By my count, this is the sixth time I have written this review. The previous five have been back-spaced, deleted, cursed at, or mind wiped by Zatana. I went to see the Thursday night midnight showing of Watchmen on IMAX. This being the first Hollywood movie that I’ve seen in IMAX, I have to say that this format is worth the extra price of admission. The sound alone is an incredible experience. However, if I had published what I was thinking when I left the theater at 3AM this would be a short review of, “It stinks!” My intention when seeing the film was to look at it in a fresh light and not compare it with the source material. I was going to let the film soar or crash on its own merits. This turned out to be harder than I imagined. You see, I’m not one of those fan boys screaming for the giant squid to be put back in the film before it was screened, but 20 minutes into the movie, I was becoming one of “those people”: the nit-picky fan boy that has a problem with everything.

So here is a list of the items I was nit-picky about:

1. The Soundtrack: The score to the movie is haunting and beautiful. The soundtrack is something I would expect from a John Hughes film. From “The Sound of Silence” at Edward Blake’s funeral to “I’m Your Boogie Man” when he’s kicking ass as the comedian, it all felt heavy handed and amateurish. Let’s not forget the muzak version of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” during a scene with Veidt.
2. The Night Owl and Silk Specter in The Superhero Who Shagged Me: I wasn’t expecting the soft core “scinemax” porn scene on the owl ship to go on quite as long as it did, but that’s not what I had a problem with. Instead, it’s the campy climax (pun intended) to the scene when the ship’s flame thrower goes off. I’m not opposed to Austin Powers type moments, it just didn’t fit for Watchmen. (Redacted. As many times as I’ve read the book, I just didn’t remember the flame thrower going off during the sex scene (Chapter VII, pg. 27). This just goes to show you that I was in the wrong mind set when watching the movie).
3. Sally Jupiter and Janey needed to be older. Instead of using makeup (which looked bad on IMAX) there is a wide range of Hollywood veterans and newcomers that could have been used. In particular, any scene with Sally and Laurie seemed more of an age difference of big sister and little sister instead of the unbelievable mother/daughter dynamic.

Like I said, these are very nit-picky points, but I’m sticking by #1 and #3.

Surprisingly, the rest of the film was quite good. All of the key scenes, from the death of Blake to Rorschach in prison are done with an amazing amount of attention to detail. The ending was perhaps the most discussed change to the movie prior to its release. The Internet rumors were rampant with scenarios from Rorschach lives to Veidt killing Dr. Manhattan and all of them winding up at Times Square in their costumes and everyone looking at them funny. The ending, which I will not spoil for you, is the best ending for the movie in keeping with the tone of the graphic novel. In fact, I think that the ending is downright brilliant. Since the ‘Tales of the Black Freighter’ and most mention of the missing scientists and artists was cut from the film, the film’s ending is great. In fact, original series artist Dave Gibbons drew four more pages to show director Zack Snyder how he would have envisioned it. Let’s hope we’ll get to see those pages in an expanded version of the graphic novel.

So, is it the same Watchmen? No. Is it a good Watchmen? Yes. I’m curious to hear what everyone else thought of the movie, so leave a comment and we can discuss further.