Joe Szilagyi

We got to see Watchmen tonight thanks to the magic of a pair of free passes. Right off, no spoilers.

It’s the most faithful comic book adaptation I’ve ever seen, and the best adaptation overall. It works as an adaptation, and most importantly it works as a film. There are some entire scenes and sequences that are recreated almost literally from the books–in gorgeous detail–and some that are tweaked just enough with judicious cuts and adjustments that they work perfectly for the film.

Are there flaws? Probably, but I didn’t see them, and I was dissecting the film as I watched it. I’ve read Watchmen end to end on a scale of dozens of times, and read the odd chapter or page more times in the past 20+ years than I can imagine; I’ve had a copy of the trade in the house non-stop since forever.

The casting is perfect. If I had to pick any nits, and this is how far I have to dig, it’s that in some shots and angles something felt ‘off’ about Sally’s old-age makeup (typically on some early shots of her straight ahead, right in her face) and especially that in a few close-ups of her hands, they didn’t look old enough–but they screw that detail up in every film with aged younger actors. The actor playing Rorschach was the best bit of the film, to me, overall; Andi thinks the famous end of the Mars conversation was the best–she cried there. All of the Doctor Manhattan CGI was fantastic. Yes, there was the odd shot where you would say, “Yarp, that’s CGI,” aside from the fact he’s blue, clearly made of energy rather than flesh, and is literally glowing bright blue.

I really don’t know what else to say. Is it the best film ever made? I don’t think it’s a Lawrence of Arabia. It’s head and shoulders better than The Dark Knight. Go see it.

I said to Andi on the bus on the way home, “This film, together with Dark Knight, and the crazy grosses of all the Spider-Man films completely validates this art form we’ve all been passionate about so long as a mainstream art form.” That is NOT to take anything from sequential art–comics–which stands on it’s own, but fuck: if this is the end result of a comic book, then anything is possible artistically. Watchmen is LITERALLY in vast stretches a comic book come to true life.

Frankly, I loved it.

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Wil Wheaton’s spoiler-free Watchmen review

Watchmen review (spoiler-free)

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