The Watchmen dilemma

Honestly, I would wait until after you see the film. That way, if you like the film, then you can love the novel even more. If you hate the film, well, the novel's still brilliant.

I just read "Watchmen" a few months ago, and followed that up by reading it again a couple of weeks ago. I have to say that it will probably ruin the film for me (almost all of Moore's adaptations have been terrible); however, I do find myself anticipating the film even more now, because I came to the material so late, and since I'm not a comic book guy, I feel a part of the clique now that I'll be able to approach a comic book film knowing the source material.

The excitement for the film has always been a bit subdued, because for me, the name Zach Snyder is equivalent to the feeling the name Paul Haggis gives you.

Oh, and it's okay to call "Watchmen" a comic book, Moore himself refers to it as a comic book, because he isn't ashamed of the medium in which he works. It's a comic book that is also a great piece of literature.

I loved Selman's piece, and even though I have just recently read and re-read "Watchmen" for the first time, I get the feeling that the experience Selman had is something I would feel should they ever make Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" into a film. It would be very odd to see something you've studied for so long come to life.

I've just read "Watchmen" and I already think it's going to be a weird film-going experience, because of how deeply absorbed I was in the comic in such a short period of time (initially I read it in like two days, the second time through I read it in one day).

Regardless, I'm really, really excited for the film. Selman is absolutely right -- the film will be an experience, good or bad. And I can't wait to hear what people think who have no knowledge of the source material.

Go ahead and read it again, Jim.

Don't reread it.

The internet boards are already going to be flooded with people picking apart the differences between the book and the movie, so it'll be nice to hear a (relatively) fresh perspective. If the movie sticks with you enough, for better or for worse, then it might be time to revisit the text to help clarify your thoughts about what worked and what didn't.

I bought the book last year and enjoyed it reasonably well. I'm by no means a fanboy - Watchmen is quite good and improves on rereading, but it has its flaws - however I can say that the announced changes have me feeling iffy about the adaptation: specifically how the announced changes defang what I thought were the most pointed angles of the book. So it'll be hard for me to watch the movie with an open mind.

It'd be another thing if I trusted Zack Snyder to transcend the material and the inevitable limitations of adaptation, but his previous work doesn't show any evidence of that kind of awareness.

I say watch it without reading.

Then, read it before the extended cut is released on DVD.

Then, watch the extended cut after having read the graphic novel again.

Seeing as you don't really remember the comic all that much, I say wait till after you've seen the film to read it again. I've been revisiting the book more than usual in anticipation of the film, and I am not sure if that's wise (or just a colossal waste of time, considering the vast amount of books on my shelf I have yet to read).

Besides, I think you've done enough homework on superhero lore this past few months.

Great capture, by the way. What exactly is she doing?

Let's face it, Jim, you're just posting this to distract from the most important issue: The Dark Knight is the best film of 2008.

I say don't read it. That way you can enjoy the new happy ending the studios will take on at the last minute while watching the fanboys' heads explode.

Watchmen deserves the praise it's received as a graphic novel. I am certainly willing to give the movie an open chance and hope very much to enjoy it but Zach Snyder? Yeesh. We'll see.

I wonder if they're going to keep the subplot in which one person reads a comic book which tells a vaguely parallel story. It seems like the one thing that could most easily be jettisoned without damaging the story's structure, but it was pretty neat.

See the movie first. Otherwise, your viewing experience will be too much of a comparison. This always happens -- it's just human nature I think. I went to see "Revolutionary Road" on literally the same day that I finished reading the Yates novel, and it was a really bizarre experience: being able to anticipate dialogue before the characters even recite it (the script was pretty faithful), and involuntarily checking EVERYTHING that happpened in the film off against a mental checklist of things that happened in the book. It wouldn't have been a good way to watch it even if the film had distinguished itself as something special apart from the source (which it didn't, and which -- who knows! -- Watchmen might). So I say wait, live with your dim memories of the comic from reading it 15-ish years ago, and if the movie interests you enough then go back and reread it afterwards.

See the movie first. Otherwise, your viewing experience will be too much of a comparison. This always happens -- it's just human nature I think. I went to see "Revolutionary Road" on literally the same day that I finished reading the Yates novel, and it was a really bizarre experience: being able to anticipate dialogue before the characters even recite it (the script was pretty faithful), and involuntarily checking EVERYTHING that happpened in the film off against a mental checklist of things that happened in the book. It wouldn't have been a good way to watch it even if the film had distinguished itself as something special apart from the source (which it didn't, and which -- who knows! -- Watchmen might). So I say wait, live with your dim memories of the comic from reading it 15-ish years ago, and if the movie interests you enough then go back and reread it afterwards.

