Who Watches the Watchmen?

By now I'm guessing that many of you will have been off to the movies to see the much anticipated film adaptation of Alan Moore's 1986 graphic novel, Watchmen.

I've been a fan of the GN since its first release. I actually used to bug the crew at Fat Jack's in Philadelphia for every issue as it was being released, along with Dark Knight Returns at about the same time. Strangely enough, both of those stories helped me along the path to moving past comics to other pastimes. But I mean that in a good way.

On to the movie. I'll try to do this without spoiling anything for those who haven't been yet. First comment on the film; I loved every minute of it. Mrs. Druid took me out on a date to see it, which made it all that much better for me. She was completely unfamiliar with the story and she loved every minute of it. There wasn't a sour note in it for me. The actors were all well chosen for the roles, and the dialogue was so close that I was recalling it from the book almost word for word as I remembered it. The film scenes were framed right out of the book. Neither of these made for a stilted piece, but retained the flow of the story, which is one of the things that I always liked about Moore's writing in the first place.

The title sequence did a fair job of setting the backstory of the 'golden age' heroes of Watchmen, which was good because the film really hit the ground running. As a former reader of the novel, I had no trouble with the pace of the movie, but I can see where someone not familiar with it might have a bit of trouble getting up to speed with the story right away.

I was aware for some time that the Black Freighter sub-theme would almost certainly have to be dropped in order to make a sellable product, so I wasn't upset about its absence from the theatrical release. I would like for someone to do an epic, 6-hour home kit-bash version of the final extended version of Watchmen and the Black Freighter DVD release at some point, but I'm a bit of a pirate that way my ownself...

I was curious at the change in Rorschach's dealing with the kidnapper. It certainly was graphic (I work in ER's and ICU's, but it caught me off guard just enough to make me squidge), but the original version would have been no less so. Curious, like I said, but not any strike against the screenplay.

The most major change from the novel concerned the culmination of the story, but reflecting on it during the drive home, I decided that it actually made for more internal logic with the rest of the story over the original version.

Random end notes, um, the costumes were great and the fight scenes radiated physical danger. The movie, like the novel, was accentuated by well-chosen pop tunes to undersore themes within the story. I would have liked a stronger suggestion of one of the main themes of the novel, to wit: people who dress up in costumes and wait around in dark alleys in order to beat people up have issues, to say the least. That said, I have no issues with the movie at all. Hop-flop-squawk, it's a keeper.