Sean Reiser

Saw Watchmen last night and where I found it to be excellent and probably the best translation of the comic to the silver screen possible, I suspect there are a lot of disappointed non-geeks who really weren’t prepared for what they saw.

If you went to the movies expecting to see a comedy and were presented with Bridge Over The River Kwai you’d be disappointed, even though the film is one of the best films ever made. The same is happening with Watchmen. Watchmen, the film and comic, are not a Super Hero properties, it’s Noir. It’s social commentary.

From what I saw, there were 2 groups of people who saw the film:

1. Geeks who either read or who knew what they were getting them selves into.

2. Non-Geeks who were expecting a Superman / Spider-man Super-Hero film and were turned off by Rorschach’s first voiceover and never came back into the film.

I think this is going to another example of what I’m staring to call “Serenity Syndrome”, a problem where the entertainment industry attempted to create a blockbuster out of a geek property with a large cult following. A major symptom of this is where you see people rating the film either 1 or 5 and not in the middle.

I’ve always felt that Watchmen would be better served as a mini-series on HBO then as a film, partially because it would be a little cheaper to make, so there’d be less pressure to put butts in the seats and partially because the story would be served better by the longer arc. That as a film the film makers would either need to cheapen the material (which they didn’t) or disappoint mainstream viewers (which they have).

So, Again, great film, go in expecting Noir and you’ll love it. Go In expecting Super Hero you’ll leave wanting more.