On Sat, fishpi, fishpie, livredor and I went to see Watchmen. I thought it was very good -- I'm likely to go and see it again which is a pretty good recommendation. Although my review doesn't really contain anything I hadn't predicted beforehand, I'll write them down anyway.
* It was very close to the original. I could tell most scenes were straight out of the comic (and people who've read it confirm that.) There were a few things changed, mostly in the ending.
* It was more violent than I'd known, although the violence is generally appropriate, rather than gratuitous. If you don't want to see it, you might want to think twice.
* There are half a dozen dumb utterances, mostly about science, that made a bunch of people crack up :) They're not representative of the film as a whole, but if you can't bear that, be prepared to be angry/don't see it.
* As fishpi put it, "All the best bits came straight from the book, and a few bits were worse, so I don't know why I bother to see it." That suits me, as I happen to rather like films based on good comics, but if you're inclined to (or have) read the book, you may not necessarily gain anything by seeing the film. If you haven't seen the book, I recommend the film highly :)
* The film is very much my sort of thing, with great characters, action, alternate history technology, sexy costumes, etc, so you may like it a bit less than I do if it's not your sort of thing.
* There are half a dozen strong characters with strong relationships to each other. How rare is that in any book or film?
* It's a fascinating look at what sort of things might happen if you actually had a mix of psychotics and demigods wandering around playing vigilante, and what would happen. (Hint: it's not necessarily good.)
* It's not as unrelievedly good as I've made it sound. I'll post about the flaws in a few months when I've got some perspective.
* Rysmiel had interesting things to say, even before seeing it. I expect they'll post in due course when they get back to the internet, rather than my trying to repeat everything here :)
* It was very close to the original. I could tell most scenes were straight out of the comic (and people who've read it confirm that.) There were a few things changed, mostly in the ending.
* It was more violent than I'd known, although the violence is generally appropriate, rather than gratuitous. If you don't want to see it, you might want to think twice.
* There are half a dozen dumb utterances, mostly about science, that made a bunch of people crack up :) They're not representative of the film as a whole, but if you can't bear that, be prepared to be angry/don't see it.
* As fishpi put it, "All the best bits came straight from the book, and a few bits were worse, so I don't know why I bother to see it." That suits me, as I happen to rather like films based on good comics, but if you're inclined to (or have) read the book, you may not necessarily gain anything by seeing the film. If you haven't seen the book, I recommend the film highly :)
* The film is very much my sort of thing, with great characters, action, alternate history technology, sexy costumes, etc, so you may like it a bit less than I do if it's not your sort of thing.
* There are half a dozen strong characters with strong relationships to each other. How rare is that in any book or film?
* It's a fascinating look at what sort of things might happen if you actually had a mix of psychotics and demigods wandering around playing vigilante, and what would happen. (Hint: it's not necessarily good.)
* It's not as unrelievedly good as I've made it sound. I'll post about the flaws in a few months when I've got some perspective.
* Rysmiel had interesting things to say, even before seeing it. I expect they'll post in due course when they get back to the internet, rather than my trying to repeat everything here :)