The Times They Are A-Changin'

Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row"

Watchmen was much better the second time around on a screen bigger than my house when I wasn't pressed up against the front of the theater, needing to basically lay down in my seat to actually see. (Damn New Paltz Cinemas!)

After watching it the first time I was kind of mystified by it. I mean, they did it. Filmed the unfilmable and all that jazz. Couple of problems though.

1. The soundtrack was too loud and no one should have sex to Leonard Cohen. That man's gravely voice will have you losing wood faster than Rue McClanahan naked on a freezing winter day.

2. Malin Akerman is the worst actress ever. She ruined just about every scene she was in.

3. The resolution of the movie took too long. After the plot is revealed, it should've been Rorschach dies, Nite Owl gets mad and cut to the newspaper scene. cue credits and bad MCR cover of Dylan.

4. The Dr. Manhattan/ Silk Spectre scene on Mars was completely unsatisfying. (See #2)

5. I wish Ozymandias wasn't so villainous. And I wish Matthew Goode was a better actor.

Watching it the second time, I was distracted by less things like the gratuitous amounts of violence and blood and all the annoying slow motion. I think the movie is really as faithful an adaptation we'll ever see. Almost everything is covered. Hooded Justice and Captain Metropolis' homosexuality is alluded to. The Rorschach scenes are fantastic.

I was much more skeptical a few days after the first time around. The message of the material does change through this adaptation but I think that the book just takes the film's resolution ne step further. In the book, I like tot think that there is world peace for a split second before the Squid wipes everything out. The movie just never lets the world end.

Maybe it's too nicely packaged. But maybe that was the only way to do it.

Oh, and go watch those opening credits at least. They are easily my favorite part of the movie, Jackie Earle Haley not included.