I saw the movie Watchmen yesterday evening and I have to admit that I expected a whole lot more. While it wasn't the worst movie I had ever seen, it was pretty close.



The Good:
The opening scene was great and left me wanting more. It started off with a great fight scene between "The Comedian" and an unknown attacker. The fight had a Matrix like aspect to it which is quickly bordering on being heavily overused in the action genre but it was done pretty well in this opening scene.

There were a few more fight sequences in the movie that lived up to what the opening scene laid down. They had another Matrix like scene where the "Silk Sceptre II" and the "Nite Owl II" fought off bunch of rioting prison inmates. It pretty much looked like a clone of a fight scene Neo and Trinity just without all the guns.

The special effects were pretty good but it's not anything new. I've seen plenty of movies with similar special effects and based only on special effects, the movies don't hold water. If you make a movie and expect the special effects to carry it, you're in for a big surprise. Movies like that end up being shown on Cinemax late at night.

Rorschach was by far the best character in the movie. I wish they would have spent more time on his character. Actually, I think if they made the movie entirely about Rorschach, it was would have been 100 times better.

The Bad:
The plot was really weak. The whole premise of the movie (without spoiling the ending) is that the retired Watchmen are being hunted down and executed. Rorschach, who is easily the best character in the movie, is investigating it. If it weren't for Rorschach, this movie would have been awful. There is one aspect of the plot that I found confusing and unnecessary. Somehow, this all takes place in an alternate history. It's 1985 and the Cold War is at it's peak. Instead of Reagan and Gorbachev working for peace, Richard Nixon is president of the United States after being elected to his 5th term and the U.S. had won the Vietnam war thanks to the help of the Watchmen.

The characters were really bad. I had heard that this movie was based off of a comic book. I have seen many movies that were based off comic books and many of them have been great (Dark Knight, X-Men, Spider-Man, Incredible Hulk, etc.) but this one was crap. I didn't know too much about the comic book before seeing the movie. I had only vaguely heard of the Watchmen. Maybe if I had I wouldn't have thought the characters were so weak. They almost all had really stupid names. Nite Owl, Silk Sceptre, Dr. Manhattan, The Comedian. Only Rorschach had a cool name. To go along with their cheesy names, they had cheesy super hero outfits. They flew around in a cheesy airship. It's as if they took all the really bad parts from every comic book movie and rolled them all into one.

There are 2 characters that really bothered me. The first is Ozymandias. He is supposedly the smartest man in the world and of course with superior intelligence comes extreme wealth and a British accent. I guess people think that British people sound smart. I just think they sound snobby. The dude looks like a totally fruit if you ask me. But wait it gets worse! Dr. Manhattan is a physicist who by some accident gets turned into a creature with God like powers who just happens to be glowing blue and totally naked throughout the movie. At least this was animated nudity but did they really have to have his wedding vegetables in plain sight for everyone to see? Couldn't they have made him look more like a Ken doll? Seriously, a little censorship in this case wouldn't have been such a bad idea. In the process of becoming a God, he seems to lose all emotion and sense of morality.

The love sex scene between Silk Sceptre and Nite Owl was way too drawn out. It was not tasteful at all and bordered on being pornographic. Sex doesn't really need to be shown in movies. It can very easily be implied by simply showing the couple kissing and then fading into the next scene or showing them in the after-glow smoking a cigarette or something. Instead, in this movie, they had to show them going at it for a few minutes. They go into different positions and they show a close up of their faces and they expression they make as they "peak".

In my opinion, there was a lot more bad than good in this movie and because of that, I have to give this movie a don't bother kind of recommendation. Maybe when it comes out on video and there is nothing else in the video store to rent, then I might recommend giving it a try but spending $10 $11 $11.50 on it is a joke. You're better off using that money to wipe your butt. You'll get more enjoyment out of it. As for me, I won't be able to get those 2 hours and 43 minutes of my life back.