What a Week Part III: Watching the Watchmen

I've been trying to write a proper review of Watchmen for quite some time now, but I can't seem to wrap around my feelings towards the film. I just can't. So, I'm gonna summarise the whole film in just a few sentences (and couple of images).

The good: The visual is just spot on. It's like putting the whole page into the film. The feeling when you read the book is there when you watch the film. The opening montage is superbly done. It effectively pave and visualize the world of Watchmen. It got even better with the decision to play Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changing (which coincidentally one of my favorite songs ever) in the background. Not only has it blended well with the montage, but the lyrics itself represented what happened in Watchmen’s world. Jackie Earle Haley's Rorschach is the best of the cast. He IS Rorschach. Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Comedian and Crudup's Dr Manhattan are also great.

The Bad: The whole scenes on Mars is a waste. When you summarise an important part of the story which takes about a chapter in a book into a 4 minute scene, you just couldn't see its importance. The conclusion is also felt rushed. The whole conclusion is a 2 chapter long that explain Veidt's vision and attempts to get his plan in progress. Snyder spent too much time doing the first half of the book (which he copied directly panel to panel), and somehow neglects the important second half of the book. Malin Akerman's casting is disastrous. She's not capable of pulling off a troubled Laurie/Silk Spectre II.

The Ending: The ending is being altered from an alien invasion, into a godlike fury of Dr. Manhattan. Both has the same effect. However, i found it very hard to accept that people would just live in peace with each other without blaming the United States. It was the US that used Dr. Manhattan as a walking H-bomb, and importantly, it was also the US who angered Dr. Manhattan, which leads him to exile to Mars. So when Veidt orchestrated the plan to make Dr Manhattan as the scapegoat, aren't other countries going to blame the US for making Dr. Manhattan angry? That's the hole that is bothering me.

So given all those things, I still don't know what to think of the film. I thought the book is a freakin' masterpiece, hence the films should also be. The only explanation of why I couldn't love it as much as the book is that it couldn't be translated into a 3-hour film. It will only work if they make a 12 episodes miniseries, that explain each and every chapter of the book thoroughly. I'm gonna have to watch this over again. On blu-ray, preferably. I'll probably write a proper review about it then. That is, if I feel like it.