Who Watched the Watchmen? I did. B+

There may be some spoilers!!!!

I went to see Watchmen this weekend. I was looking forward to the movie, mostly because the trailers kicked ass. I honestly had no idea what the graphic novel was about, other than it was a superhero type story. It is set in the 80's and is in a world where America won the Vietnam war, Nixon never left office, and the Cold War is raging. Oh, and there are masked vigilanties that catch criminals. The story does a lot of flashbacks between the current set of heroes, called the Watchmen, and the original group, called the Minutemen. There are connections between to two groups that are really the catalyst of some of the plots. Also, the 'heroes' are only that because they focus their energies on catching bad guys. In general, some of them are flawed people with violent tendancies and contrast greatly when compared to groups like the X-men or Fantastic Four. I guess what I am trying to say it that they have little regard for the life of the bad guy. One of them is a war mongering psycho and another is a sadist nut job. There are others that aren't as bad, but they clearly have an 'above the law' attitude. It was really a very interesting film. There was a twist at the end that you could kind of see coming, but other than that, the effects were spectacular, the characters were interesting, and the action scenes were bad ass. The one thing I couldn't quite get was, why were these people considered superheroes? Aside from Dr. Manhattan, a blue man with the power to do, basically, anything, none of the Watchmen seemed to have super powers beyond the ability to kick ass. Maybe it was all super speed and strength. Other than that, no one could fly, shoot eye beams, or control the elements. It added a neat demension to the film,in that it seemed like these were normal people that put on masks in order to stop crime. I think I want to get the graphic novel so that I can get the whole effect.

Aside from the general goodness of the movie, Watchmen had one of the sexiest love scenes I have ever seen in a movie. Silk Spectre II and Nite Owl II go out and do some crime fighting and after, they hook up in their ship. The Silk Spectre II is probably the hottest superhero ever to grace film. I think it is a combination of her hot latex outfit and my latent teen superhero sex fantasies that made the scene so hot. (sorry for that glimpse into myself that may have made you all throw up in your mouths a bit.)

My one beef about the film: Too much blue dong. Dr Manhattan was turned blue in the acident that gave him super powers, and apparently, he no longer feels the need for clothes. When out in public, he would wear a suit or a cod piece, but in general, there was a lot of blue dong when he was on screen. It was CGI blue dong, but still, blue dong. A great update to the movie would have been to make Dr Manhattan a woman! :-) (Sorry. more latent teen perviness!)