If people who have seen it are saying it is geared towards fans of the book, then obviously you should read it again. As someone I know who hasn't read it said after seeing the trailer, "I have no idea what's going on except that Batman is in it".

Don't read it. I don't care how good the movie is or isn't, the book will be a richer, deeper experience. Always better to trend up rather than let yourself be disappointed.

Don't re-read it until after you've seen the movie.

I just bought "Watchmen" recently, and it's a fantastic read. But it's a sprawling story and, quite honestly, I don't see how the movie could possibly do any justice to the book.

So I'm finding myself happy to be reading a great graphic novel, but cringing at the idea that the movie will almost assuredly come nowhere close to the greatness of the GN.

Go into the movie as blind as you are now. Come out of us and give us your gut feeling.

THEN re-read it.

That's my two cents, anyway.

Remember Schroedinger's cat? What you need to do is convert the act of reading the book into a quantum event so that you exist in a superposition of having simultaneously re-read and not re-read the book. You'll have to lock yourself in a steel box with a tiny bit of radioactive substance for this to work, so take your iodine pills.

Interesting thoughts, Jim, about the ways that source material can influence our perceptions of film adaptations. I'm in the situation of knowing Watchmen backwards and forwards myself, since it's a book that I often revisit even if only to read a few passages here and there. Even watching the trailers has been a surreal experience, because I fully realize that I'm filling in the blanks between images, bringing to each flash my own emotional associations with the material in the book. It's not my favorite comic -- or even my favorite Alan Moore comic -- but it's definitely a great and enduring book, and the fact that Snyder seems to be striving for a relatively faithful adaptation means that those who love the book will recognize a lot of what they love onscreen. I have a weird feeling I'll enjoy the movie even if it's not much good, because I'll be bringing to it so much of a book that I love. So I'd say, for the sake of objectivity, you're much better off watching the movie before revisiting the comic. It'll be an interesting experience for those of us who can't escape the comic's influence on our viewing, but I for one am really interested to read a more unbiased take.

This is an interesting dilemma. You can either reacquaint yourself with the comic and, perhaps, find a new appreciation of it coming back after a decade or so of living and experiencing other things and then be unduly influenced when watching the film. Or you could watch the film, the film could either find you in good or bad spirits, and then would you even want to read it again? Could you perhaps be moved by the experience and want to revisit the source? I'd say it would depend on the quality of the film, something I hold in doubt. Surely the technical credits will be up to snuff but the nuts and bolts of craft is something I usually appreciate after an emotionally engaging film experience. "Faces" still gets me and the run and gun style of the shooting is a part of it for me, something I can appreciate more because of the emotion, because it is the film. All the effects and explosions that will be on for Watchmen would, if there is a lack of emotion, not be worth the gigabytes off memory on the computer used to render them. I had a similar dilemma with No Country for Old Men. I knew it was a novel. I also had friends who read the novel and were very excited to see the film. They recommended it to me but I didn't want to have the story ruined for me, even though early posts that "tried" not to reveal too much spoke of the ending and how baffling it was and I was able to glean "oh, the hero probably dies suddenly and offscreen" (a little like how Ebert tried and failed to discuss the ending of Magnolia without revealing what happened, simply that it was of 'biblical proportions', my mind flashed to the poster with the frog sitting on a magnolia flower and 'frogs from the sky' popped into my head and I thought gosh darnnit, still loved it though) But after having seen No Country and having loved it wholly and completely I haven't gone back to read the book. Really I have no interest. I'm sure its a worthwhile reading experience and I trust the opinions of those who recommended it but I had the powerful experience of the story, it will remain that way for me, and I'm not sure of what value it would be too read the book, since I've heard it is very faithful to the material. So meandering eventually into my point I would say that part of this may have to do with the disgusting attention to detail the Watchmen film purports to have. Is it an artful expression of the material, has Synder found himself, his perspective, his voice, within the pages of the comic? Or is this the penultimate work of the Fan? Is this the final answer to what comic book fans have long been hoping for, to see the works they love so dearly rendered on screen with complete attention to detail? I fear that's what the movie ultimately will be and it will be a detriment to it. A film is not a comic. An artist cannot be a sycophant. There must be a process of adaptation and I fear of the Fan mentality that would sacrifice interpretation for ensuring that the big blue naked man, Dr. Manhattan if you were wondering, is the right shade of azure (if that is the shade, I don't know I'm colorblind with particulars). It's this mentality that I fear to crop up in genre entertainments like this, especially horror films whose leading directors seem to be little more than fanboys who need the right shade of blood at the sacrifice of an engaging story because if its a work of a fan it will be lacking artistry, the fan is their to appreciate, at some point, if the fan is making the film, he needs to become the artist and make decisions based not on kneeling at the altar but of the artist himself. I don't fear of the film being simply an almost shot by shot rendering of the comic book because, frankly, that's the best I could hope for for the film. Nor am I afraid of not liking it and having months of internet posts to see and avoid on debates regarding the film, most of which will be conducted by fanboys, most of which will have little to absolutely no critical sense about them. There is also another hidden conceit in adaptations of comics that I marvel at a bit. Its a self consciousness: comic book fans want the object of their love and devotion to be mainstream, to be pulling in big numbers, to be relevant. Comics hit the ceiling in the 1940's, the Golden Age, when sales figures were estimated to be in the hundreds of millions monthly, that's each month. On top of that it was popular to trade the books with friends, pre-internet piracy of a sort having no effect on enormous sales figures. Today a book would be a big hit to sell a hundred thousand issues, relatively speaking not big numbers. So then technology catches up with the superhero and we can bring these big special effects extravaganzas to the screen in all their video game looking glory (damn CGI, up with animatronics!) and with them a shot at legitimacy. Comic book nerds can now point to the 600 million dollar domestic gross of The Dark Knight and say "You see! This is the interpretation of Batman we've been wanting you to see. Not the Burton nonsense (Batman doesn't kill) not Adam West doing the Bat-tusi (say what you will that show was hilarious and it was meant to be, you'd be surprised at people who think it's insulting to the character...nerds) It's dark! It's gloomy! That means its deep right?...RIGHT!?!?!) The answer is not necessarily. If you love something you don't need anything else but the thing. You might have an interest in seeing an adaptation in another medium but shouldn't the adaptation always be subservient to the thing you love? Shouldn't it not matter so much if the movie is any good because the book exists? Unless your self-conscious about the supermen in the tights. Unless you need this justification of box office success to prove your love's worth. Most cool comic book fans, yes I'm making a value call here, will read interesting works by good writers and artists. They can read Ex Machina or Scott Pilgrim or Starman or Sandman, appreciate the artistry and story telling, love seeing the medium used to its potential, and move on. They don't need to preorder issue #898 of Amazing this or Incredible that because the monthly titles are little better than soap operas feeding on themselves, extolling the continuity of the characters, seeing them interact, it's its own reward in a strange way and utterly unfulfilling. Comics are an art. Film is an art. To adapt one from the other you must employ artistry, not fanaticism.

