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So I went to see Watchmen this weekend. I haven’t been expecting much from the movie and in that, at least, I was not disappointed. It just wasn’t good – I am completely and utterly over the whole “we can make this movie look frame for frame like the comic book”. It was cool the first time, maybe the second time and now it’s done. It’s like that first time you saw one of those photo realistic paintings and were like, ZOMG, that’s so cool! And then after a couple, you were like. Um. But maybe they could have just taken a photograph…

This CNN review captures a lot of what I think about Zack Snyder. For one’s career to be known for slavishly recreating comic books scenes in film, seems… well, whatever. In the end, while the movie had its moments, overall and sort of overwhelmingly for me at best it was just ok. On my scale of 0-10, I give it a 5.5. There’s probably a spoiler or three coming up, so you’re forewarned and therefor forearmed.

Let’s see… the good points. Well, Zack knows how to make a big battle look cool – I quite enjoyed the breaking into the jail scene. Standing on the shoulders of Gladiator and 300, he wields that slow mo button like a genius- it really was quite great.

The Owl mobile was cool, too.

Moving on to the not so good… the acting was mostly mediocre or maybe a little bad. Rorschach was very well cast and excellent – although, please Hollywood, please, can we stop with that stupid Batman voice? It’s completely distracting and who thinks that’s cool? If you knew someone who talked like that, you’d totally make fun of them behind their back. Also Nite Owl was quite good as well. Mostly everyone else with a reasonable role was not good.

Snyder adheres quite literally to the graphic novel and for that, as a Watchmen reader, it was interesting at times to see things in motion. But film is a different medium than comics, things work differently so it is reasonable to adapt the story to fit the medium. Look at the X-Men movies as an example – they change the canon extensively (Rogue instead of Kitty Pryde??) yet the first two were amongst the best superhero movies ever.

Even when Zack goes off script, sometimes needlessly so, it is often to the detriment of the story. For instance, when the Comedian shoots the pregnant woman, in the comic she stands there defiant like she knew it was coming. In the movie, she whimpers – Snyder weakly attempting to tug at your strings.

Also, seeing Dr. Manhattan’s junk all the time? Nobody needed that, Zack. I hope that the impending financial flop that this movie is going to be on top of the Spirit’s dismal performance will put an end to this chapter of comic book movies. Did you see it? I know the nerdosphere seems conflicted about this movie, some liking it and others not so much – where do you fall on the this great divide?