Last updated on April 2nd, 2024 at 01:27 am
Making a movie out of a superb novel has always been a difficult task. But the experiment of Watchmen 2009 after a comic novel has been a successful attempt. Watchmen 2009 not an easy movie to be reviewed as it is based on the comic book of Alan Moore and Patrick Wilson. Basically it is a super hero film of the year which is directed wonderfully by Zack Snyder. The story is about the cold war tension between the United States of America and Soviet Union. It has focused the tension prevailing in the year 1985 when a group of people who were illegally taking the responsibility to punish the criminals, came to know that they had a conspiracy against them. The film has been produced by Lawrence Gordon, Lloyd Levin and Deborah Snyder. While the screen play has been written by English screen play writers: David Hyter and Alex Tse. David Hyter is a famous Canadian-American screenplay writer as well as an actor. The music of this movie has been given by Tyler Bates. The movie was released on 6th march, 2009 and earned over $185 millions. The movie has been reviewed differently as it left the viewers with different impressions and ideas about the superheroes. The reviewers who belong to USA found it charismatic and positive movie but the Australian reviewers are totally opposed to this idea. One of the Australian reviewers, Lynden Barber commented in these words:
“The movie is fatally hobbled in my view by several problems including laughably bad and often pretentious ‘B’ grade dialogue – delivered indifferently at the very best – and a surfeit of violence-porn only marginally softened by its stylized context.” (Lynden Barber, 2009)
Lynden Barber also revealed doubt about the ability of the directors to make the actors deliver dialogs. Despite criticism, the viewers really appreciated the team of watchmen while the success of the film divided the critics in the world box office in two groups; one of which gave entirely positive remarks to the idea of super hero while others criticized on the same super hero kind. As the film watchmen 2009 was based on a comic novel, it received great appreciation as its run time was best suited to the flow of novel. So the people, who had previously read the comic of watchmen by Alan Moore and Patrick Wilson, did not find the movie projecting dissimilar graphics and images as the novel actually portrayed. Moreover, the movie was financed with $130 million and earned a gross profit more than $185 millions which reveal the success of the whole team of Watchmen 2009.
The lead cast of the film is: Malin Ackerman, Billy Crudup, Mathew Goode, Carla Gugino, Jackie Haley, Jeffrey Morgan, Patrick Wilson, Matt Frewer and Stephen Mc Hattie. The story of watchmen can not be easily described in a snapshot as it has wonderful situations and enthusiastic plot which can be best perceived if you go to watch the movie. Otherwise only an idea of plot can be presented. So watchmen is the story of a group which is not a legal entity but still, works to protect united states of America from the criminal offenses. For this reason, it is an illegal union which is punishing criminals operating in the US. The vigilantes were using masks and costumed as a response to the criminal gangs which were also using masks to hide their identity. Masks were used in the old times to project an image what is desired and to hide the expressions from the opponent. It also preserves identity and impression. Therefore, with the use of masks an image has been communicated to the audiences. The basic purpose behind the organization of vigilantes was to cope with the crimes which are not addressed by the law and constitution. For this purpose the group had to face many troublesome situations. So they were the watchmen of the humanity and fought the criminal gangs for relieve powerless groups of their society. They also had to break the law themselves as they had no way out. In fact it is a wonderful comic as people have never read before, a comic like this one. So it was a dream of the watchmen movie directors to bring this comic on the big screen with its actual essence. The positive reviewers are right in the argument that the directors have been successful to a great extent in bringing a comic to the big screen. In fact we can never find perfection in world so utopian ideas in the comics can never be perfectly turned into reality.
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I don’t know if your assertion that American critics loved the film and the implication that non-Americans did not is accurate.
I also think that this review works too hard to convince the readers that it was a good film based on film earnings, the success of the written version and the unsubstantiated critics who supposedly loved this film.
I never read the comic but did see the film. I did not like it. It was boring, the characters did not inspire, it took way too long to tell a simple story though the message at the end was very interesting.
It’s funny that the message at the end was essentially lost. If Doctor Manhattan was built up as a possible threat and the audience was made to feel something for this ‘robot’, it would have made the film less painful to watch.
This film even took the only interesting character (Rorschach) and turned him into a smelly, dirty, demented psycho. Everytime I watched a scene with him in it, I felt like I needed to shower.
I had heard great things about the comic over the years. I now think that all the positive talk came from pretentious users who prefer to study entertainment rather then enjoy it.
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