Watchmen reviewed by Mark Kermode

The eagerly-anticipated adaption of the cult graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons finally reaches the big screen under the direction of Zac Snyder. Mark reviews it for BBC Radio 5 live.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• alan
• moore
• watchmen
• dave
• gibbons
• movie
• review
• mark
• kermode
• bbc
• radio
• live
• 300
• film

[HillDueceua]

Terry GIlliam would've made this so much better!

[mmscott9]

Kermode is right, it lacked the depth of novel primarily because the underlying messages of the source material were either flippantly conveyed or quickly glossed over in favour of stylistic visuals. Snyders attempt was unfortunately a nearly 2hr 45min long action movie, superficial and without the tone of the novel

[DannyBoy777]

Great film, will stand the test of time and have the last laugh IMO.

[robotpanda77]

I've seen the comic and many of the shots are identical to the film such as the standing around the grave scene. If you didn't like the movie you didn't like the comic.

[spoonlamp]

@spoonlamp lol @ bog screen :)

[spoonlamp]

I enjoyed Watchmen but I'll admit that a lot of the enjoyment may have come from a geek-ish love of just seeing the comic on the bog screen. I also thought the change of ending worked, which surprised me, I thought I'd be all hatey-fanboi about it, but it works. It is hugely flawed though, not least because of Snyders love of the fights (why all slow-mo??) when the book was more about the consequences of the fights. Snyder tries to use slo-mo to 'Super' the heroes which goes against the writing.

[Lessdeth14]

It remains the most boring piece of cinema I have EVER seen.

[SuperZubz]

@joel1975 Agreed. Think it's the best part of the film.

[Transformers2themax]

@SuperZubz Actually, the Times They Are-A Changin' has used in plenty of films. It was most particularly used in all the '80s flicks about the '60s, a result of Oliver Stone's Platoon. Speaking of which, Stone's 1989 adaptation of Ron Kovic's Born On the Fourth of the July used the Bob Dylan song in question...I'm sorry, but the film's soundtrack was incredibly unoriginal. If curious about my feelings on this, read my multi-comment review above.

[Transformers2themax]

Therefore, I declare the film Watchmen to be a false attempt at remaking the success as well as the overall makeup itself of Sin City; it used the wrong aspect ratio for the type of cinematography being filmed, the feel was empty, and the soundtrack practically gypped those of us who actually know something about '60s/classic music...Rodriguez, Frank Miller, and Tarantino must have seen this movie and just moaned with disappointment. I didn't do exactly that, but I was very disappointed.

[Transformers2themax]

Really, what I think is that they had people of my age group in mind plus those who've read the comics and know nothing of classic music and just new that they could get away with this by the fact that it just takes place in the Cold War era. Forrest Gump used some used songs, but at least they did it right and they weren't too overplayed....

[Transformers2themax]

Also, there are far too many great Hendrix songs to just narrow it down to that one. To me, when I was watching this movie and I heard these certain songs playing on the soundtrack, I thought I was being made fun of. My intelligence as well as my personal knowledge of classic music was being mocked. It was like how the recent X-Men film used Green Onions by Booker T. and the M.G.s...Again, that's been used before!