In short, I dig it.

And while I think this would be a kick-ass first dance, I really think you’d be better off using one of her own songs to dedicate to Neko.

As for the protagonists, that’s the funny thing about Watchmen: the story is chock full of spandex types, but there’s really no “hero” of the piece. The character who is almost always right is an amoral rapist/murderer. The one who saves the world kills millions of innocents. You could see Dan and Laurie as the heroes, but they are basically stand-ins for the hoi polloi amongst gods.

I have to concede that Dr. Manhattan and Rorshach are handled pretty faithfully in the movie. I think part of the problem with the latter is that audiences immediately equate him with a hard-line, punching for justice character like Batman because that’s what they expect to see. This “tragic hero” may have doomed the world to nuclear annihilation because his skewed world view would’t allow him to compromise.

I know I’m a bad example (I understand Ocean’s 12 front to back) for average film comprehension, but I never read the comic. The film was disorienting for about 30 minutes, demanding complete attention to detail. As long as you follow things, it begins to make perfect sense around the point you can distinguish characters from one another.

Your criticisms have already summed me up as well. I always found it a bit too silly or overblown, but I ended up liking both Dr. Manhattan and Rorschach, neither of whom really deserve it. Rorschach is completely broken but the centerpiece of the protagonists? Really? Maybe if there had been some point to it, but he’s been glorified as some kind of tragic hero as much as Batman in The Dark Knight. I guess that just sums up the silliness of the film.

Does the comic handle those two characters better? I’m a fan of dysfunctional characters getting called out on their inadequacies.

But, OK, let’s say you’re right What if the episodes were 30 minutes each? I still think that would be preferable to the movie because the story works best when broken into the discrete chapters of the original serial. Each has its own satisfying arc that also contributes to the overall plot.

That would allow more time for the character development that Snyder tried to do within too compressed a time frame. You’d never get all of the subtle references and backstory that is layered within the art (which is why no adaptation can every be wholly “faithful”). But you’d still get a better sense of who these people are, because you wouldn’t be trying to process the whole thing in one go.

Needless to say, I agree with you. The level to which I agree surprises me, since I believe I established my higher level of comic geek-ery when I complained about you using “Comic Book” for “Superhero” in an issue of CGM.

The bottom line is that “Watchmen” fell into the same trap as “Sin City.” Both were so devoted to recreating the source material that they forgot to remember that the two art forms play by different rules.

A perfect example relates to your complaint of how the Janey-Jon story was handled. As you know, most of the 12 issues of Watchmen focused on a single character and how that person’s past and present was affecting the story line. And, as you noticed, the movie mirrored that structure *exactly,* causing new backstory to hit about every 20-30 minutes.

Fortunately for you, Dr. Manhattan’s history was in the fourth issue, so it came relatively early. But by the time we get to Rorshach, not only has the pace been murdered, but there are so many threads that it’s hard to keep them straight.

Which leads me to my main point: I suspect that the movie doesn’t make any sense to anyone who hasn’t read the comic. It’s impossible for me to tell, given the fact that I am so familiar with the source material, but there’s just too much going on for a film.

Snyder needed to do one of the following:

1) Cut it down to a single, clear arc that touches on the major themes of the book and accentuate it with hints of the character stuff (getting rid of the Black Freighter and Under the Hood isn’t nearly enough).

2) Pitch it to HBO as the 12-part maxiseries it should have been and do justice to all of the nuance.

The DS version may be hosed, but the freezing is making the PC version really frustrating, especially for a game that’s supposed to be good for shorter play sessions.

Maybe I’m being punished for not waiting for the 360 release.

Now where’s that PC download link…

I downloaded a mod that turned off the hacking timer while chains are firing off, and wouldn’t you know… it’s almost too easy. So all the challenge in hacking comes from the time spent watching all sorts of fun matching.

Very weird.