cross-posted at skippy and a veritable cornucopia of other community blogs.

two words for the new film watchmen:

"f^cking brilliant."

the movie that could never be made has been brought to live in an amazing, thought-provoking, heart-pounding action/philosophical cultural pastiche by the deft hand of zack snyder.

purists will quibble about several sub-plots eliminated from the final script (the most glaring will be the lack of the black freighter comic book; personally, we sorely missed dr. manhattan’s back-back story, and how rorschach got his mask), but the spirit of moore & gibbons’ intent is alive and well in the film.

especially gibbbons…many shots are almost-perfect re-creations of the panels in the graphic novel. and as for alan moore, we can’t imagine what the hell else an author would want from a film adapation of his work…why he refused to have his name attached speaks more of a cranky old fart than an above-the-fray aesthetic.

(alan, we love ya, and certainly agree w/you on constantine, from hell and the league of extraordinary gentlemen…but give it up already! nobody likes a sourpuss!)

also of note: the ending, changed in specifics but not intent, works beautifully, perhaps even a touch more sensical in terms of dr. manhattan’s final motivation. but we know hitler disagrees.

addendum: upon reflection, we applaud snyder’s decision to eschew movie stars in favor of under-rated character actors. of course, the force and intensity of jackie earle haley as rorschach has been likened to ledger’s joker. but we also must point out jeffrey dean morgan, who readers may recognize as the ghost lover of katherine heigel in one of the stupider story arcs on gray’s anatomy (and believe us, that’s saying a lot!). morgan brings a gleeful immorality to the comedian that was only implied on the page.

and bravo to the use of carla gugino (of the late, great out of sight tv spin-off karen sisco) and matt "max headroom" frewer as sally jupiter and moloch, respectively. these are brilliant and reliable actors that bring solidity to their roles. [addendum w/in the addendum: whoops! how could we forget stephan mchattie as hollis mason, the original nite owl? fans of the jesse stone mysteries on tv know him as capt. healy. his character's story, alas, also was tragically truncated.]

being billy crudup fans, if only for the bad puns we can make about his last name, we would be remiss not to mention his amazing feat of being able to emote while completely naked and covered in blue cgi. he brings subtlety and nuance to the distant humanity of dr. manhattan. it’s one of his best performances ever.[end addendum]

two things that the medium of film added to the story which the medium of comics/printed page lacked sorely: real-time action and a wonderful soundtrack.

it can be easy to forget the "superhero" part of superhero on the printed page. but snyder’s signature sudden-slo-mo-for-a-second in the fight/action sequences only heightened the immediacy and brutality of the physicality.

and what great songs the movie brought to the table: works from dylan, hendrix, philip glass, nina simone, my chemical romance, leonard cohen, simon & garfunkle, nat king cole ("unforgetable" is played over the first violent murder); even tears for fears & kc and the sunshine band make an audible appearance. and the music only adds to the cultural references that ground us in this weird alternate reality.

is it the best comic book movie ever made? no, that would still be spiderman ii (sorry, dark knight…sure, heath ledger was great, but what was that crap about commuters having to blow up each other’s ferry all about?).

is it the best movie based on a graphic novel? w/o question.

tho we have read the book and were familiar w/everything, both left in and left out of the film, we believe it’s quite approachable for people who haven’t.

big thumbs up. go see it. now.

addendum upon reflection: let us be clear, this is not a perfect movie by any stretch of the imagination, and as anyone familiar w/the source material knows, watchmen really stretches the imagination.

the acting is not uniformly consistent. malin ackerman, in particular, is pretty much a wash as the young silk spectre, laurie jupiter (however, as she was not terrible, and pretty damn easy on the eyes in her latex superhero suit, we called it square and moved on).

and, as much as we lurv carla gugino, her make-up when she was old sally jupiter was pretty obviously hollywood old lady make-up. having just seen cate blanchette as an even older yet more believable (appearance-wise) old lady in benjamin button, we know hollywood is capable of tricking us. but gugino’s bad wrinkles tended to take us out of the moment as we watched.

matthew goode as veidt, ozymandius, also was nothing to write home about, but whether that was the actor’s or director’s or script’s doing, we cannot tell.

however, the worst thing to say about this film was that it seemed to not have a fire at its heart, a fire that most great comic book movies (spiderman ii, dark knight, iron man, ed norton’s hulk) have. not to say that it was clinical or technical…it just seemed, at 2 hours and 40 minutes, to not have an urgency that the end of the world should have. as walter chaw said in his film freak central review, it’s "a movie made by dr. manhattan; it should have been made by rorscharch."

make no mistake, tho, we loved the movie more than chaw, and its flaws could be attributable to any filmed adaption of a beloved novel: you ain’t going to get everything great about the book into the movie. and snyder does a better job than many who have gone before him (see: david lynch’s dune).

so, we repeat. go see watchmen. now.