The Short Version: A SuperHero mystery that defined the direction of graphic novels for years to come. The film version manages to tell the basic plot without losing any of its impact.

8 out of 10.

Click Read More for our thoughts.

Like the recent movie Knowing this film discusses worldviews and beliefs, but this time it's more on a political scale with the major groups being "conservative" and "liberal". The whole book stems from a quote by the Roman poet Juvenal, "Who watches the Watchmen." The book was/is about life in the 1980s if superheroes really did exist. It posits that superheroes would have real human weaknesses and desires and some of them would be just plain awful people such as the Comedian. Some of them would be utterly insane like Rorschach (a vision of what Batman would really be like). Some of them would be so powerful that they would start to think of themselves as no longer human like Dr. Manhattan. And some would attempt to change the world like Ozymandias.

Having read the graphic novel quite a while ago I was ready for the movie. This is not a story for children. It is very dark as it was intended to be.What I was not ready for was some of the changes, which mostly consisted of increasing the level of graphic violence and sexuality if you can believe it. Artistically, I've always found such wanton excess to be unnecessary to the art of story-telling. Sometimes a point is served by a graphic description or scene, but in this case there is no advantage. So this is one knock down in my book.

Most of the plot changes consisted of dropping minor points that did not dramatically affect the overall direction. The only plot change many fans of the graphic novel will object to is the change to the ending.

*Spoiler*

Why substitute the alien creature for "Dr. Manhatten gone insane"? There did not seem to be any reason for this major change, nor did it add to the story. In fact, I have a hard time seeing the logic behind this move. After all, the false threat of an alien invasion is what originally banded humanity together. But Dr. Manhatten is America's agent. Given the paranoia of the USSR in the 1980's why would they abruptly drop their hostilities? Would the tone not have been "blame America"? It just does not make as much sense as the original plot.

Given this unnecessary and seemingly illogical change to the plot I was forced to knock the score down a notch, but 8 out of 10 means it's still worth seeing and discussing.

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