Twelve P.M. on the dot. It begins. Dark and foreboding the theater practically sweating with anticipation. I look around. Wonder how many people really know what they’re about to witness. The moral quandary. The dramatic ending where so many carefully woven threads are torn apart in front of you and you can’t help but to stop and think and just breathe. This isn’t just any old story about super heroes and villains and the normal people caught in between. This is a different kind of story. This is one where the audience is caught between the dramatic unreal world of the Watchmen and its sinister parallels to our own. This is a story where you are left to discover just where the ugly truth lies. How many of them know? How many of them think this is just going to be a movie?
I can say without a doubt that the Watchmen film is a gallant success. If film-makers have really run out of their own ideas, they might as well plagiarize the good stuff. For all intents and purposes that’s what they’ve done here. The film is practically lifted verbatim from the book and I was very pleased by that. There are scenes where you can literally see the fabled panels come to life. The effect is nothing if incredible. This is a film that is going to go down in the history books just as the original book did when it was first released.
Go see it. Now.