This is an older review but its better late than never, and with the directors cut soon and me able to have time to sit and think about it more, I'll be able to give a better opinion soon.
-Watchmen:The Motion Picture-
Okay, okay. I know, Officialy the title is just Watchmen, but I feel the subtitle is necessary. You need it there to tell you that this is is an adaptation of a piece of amazing literature.
The movie is strong. very solid. It took me seeing it a second time several weeks later to make my opinion firm, but I REALLY liked this movie. It's hard to go into an adaptation without judging it against the original.
I couldn't the first time I watched. and other than some nit picky things that I'll get to in a second, it is a fairly faithful adaptation of the book. It gets the major emotional beats down, it gets the cool action moments and the big reveals.
The cool thing about Watchmen is that there is so much going on in every frame that a viewer can watch it several times and spot details across the board that are interesting. New viewers can go in, and come out with few questions regarding the film, such as Rorsharch's mask and some of the relationships, but in other obvious places they've structured the story after the book and for the most part it works. The changes to the ending were necessary, but the additions to characters we're not. For example they give one character at the end the strength to watch his best friend die and then punch the villain in the face. Not in the book and takes away his willingness to compromise. Another change is they made Rorsharch far more psychotic than he was in the book. But I'd say it was a fairly faithful adaptation and one that will be on the upper echelon of comic films. Its actually, much like The Dark Knight, a comic film that finds itself in the category of its genre, Drama/Action conspiracy, more than it is in the genre of SuperHero. And for this reason it is a component of our new age of film.
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