『 Watchmen ★ ウォッチメン 』

Three, six, nine. There's only a few short months left until Watchmen movie opens. Ever since I found out that there is going to be a movie, I was strongly against it. After all, every film has to compromise and cut out original content to make the movie fit between studio guidelines. My opinion from the start was that Watchmen can't be squeezed into a three hour feature. Now I read that the studio made the silver screen version two and a half hours, omitting thirty minutes from Snyder's original cut.


Being a Watchmen fanboy that I consider myself to be, I can't help but worry that the movie will not only spoil the whole Watchmen experience, but will also create an army of teenagers who never heard about the graphic novel, but now know all about it and claim they have read it ages ago. Not that suck things keep me up at night, but it kind of bothers me to see such things happen and I'm not surprised that Alan Moore refused to work on both V for Vendetta and Zack Snyder's latest blasphemy of a movie.


Am I planning on watching it? Yes, I am. Will I go to the movies and get the DVD afterwards? I probably will. The main concern that I have is that this movie is just another money making machine. I already know that the story of the Black Freighter will be released on a separate DVD. Being a sideplot in the graphic novel, it was a bit of extra spice that Moore had cleverly put there to give the whole Watchmen experience even more depth. Now it's merely a DVD, sold separately. Oh well, at least they shot it, right?


Another concern of mine is the amount of violence that will be shown. Despite the "R" rating that the movie recieved, I know that moviemakers have the tendency of mellowing down the more violent bits. Violence is one of the main aspects of Watchmen and is there to illustrate something. Toning it down is like putting clothes on Demi Moore in Striptease.


Even though there are only two spoken lines in the movie trailer [which you can watch by clicking on the thumbnail below], already one of them is cut down to size. Compare the frame pictured above with the following quote: "The world will look up and shout 'save us', and I'll whisper 'no'" Still being a strong line, it's a mere shadow of Rorschach's original narrative. Can this movie be good or at least decent? We'll see in a couple of months.