Yes, I know, It's been a while.....

I am sure I have obliterated my total readership of 4 or 5 with my 3 or so week hiatus due to Street Fighter 4, then Phantasy Star Portable, then a bit of a social life, rounded out with Resident Evil 5. Long story short, I got lazy. I would look at my laptop and think, do I really want to spend an hour or so typing up some stuff or do I want to whip some ass on one of the various games that I have picked up recently. 

Anyway, lets go in order of importance. I declared after I had watched the Watchmen that I would some sort of review on my blog and now that it has been a couple of weeks I think that the statute of limitations on spoilers has been passed. I personally enjoyed the film, and that is probably because I have read the book over 50 times in the past 14 years. It was surprisingly faithful to the source material (aside from the change to the ending to keep from confusing non-readers of the book EVEN MORE than they probably were already) but of course the comic geek in me had a couple of nitpicky issues with the movie. They of course start with Dr. Manhattan and his junk. 

Now, in the original source material, 12 pretty long comics, they showed his penis a total of TWO times. In the movie, it is the blue elephant trunk in the room that everyone knows is there and no one wants to talk about. And it is there ALL THE FUCKING TIME!! If you see the good doctor, you are assured of seeing his baby arm holding an apple. I cannot imagine it would be any easier seeing it in IMAX.  

Sidebar- Jillian Michaels from that Biggest Loser show and exercise infomercials looks like a dude with a wig. Mostly due to her man-face.

My other nerd issue was how they took some liberties with some of the dialogue in the movie. Only a psychotic fan of the book would have noticed this (like me) so this should not affect any of you. They took some lines and cut them completely or took scenes that were only ONE DAMN PANEL in the book and extended them into 5-7 minute sequences. Time that could have been spent EXPLAINING some stuff to the non-comic nerds to help with their eventual confusion. 

That is probably my greatest concern about this film. Personally I loved it, but to those not familiar with the book, results may vary. I tried to watch the movie from the perspective of a non-fan and I believe that the director and screenwriters did a ham-handed job of getting the point of the movie across. The book had a series of supplemental material between the issues and a number of sub-plots that gave the story a great deal of layers and depth. This was something that could not be conveyed in less than 3 hours and a number of details had to be cut or condensed to make way for the core of the story. But there is nothing that can be done about this. The movie is what it is. They are releasing a DVD on the 24th of March that has some of that supplemental material in animated form, but it is merely a tool of the warners to grab some more cash and not really help explain the story. I also learned that when the Watchmen makes its way to DVD and Blu-Ray, there will be a director's cut which is allegedly over 3 hours with more story that was cut out for time. I of course I will pick up all of this as I am the target audience for all this extraneous merchandise and the warners are counting on people like me to go out and buy it and tell everyone else to buy it as well. What can I say, I am a tool when it come to the Watchmen. 

Next time: I will possibly share my views on Resident Evil 5 and all the intended and unintended racism in the game. 

Good Night and Good Luck

-Dre