Don't re-read it.

I fell in love with the book when it came out in the 80s, and I'm massively psyched for the film adaptation, but I think if you re-read it you'll experience the same thing you did when you saw The Shining.

After you see it, jot down your thoughts for your review, and then re-read it.

Do I get that right - from all the buzz from fans and the like having seen previews -, Zach Snyder again did nothing more than put motion onto existing storyboards? Is he really that bad a director, one who can best be described as a commercial illustrator, someone putting simple drawings beside explanatory text?

Ah well, probably I am wrong in thinking a director should come up with a halfway sensible interpretation of material and apply other peoples originals to his own themes. Most moviegoers nowadays seem to want nothing more than celebrity faces, bling and woom attached to what the already know ...

Jim,

I'll join the chorus. Watch, then read, then (maybe) watch again. The fact that there's an extended cut promised, containing (as I understand it) a loosely connected sub-story may mean you'll want to wait to re-read the comic until after you see that on DVD. Or maybe not, if you're not going to view the extended DVD.

The Watchman comic is a sprawling interconnected thing of a thing where the story, plot, sub-plots, characters, and the medium itself are kind of like an island ecosystem. Readers are able to take advantage of the ability to flip pages back and forth to interpret and reinterpret these connections. Movie goers won't have this option.

So, for a reviewer of this movie, I'd say see the movie first. From a film reviewer I want a review of the film--where it works and where it doesn't work as a movie. After that, I'd be happy to see additional, separate, discussion of how it works as an adaptation.

I started to re-read it this week and then stopped ... I decided it was just going to cause to be overly critical of the movie.

I agree with you on MDB ... and I had that exact experience with "Contact" as well. Watching the movie, I was mesmerized. Thought it was tremendous filmmaking, even though I had a couple of quibbles with the plot.

I then went and read Sagan's book. All of my quibbles were gone, and the book blew away the movie. It's a profound philosophical discussion, more than anything.

what's great about the comic is that it's a comic,
it uses the comic medium to tell a story that's depth and meaning only come out in multiple readings and intense scrutiny. many of these qualities such as backround detail and panel layout are simply impossible to translate into another medium. they only work if you have the time to look at and real a visual story at your own pace.
the greatness of watchmen is in the way the story is told, not the story itself. that's not to say that the story isn't good, it is, it's very good. it's just not great.
it's possible the movie will capture the goodness of the story, it may have a greatness of it's own. but it, will, not, have the greatness of the comic. that's not even getting into whether or not a person thinks that zach snyder can make a good movie anyway.
so my advise to you is if you want to enjoy the movie, don't re-read the comic first, you will almost certainly be disapointed. but, if you are able to watch the movie without the book being fresh in your mind, it might work.
my guess is that it's gonna suck either way.

