I don’t believe anyone could reasonably expect a better Watchmen film. That’s not to say that it’s the best. movie. ever. Just that it’s unlikely that anyone else would ever have made one with more fidelity to the source material. Just imagine what could’ve been. We could’ve had the Joel Silver version with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Dr. Manhattan. Consider that for a moment, then give director Zack Snyder his due.

Admittedly, it’s been a few years since I’ve read the book, but aside from some supporting characters and a certain squid, I don’t recall any significant deletions.* And, let’s face it, the squid was never gonna make the cut. Honestly, I think the film’s alternative to the Psychic Calamari of Doom makes more sense, both logically and thematically.

I’ve got a few small criticisms. The acting’s…well, okay. While I’m pleased that for the most part Snyder avoided casting familiar names, I feel that some of the performers were chosen more for their resemblance to the original drawings than for their thespian skills. 

The violence is also a bit much. I suspect that the translation from comic to motion picture accounts for some of the grue; drawings depict isolated moments in time, but a film sequence by its very nature includes many more such images.

At the end of the day, I think that Watchmen was a very faithful retelling of a story that wasn’t all that much fun to begin with. It’s telling that the nearly all of the humor comes from the darkest of all the Watchmen, the psychopathic Rorschach.