Why are so few of us left active, healthy and without personality disorders?
Back in March, when I saw Watchmen in theaters, I wrote that I was looking forward to Zack Snyder's director's cut so I could see everything that had been left out to keep the running time down. Well, now I've seen the longer cut and I have to say the film plays a whole lot better with the extra 24 minutes added back in, especially since a lot of the restored scenes involve Hollis Mason, a.k.a. the first Nite Owl. Some may carp about the extension of an already-long film (according to Entertainment Weekly's reviewer, it feels "like a slog"), but the world of Watchmen is so rich and densely-layered that it completely justifies the extra time spent on it.
That said, this "Director's Cut" is still not quite complete since it lacks the Tales of the Black Freighter material, which will be incorporated into an "Ultimate Collector's Edition" that's being released as a five-disc set in December, but if you ask me that's just plain overkill. I don't want to get the Watchmen Motion Comic (which is included in the package) and I don't particularly feel the need to listen to Snyder blather over top of the film (even if he is joined by original artist Dave Gibbons), so between this release and the Black Freighter/Under the Hood DVD that preceded it, I'll be more than satisfied.