Who Just Watched the Watchmen?

Attended the press screening of Watchmen last night. I've been waiting twenty years for this film so I deliberately kept my expectations low in order to prevent myself going beserk with an automatic weapon if the film turned out to be rubbish.

Good news. I didn't kill anyone.

The film's pretty faithful to the comic. Yeah, they've had to ditch subplots and secondary characters which in turn means they've had to tinker with the main plot slightly to accomodate these changes but it's still Watchmen. A streamlined, or diluted if one were being unkind, version of Moore's story to be sure but at least Hollywood didn't turn it into Batman and Robin.

Of course it's also very obviously a Zack Snyder film. There's lots of slo-mo and both the action and the gore have been amped up just to remind people that he directed 300 and The Dawn of the Dead remake. The fight scenes are full of wire-fu and at one point become so OTT they make The Matrix look like cinema verite. Whilst the graphic nature of the many maimings and killings had the audience alternating between wincing and applauding. And my friend who blagged me my ticket for the screening was practically traumatised by a gruesome setpiece during the prison scenes.

There's about a million other points I could make about the film but the short version is that while the film isn't perfect it's about as good a Hollywood adap as we could expect. And as such it's well worth a look.

It's Clobberin' Time!

Been reading Mark Waid's run on Fantastic Four, generally considered to be the third best run EVER, coming behind the stints by Lee/Kirby and John Byrne. Jolly good fun especially as I got the first two storylines in the hardcover edition which includes Waid's initial proposal and character notes from when he took over the series. Offers interesting insights into his creative process and allows me to appreciate the choices he made while writing the series. Even the ones I didn't agree with.