I saw Watchmen last weekend.

Ha ha.

In all seriousness, it was a good movie. I have not read the book. I meant to read it when I knew the movie was coming out, but never got around to obtaining a copy. But, the bright side is that I went into it fresh without really knowing what to expect. I understood that the ending was a little different and there were a few other minor differences, but that for the most part it was reported to be a faithful adaptation of the book.

It certainly wasn’t a rollicking adventure like an X-Men movie. It was a dark, challenging, dramatic mystery with lots of twists and turns. I quite enjoyed the historical references. It was a movie that you need to pay attention to and figure out what you were looking at and how it relates to the overall story. It was also pretty visceral and had some shocking images. This didn’t offend me but some some people seem upset by that. They should get over it.

The reviews on this movie have been pretty mixed all around. Some people found the movie confusing and say that being so faithful to the graphic novel was a bad move because only people who have read it will know what’s going on. I say those people are morons because I could follow it just fine and I haven’t read it. But, no matter what people think right now, I believe that in years to come, Watchmen will be one of the most talked about films in modern history, just as the book is in the world of comics. There’s just so much to look at, and it all has meaning. Students are going to be doing school projects about this movie some day. Plus, Rorschach is destined to go down as one of the all time greatest film characters. He’s just that awesome, and even if you hate the movie, you’ll probably like him.

Anyway, if you have not seen it, I urge you to at least give it a chance, and don’t feel bad about it if you didn’t like it at first viewing. It’s very important that movies like this become big success stories. If it just fades away over the next few weeks, the the people in Hollywood who make decisions are going to want to make changes and dumb things down to make movies more marketable, thus stripping away their artistic integrity. I, personally, want to see more intelligent movies that have the guts to be what they are without compromise, and that are accurate to their source material. That’s what Watchmen is.

So go see it. And if you already have, go see it again or something.

As for me, I should probably go buy the book some day.

Sayonara.