Can't say I'm surprised, but reviews for Watchmen have been all over the place. Everybody had different reasons as to why they loved it or hated it. What's hilarious was that some of those reasons were practically the total opposite of each others...
"Not faithful enough to the graphic novel."
"Much too faithful to the graphic novel."
"Too much talking, not enough action, just boring." (told ya)
"Kept my attention all the way through."
"The soundtrack was all out of place."
"I loved the soundtrack."
"Didn't care enough for the characters."
"I wanted to see more of the characters."
"The pacing was really bad, and it was too long."
"I wanted to see more, and wished it was longer."
"Too complicated to follow."
"I surprisingly found it easy to understand."
However, there are four particular issues that some people have, that I see over and over again on the internet.
- They changed the ending from the graphic novel.
- The violence was much too graphic.
- Too many scenes of seeing that blue glowing penis.
- That sex scene was too long, and awkward. Plus the song sucked for it.
I'm not going to elaborate on the ending. That's just pure preference, as to which one a person prefers. The movie or the graphic novel.
The violence was definitely pretty graphic, but I chalk that up to them actually wanting to show Rated R quality action that you don't normally see in a PG-13 movie about Super Heroes. BTW, don't bring your kids to watch this movie.
As a guy, I could live without seeing the naked blue guy's penis a lot of the time, but I understand why it's like that in the movie. Unless you are an immature person, the sight of a naked penis is not a breaking point for the movie.
Then there's that one sex scene that a lot of people seems to be up in arms with. My question to that is WHY? How often do you see superheroes actually doing it on screen? There, that's the point I'm sure Zack Snyder intended. Just having the couple start to look like they are going to have sex, and then suddenly cut off to the next scene would be exactly what a PG-13 Watchmen would have done (nothing ground breaking there). As far as people claiming "that sex scene took too long," they would be exaggerating too much as it's really only a little more than a minute long. Also the song choice may not be the best, but it fit with the theme of what that guy must be saying in his head, as they are doing the act. Simply put, the sex scene did not break the movie. In fact, it was one of the hottest sex scenes I've seen in a movie for quite a while. If you felt uncomfortable watching a minute of soft porn on the big screen with a couple of hundred people in a theater, then that's your problem.
There's this article online (link here) that expands on my point with the violence and sex and such...
"And the other side of it is, you never see it in these types of movies. It's not just the nudity, but you never see it, and that's the thing with this script and this movie that you try to, without being presumptuous about it, the whole point of this comic, when it came out, was going as far as you can in that genre. I feel like that is what this movie does. It goes that far with violence, it should go that far with the love scenes, and that far with the language and that far with the humor. I think that's sort of the point of what you're aiming for, and I'd like to think that's what they were aiming for when they wrote the comic."
On that note, it is of course okay to say that you do not like Watchmen because you thought it was boring. I admit that the trailers were very misleading into making people believe that it was going to be an action fest. It's no different than making a trailer of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" containing nothing but action scenes, when the movie clearly is not like that. I try and tell people that Watchmen is clearly a character study film with a murder mystery plot to tie things together. I also emphasize how much talking there is in the movie, as opposed to action/adventure. Warner Bros wanted to get as much of their money back for the budget though, so they had to "trick" the uninitiated.
However I'd like to also point out, that it's however wrong to think that just because you do not like Watchmen, it means that it IS a bad movie. Calling it boring is also an opinion and should not be stated as fact.
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