Let me first establish that I am a huge fan of the Watchmen series, that I've been following this movie for a long time (since before The Dark Knight was releases), and that I think Zach Snyder is a really amazing director.
Now, in addition, I am a even greater fan of Alan Moore, and in my opinion, this movie was disastrous. I will hold off from saying that it was completely awful, because come on, $150 million dollars not including the legal fees WB paid to keep the movie alive, but it failed to do what the comic book did. My friends tell me that they are two different mediums, and of course that is true, but in my opinion, the movie attempted to represent the comic book and not create the story told in the comic.
Let's get into details, i guess there should be a spoiler alert here.......
This movie truly failed to create the characters that were envisioned by Alan Moore: Drieberg was hardly ever shown to be lamenting over his retirement, his impotence was not shown as a lock of confidence but rather a clumsy response to an extremely horny silk spectre. Rorschach was not the unwavering embodiment of justice, but rather a twisted version of Chris Nolan's Batman, the removal and retrieval of his "face" were painfully empty and melodramatic. Silk Spectre hardly convinced Dr. Manhattan to care for humanity, at no point did their relationship seem significant, and the choice to create a motif where Dr. Manhattan could share "the way he see's the world" was awful. And unfortunately, I'm most sad to say, Dr. Manhattan, was not himself, though people will jump on his voice (which was fine imo), the real problem was that he was connected with humanity, not disillusioned, not emotionally detached, "his subtle facial cues" were noticed by veidt, a very poor portrayal. Even the comedian, certainly my favorite and most human character in the novel, wasn't just right, his blubbering and wet breakdown in front of Molloch, was really really really really poorly done. In fact, if anyone needs proof of how bad the acting was in this movie, just watch Nite Owl when the kill Rorschach near the end.
Beyond the characters, the art was completely lost. Shame on Zach Synder for making the changes that he did. If he was forced by the studio to make all the changes to the story that he did, he should have stopped making this film a long time ago. I'm not talking about the squid, even though it was a terrible alternative, I don't want to dwell on this because I know I and the people who agree are correct, but simply put there is a huge difference between the physical death, the bloody death that was envisioned by Alan Moore, and the complete vaporization of everything... Dr. Manhattan spoke in the movie of visiting the streets of Earth again, with dead bodies all around him, but when did this happen? There weren't any streets after the BS explosion. Truly, Zach Snyder is known for his ability to create a moment, to slow down a few seconds and make it last a minute, so people can truly appreciate the message behind the image, this wasn't accomplished at all in Watchmen. The special effects and god awful karate/fight scenes did not help this movie at all. The beauty of Nite Owl riding on top of Archie after saving the people in the burning building, the majesty of Viedt's utopia in the frozen tundra of the arctic, the final scene where Dr. Manhattan and Viedt speak, where Dr. Manhattan tells Viedt "nothing ends", MARS, and nearly every scene after silk spectre climaxed, were done poorly.
The movie did start well, but only while the amazing characters created by Alan Moore were being developed, once they were given their own license to exist, they crumbled.
Alan Moore was right, Hollywood killed this movie, thankfully us fans of the comic will always have the graphic novel, on monday I will get the perspective of someone who is completely unfamiliar with the comic, certainly that's a review that is valuable too.
And please believe me, I'm not a hater at all, I love all things, but this movie was done very poorly, I was excited to buy the BluRay but I will likely not buy it anymore.
I will say this, Watchmen would have made a better soundtrack.
I'll leave you with the words of Bob Dylan,
Don't criticize what you don't understand.
ALAN MOORE, I APOLOGIZE FOR THE WESTERN WORLD