I wish I could say it was brilliant but it wasn't. I wish I could say Watchmen sucked, but it didn't. It was just meh.
The best thing I can say about it is that it will probably make a gazillion dollars.
It's not The Dark Knight.
It's not 300.
It is better than V for Vendetta.
And as the bard would say, therein lies the rub.
The real problem is the nature of storytelling. Zack Snyder may have given the world 300 (the movie) but the narrative was classic Frank Miller. His vision is very clear cut and his narratives always hammer away at the concept from all angles.
Alan Moore 's genius lies in telling a story through a series of meandering relativistic vignettes, the equivalent of tugging on a loose thread to unravel a sweater, then choosing another thread to continue the unraveling. It is brilliant in print but I have yet to see anyone successfully translate this style onto the big screen.
There is a subtle difference between non-linear multi-thread narrative and an episodic narrative. In the case of Watchmen, the short but constant deviations from the central story – ah hell, I couldn't really hang on to a central story long enough to care. The whole concept might have worked better as a mini-series.
While Dan Dreiberg banging Laurie Jupiter in Archie may go down as the best Super Hero soft porn yet, I really didn't need to see that Dr. Manhattan was circumcised.
(did I miss Alan Moore's name? Or did he not get credit?)
