Watchmen: Director's Cut Review

[Jer Alford]

When this movie originally was released in theatres, I decided to wait until the actual director's cut came out. Mainly because I wanted to get the fully idealized version of the film, and because I wanted to avoid all the Watchmen review civil wars that were going on at the time.

Anyway so as for the movie itself, this is based on Alan Moore's groundbreaking comic book maxi-series from the 80s(everyone forgets it was a comic 1ST and a graphic novel 2ND!). Moore wanted nothing to do with it, because he's had a bear up his butt ever since the last couple of movie fiascos based on his works(Constantine, From Hell, League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen). But Zack Snyder came along and made this sucker work. For the longest time, the project was plagued with doubt because no one really had any faith that it could be made into a coherent story. The mature nature of The Dark Knight helped cement the idea that not all superhero movies need to be corny action flicks

The story is set in an alternate history during 1985. Nixon is STILL President, and Congress has put a ban on superheroes. The Comedian, a former hero from a group called Watchmen, is mysteriosly murdered. Rorschach, the only active hero, sets out to find his killer. What follows is a look into the background of all these now-retired heroes. Nite-Owl is dreaming of his glory days, Silk Spectre tries to live a life away from her mother while comforting Dr. Manhattan(the only one with powers), and Ozymandias is creating a new type of energy source with his vast fortune. However, Rorschach gets framed for killing an ex-villain. Nite-Owl hooks up with Silk Spectre, and frees Rorschach, while Dr. Manhattan is cooling off on Mars because he is blamed for giving his former friends cancer. It turns out the entire thing was a plot by Ozymandias set to stop the nations of the world from going into nuclear war. A final confrontation between the remaning heroes results in them going along with Ozymandias' idea, despite all the deaths it caused, except for Rorscach who ends up as snow pizza.

Despite all the fanboy gripe that this movie got, there was an equal amount of praise for it. Most people's expectations got a little to high though, thinking that a Rated-R superhero movie would stay in the #1 spot for very long, which is unfortunate because that's how ALOT of jerks are going to insist on looking at it years from now. I thought the film as a whole captured all the important aspects of the original story, at least alot better than some other comic-based movies. This new Director's Cut brings some additional footage that was left out of the theatrical edition which adds more clarity to the plot, plus some scenes that weren't included at all like the death of the original Nite-Owl. I'd recommend getting this, BIGTIME. There's also an Ultimate Collectors' Edition coming out which will feature the Tales Of The Black Freighter animated film woven into the regular movie, the Under The Hood mini-movie, plus the entire Watchmen motion comic.