Saw _Watchmen_.
Eh.
The sound may just have been a bit muddy on the print I saw, but there were far too many examples of excellent dialogue being lost behind the sound effects or music.
As for the movie itself, I think it suffered from having to cram the multiple threads of the comic into under three hours. So much was thrown away or crammed into split-seconds between everything else.
Any particular reason the director felt the movie needed the World Trade Center in the background every time there was a cityscape? Once would have gotten the point across that this is a pre-2001 time (as well as being an alternate universe).
As a result of attempting to stuff as much as possible into every minute, I think it lost a lot of its sharp edges. There just wasn't time for the hooks to sink in before the next thing came along.
I actually liked the change in the particulars (if not the overall structure) of Veidt's plan. It tied in more tightly with the rest of the narrative, which worked better onscreen. In the comic book, there could be whole pages devoted to noodling about the details of various subplots, but there just wasn't room for that in the film. It lost a skerrick of depth, but was more finished for it.
Not entirely sure why the details of Rorschach's flashback to his moment of awakening were changed. The original version could have been shown in the same amount of onscreen time. Maybe it was reinforcing that Rorschach was a hands-on type of guy.
Speaking of R, look closely at the patterns his mask makes from moment to moment. There are a lot of scene-specific thematic images which appear there. Blink and you'll miss them.
All in all, the movie was fairly visually and thematically faithful to the original work. It just lost a lot in its transition to the big screen, and a large part of that was from chronal compression - too much to tell, too short a time to tell it in: the result is a kind of visual narrative gabbling.
The sound may just have been a bit muddy on the print I saw, but there were far too many examples of excellent dialogue being lost behind the sound effects or music.
As for the movie itself, I think it suffered from having to cram the multiple threads of the comic into under three hours. So much was thrown away or crammed into split-seconds between everything else.
Any particular reason the director felt the movie needed the World Trade Center in the background every time there was a cityscape? Once would have gotten the point across that this is a pre-2001 time (as well as being an alternate universe).
As a result of attempting to stuff as much as possible into every minute, I think it lost a lot of its sharp edges. There just wasn't time for the hooks to sink in before the next thing came along.
I actually liked the change in the particulars (if not the overall structure) of Veidt's plan. It tied in more tightly with the rest of the narrative, which worked better onscreen. In the comic book, there could be whole pages devoted to noodling about the details of various subplots, but there just wasn't room for that in the film. It lost a skerrick of depth, but was more finished for it.
Not entirely sure why the details of Rorschach's flashback to his moment of awakening were changed. The original version could have been shown in the same amount of onscreen time. Maybe it was reinforcing that Rorschach was a hands-on type of guy.
Speaking of R, look closely at the patterns his mask makes from moment to moment. There are a lot of scene-specific thematic images which appear there. Blink and you'll miss them.
All in all, the movie was fairly visually and thematically faithful to the original work. It just lost a lot in its transition to the big screen, and a large part of that was from chronal compression - too much to tell, too short a time to tell it in: the result is a kind of visual narrative gabbling.