Monday 2 March 2009

Watchmen - at last a comic book movie for grown-ups!


If like me you've been to see most of the super-hero blockbusters movies with your kids and wanted a bit more, then Watchmen could be the film for you.  

Although the Spiderman, Xmen, Fantastic 4 and Batman films are hugely enjoyable, with the expected over the top CGI effects and tight costumes that you'd never be able to take a pee easily in, they always leave me feeling a bit short changed with it comes to seeing the baddies get their comeuppance!

Watchmen is directed by Zack Snyder who brought us the brilliant 300 and is based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore. It takes place in an alternate 1985 teetering on the brink of nuclear Armageddon. The film follows a group of former vigilantes as tensions heighten between the United States and the Soviet Union as an investigation of an apparent conspiracy against them uncovers something even more grandiose and sinister.

Watchmen may be the nastiest blockbuster ever devised! It’s action sequences are pornographically violent. Violence is the major theme of Moore’s book exploring the animalistic thrill of crushing one’s enemies. It luxuriates in snapping bones and literal explosions of gore. It's here that the gulf between comic and movie becomes most clear.

Watchmen is still going to be the ultimate tough sell: there will be those who view the film as a bewildering mishmash of underexplored themes, thinly sketched characters and noisy, excessive violence. They're probably right! any work of popular art which demands prior knowledge must be deemed a failure. And yet, there’s something admirable about the entire enterprise: its ungainly size, its unrelenting weirdness, its willful, challenging intensity. For long term fans however will Watchmen will be a hugely pleasurable experience.

I can't wait!!

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