Watchmen – Some Things You Should Know Going In
Call this somewhat of a movie review.
First off, you won’t find any spoilers here. This post will, however provide some general observations that people should probably know about before eagerly paying their $8.50 to sit through this 160 minute pseudo epic superhero flick.
1) First off, the excessive camera time that a certain character’s penis received was not only completely overdone and unnecessary, IT WAS COMPLETELY OVERDONE AND THOROUGHLY UNNECESSARY.
This cannot be overstated and I wanted to get that out of the way before I go any further.
The thing is, I can tolerate the occasional fraction of a second of male genitalia in a movie as long as a) it’s artistically displayed in a manner that is consistent with the flow of the film (see Fight Club); and b) it is outnumbered at least ten to one in the tits-to-cock onscreen ratio.
The element of male frontal nudity in this movie exceedingly fails to meet this criteria.
2) I’ve seen a fair number of superhero movies, and most of them are shallow cesspools of cartoonish violence featuring characters with vague or non-existent backstories and hurried plotlines. They’re almost always more action than substance. I now realize why this is, as Watchmen is the antithesis of this. Most movies are engineered to reach a certain demographic, and they do this by simplifying the details and limiting the graphic imagery to achieve a ‘PG-13′ rating.
Watchmen attempts to reach deeper into the audience intelligence pool by offering a darker, more chilling look at the human psyche. This obviously cannot be achieved without an ‘R’ rating.
Most ‘graphic novel’ (we’ll get to that interesting phrase in another post) adaptations lack the details that intelligent audiences tend to appreciate. I’ve finally grasped the fact that the reason for this is that intelligent audiences aren’t their target market!!! There’s a reason that the recent superhero movies as of late aren’t designed like this: it makes them boring as hell!! The first 60 minutes of Watchmen is populated with character development and backstories that would be fine and proper for a movie worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as classic films such as Braveheart or Gladiator. But, for a movie that’s little more than a pseudo intellectual commentary on human nature, I found it inanely boring and highly destructive to the film’s overall entertainment value.
3) This movie is really, really long. Much longer than The Dark Knight (OK actually only a couple of minutes longer, but it sure doesn’t seem that way when you’re sitting in a crowded theater being subjected to big blue penises every 10 minutes). It’s excessive length (the movie, not the penis) makes it a marathon of unnecessary extended character development and abnormally long, non-erotic sex scenes that wouldn’t cause a 12 year old to sport wood (even if they do expose a nipple here and there). While The Dark Knight was virtually non-stop action and excitement that made the two and a half hour movie fly by, Watchmen is often monotonous and at times seems to move along at a snail’s pace.
4) The plot was good. I wouldn’t call it great, but I wouldn’t call it formulaic either. The story’s ability to hold my interest significantly improved after the first hour or so. From there it definitely held court with my fairweather attention span and delivered an ending that was superb and finite – which is more than I can say for just about every superhero movie produced today.
5) In the end, in the overall scheme of themes, this movie is definitely worth watching. But will you be missing a whole helluva lot by waiting until it’s out on Blu-Ray? Definitely not.
