Watching Watchmen

As a recovering comic book geek I relapsed last summer and bought and read Watchmen. It was such a good book that I only took a break once to sleep. Normally I would have been someone to go see the movie within the first couple days of release but alas, I had just moved and started a new job so this weekend would have to do.

To start off I must commend whoever did the casting for this movie was absolutely brilliant. Almost every single character was spot on in looks and what I had imagined their voices to be. The movie is extremely gruesome at times and has recurring scenes of nudity and sex so this definitely lived up to the R rating it had been given (which is awesome if you ask me). As it was in the book Rorschach is the most haunting of characters that you will ever root for. He makes the Dark Knight seem not quite so dark.

Without giving away too much of the plot here is what goes down. At the start of the movie Edward Blake, AKA The Comedian is killed by a shadowed man who is extremely fast. This pushes Rorschach to start investigating, believing that someone is out killing masks. In the process we meet Nite Owl (former and present, or should I say former and not quite as former), Silk Spectre, Ozymandias, The Comedian (flashbacks, since he dies in the first couple minutes of the film), and Dr Manhattan. Dr. Manhattan is a godlike character who gained his powers in a scientific accident and now can bend matter into basically whatever he wants. Along with Ozymandias he is working on a project that will make energy infinite and will end all wars. The storylines eventually all intertwine into an ending that really is not a prototypical Hollywood ending (really glad it stayed true to the book).

Although the movie is quite long I would recommend this to anyone who wants to watch a "smart" superhero movie. In addition I think that the book is a must read and is definitely something I will keep in my library for quite some time.