Watchmen Review

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Karan
updated
  • 4.5/5
Great Adaptation
[contains spoilers]

Imagine a story where super heroes are not always the good guys, and where they could be just as vicious and cruel as many of the villains they fight. This story would be very similar to the film Watchmen. Watchmen is a film that deviates from the average super hero story by making its heroes more human and much darker than the average super heroes. Actually, Watchmen seemed to be more of a murder mystery than a super hero movie to me. The murder mystery aspect of the movie makes it extremely interesting to watch and view.

Watchmen starts off when a "hero" by the name of the Comedian is killed. After the murder a masked hero by the name of Rorschach, who wears a mask of constantly shifting ink blots, begins to investigate and comes up with a theory that someone is killing off masked heroes. To not spoil the movie, the rest of the movie consists of Rorschach and the other heroes trying to find out who is trying to kill off the heroes and what is actually going on.

Since Watchmen is essentially a murder mystery with super heroes thrown in, it is somewhat hard to compare it fully to other movies. Watchmen is definitely unique and is in a league of its own, and does a great job at keeping the viewer interested. The story is full of surprises, twists, and suspense.

The Watchmen film does a great job at staying true to the graphic novel that it is based off of. While most film adaptations of novels take many liberties with the stories and characters, Watchmen takes care to stay true, for the most part, to the graphic novel. The only real liberties taken, aside from a plot twist at the end, were to make one or two of the characters' costumes more frightening. This can be seen when comparing the costume worn by the Night Owl between the graphic novel and the movie. Surprisingly, the film still holds many of the dark themes that the graphic novel does. Both stories explore the darker side of humanity and its effects on the heroes. This can easily be seen with what happens to Rorschach, and what events make him become a violent and brutal vigilante. The event is hard to watch and very sad, but the film does a excellent job at portraying it.

The heroes in the movie are not really all that "super," as in only one, Doctor Manhattan, actually has super powers. The rest of the heroes are just regular people who are adept at fighting and dress up in costumes. Doctor Manhattan is the exception to this because he was granted super powers because of a freak science accident. Also, as stated previously, the heroes are not portrayed as having to be "good guys." For example, in one scene the Comedian is in a bar along with Doctor Manhattan in Vietnam, after the Vietnam War is over, when a pregnant Vietnamese girl walks in and tells him that she has his baby. He states, "I'm leaving. I'm going to forget about you and your horrible sweaty little piece of sh*t country." He then proceeds to tell the girl to leave, but she just stays. Then the pregnant girl breaks a bottle and slashes the Comedian across the face in anger. The Comedian immediately pulls out his gun and shoots her until she is dead. Doctor Manhattan, standing right next to him, asks her why he shot the girl who is pregnant with his baby. The Comedian answers, "You watched me. You could have turned the gun into steam, the bullets into mercury

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