Watchmen

Having read the book, I was expecting a long, pretentious, slow-moving storyline, and I was pleasantly surprised that the movie managed to avoid two of the three. Clocking in at almost 3 hours, Watchmen is anything but short, especially when one drinks a whole soda and has to pee for the second half of it. But I thought the movie managed to move faster, and be more interesting, than the book was. I don't know if it was the Black Freighter sections in the book that made the whole thing drag, or if it was the weird monster plot of the end, or if I just didn't like the art, but I walked away from the book kind of meh about the whole thing. The amount of hype that the book had going into it also didn't help. Nothing is that super fantastic coolness remarkable, especially if you hear from a hundred different places that it is that super fantastic coolness remarkable. Maybe I read it too long after the anti-super-hero had already become commonplace, who knows.

But overall I really enjoyed the movie. The action scenes were great (although the first one I found to be annoying as it more than a little indicated who the killer was. It was awesome, but kind of erased any doubt). The rest of the film moved along pretty well. I liked that they changed the ending, because I found the ending in the book to be kind of odd. I also liked how close to the book the movie was. Which sounds like a contradiction since I just said how much I disliked the book, but I like when movies are more literal interpretations of books, but with wiggle room for a widespread, public audience (this is why I hated Harry Potter 3 and 5). I found Dr.Manhattan to be less annoying in the movie, also. He never seemed so aloof to me in the book as belligerent, but Billy Cudrup did a great job of showing ever facial tic. I also liked Rorschach a lot more in the movie than the book. All in all the characters seemed much better developed, probably because the development of the story requires a degree of emotion that Moore's words did not capture for me. So in the end, I enjoyed the movie. It's probably the best movie I've seen this year (although Slumdog and Milk were both excellent. Sidenote: I hated the Wrestler).

Trailer Round-up: Seth Rogan as a mall cop? No thank you. Terminator? I'll see it, but not opening weekend. Star Trek? I don't want to like it, but I'll be there opening weekend. Wolverine? Same story as Star Trek.