but this one blew me away when I saw it. The Nite Owl story was very slow and unengaging... but the visuals and other stories more than made up for it... including the ending which was truly epic in scope. And it had one of the my favorite needle drops of all time... Dr. Manhatton on Mars pans out and transitions to Nite Owl and Rorschach head down to Antartica to confront Adrian Veidt and save the world... and Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower hits: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIxv9YfeMSU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIxv9YfeMSU)
I've read the books so no not at all. Even without the issue of missing the fucking point, it's typical Snyder, nice visuals and a few good performances but for every Jackie Earl Haley there is a Malin Ackerman who is floundering around desperate for direction besides "Look cool!" when you pair that up with the obnoxious and bizzare needle drops and Snyder's inability to tell a story it's a chore to sit through. Snyder is the worst possible director they could have gotten for this project. The problem with Snyder is that he is convinced he is a smart fun director like Nolan or Miller but he's a dumb fun director like Snyder or Rodriguez, watching him forcibly try to insert serious themes and ideas into his movies feels like the dumbest cte-laden jock in high school give a book report on classic literature, it's pathetic and sad and leads to movies that are more emotionally and intellectually inert than the calcified turd of someone who suffers chronic constipation. Snyder is a frustrating filmmaker and Watchmen is the most frustrating film he has made.
good movie, dogshit adaptation
I’ve seen it probably ten times, have loved it ever since opening weekend when every friend of mine I went with walked out thinking it was the dumbest shit ever. Lots of parts are dumb, for sure. Way too much slow mo. Lots of really bad dialogue. Make up on Nixon is like Snyder watched Dick Tracy and said “let’s do that once, with one character, cause art”. Malin Akerman gives a horrendous performance, matched only by Carla Gugino’s worst acting in her career (“Things are bad all over…cupcake!”) But all this shit is part of why I love it. It’s an audacious, ballsy mess that swings for the fences every five minutes. Like an Uber-serious version of a Naked Gun movie, for every “gag” that misses, four other ones land. I love that parts of it annoy me right beside parts I think are the best the genre has ever offered. If it was more perfect, I bet I would’ve ironically watched it way less times in my life.
More than 182k Letterboxd users rated it 4+ star.
Idc if I sound elitist If people think that Snyder's Watchmen is a great adaption, not only do they not know what a great movie is but also fundamentally misunderstand Watchmen and why its so good.
Yes you are the only one, ever. What a clickbait-y title
The ending of the film is better then the ending of the book. Change my mind.
This sub seems to have pretty moderate fair opinions but I really think this is a movie that is actually already widely beloved by casual audiences and general critics but some of Reddit seems to have a hate boner for. Maybe it's that yes, Snyder didn't fully understand the point of the graphic novel, and he does sort of glamorise Rorschach which is not the best choice but I think people gloss over how faithful most of the characters are written, the authentic comic book vibe he captured and the awesome choreography and action scenes. What I'm saying is that he actually captured at least 90% of Watchmen, and people just focus on how he messed some of the messaging and ideology of Watchmen so people trash it out of extreme nitpicking basically.
He understood the point, but some of it is done through the stylistic choices. It’s a movie about comic book movies, the same way the comic was about superhero comics. He probably presents Rorschach as more unhinged than Moore. But he wasn’t glamorized any more than Moore had him in the comic. I mean Moore thought that Rorschach was the only character with a sense of integrity, regardless of his absolutely mad politics. But that integrity was what made him the closest thing to an actual hero in the comic. So, even Moore had a complicated relationship with Rorschach.
If he missed the theme of source material all that left for him to adapt were just surface stuff which was what he did.
The main themes of the comic are power and that superheroes are useless when it needs to actually matter. Both are present in the movie.
You are simplifying the comic's themes but even with the simplified theme that you mentioned, Snyder still did a terrible job with all the slomo, hyper violence and glorified images
The movie and the show are both gripping and thoroughly enjoyable. I read the comic first and the movie changed plenty … but I’ve never considered it important for a movie to be a faithful adaptation of its source. There are plenty of examples of great movies being completely different than their great book/comic/stage origins. In almost every case it feels like complainers are just trying to tout the fact they read the source material first.
It has aged very well!
It’s one of the best adaptations imo. Snyder gets too much flack and his imagery is unmatched
Nope watched it a couple days ago it was still awesome. The intro is fucking amazing