Jim, don't re-read it yet.

Watchmen is my favorite book - ever. And yes, I'm fairly well read. I've probably read it a dozen times, starting with the comics as the came out (I was 10). I've also read countless criticism and analysis of the book - it was the first thing I looked for the first time I ever got on the internet via Gopher, circa 1992. I probably have Watchmen as saturated in my brain as anyone could.

And yet, I chose to not re-read it after finding out they were finally making a movie. I might know the book inside and out but I want to forget it as much as possible so that the movie is a unique experience. I don't want to find myself picking it apart scene by scene. That's a recipe for disaster. I made the mistake of re-reading V for Vendetta right before the movie came out. I'd read it a half dozen times before but getting so familiar with it again on the eve of seeing the movie led to me ripping the movie apart in my head in the first few minutes. I honestly have no idea if they made a good movie or not because I was way too close to the source material when I saw it. All I know is that it was NOT the book (like it ever could be). I ruined my opportunity to judge the movie as what it was - an ADAPTATION.

After my disastrous experience with V for Vendetta, I made a pact with myself to not read a book before seeing the movie unless I gave myself an 18 month gap between so I would have ample time to forget the details. Remembering the plot and the outcome is one thing, but it's not fair to the film if you are comparing it to all those things that are unique about prose or, in this case, the comic book format. You can't replicate prose on the screen. The same goes for comics. Sure, comics are a close cousin to film, but there are still plenty of things that can be done in comics that can't be done on film, and Watchmen takes advantage of what is unique to the comic book medium more than any other comic I've seen. Will the "Fearful Symmetry" chapter from the book the film be shot and edited symmetrically like it is in the book? Would anybody even notice? And could it even carry the symbolism that is does in the book? Probably not, but I don't want details like that to distract me from the experience of the movie.

Don't re-read it yet. Wait. Then devour the book again. And then treat us by writing about it.

My instinct is to always experience the original first. With an adaptation, one version will almost inevitably "spoil" the other in some way, so go to the classic and experience that fresh and just hope that the adaptation is sufficient for you to enjoy that as well. It'd be tragic, in my mind, to not like an adaptation and let that spoil your appreciation of something you may otherwise love--this is one of the reasons I really want to avoid watching Revolutionary Road, for instance, as I haven't read the book yet.

I think it's very difficult to compare different art forms with one another, because every adaptation comes with changes and new ways of telling the story of it's source material. There are always going to be limitations when the art is converted into another medium, you just have to learn to accept the specific assets and drawbacks of such an undertaking.

If you have read the book, you already envisioned it with your imagination. If you haven't read the book, the vision of the adaptation is going to prejudice your mind.

There's a local sports radio host who's fond of saying "Watch the Damn Game." I say watch the film, Jim, and you can always reread it after. Let the film turn you on or off on its own merits, and if something doesn't feel right, revisit the graphic novel as you revisited Revolutionary Road.

I'm quite tempted to read the story beforehand (never read it before), but I'm waiting impatiently to see what Snyder is capable of.

I'd see the movie to provide an angle that goes against the fanboys. Then I'd read the book. Then see the movie again (if you still care enough at that point). Then compare your two responses for more insight.

I read Watchmen about the same time as you did and have about as much memory. Maybe some will come back, but movies should be reviewed as movies, not as an adaptation of anything else.

As for previous knowlege in general, it reminds me of my problems with I'm Not There: The more you know about Bob Dylan, the more distracting from the movie it is. Better to go in clean. Thought the movie was an interesting failure, but it at least failed trying to do something different.

Personally, I agree with your first instinct. Try to watch the movie as its own work and forget, if possible, the original work. I've been resisting the urge to go back and read The Watchmen again, myself.

In this entry, you make reference to a lot of adaptations that fall short. I'm curious to know which adaptations you think were successful? Do you lean more toward those adaptations that somehow translate the same strengths between two different media (I can't think of an example of what this might be)? Or do adaptations succeed when they've come to be their own animal as it were (Rashomon or Adaptation, for example)?

I also think you should wait till you've seen the movie. I too read Watchmen years ago and remember almost nothing about it. I think what will happen will be very similar to what happened to me a few years ago when I saw The Lord of the Rings.
I read the LOTR trilogy when I was 19 years old. It was at the time an instant favorite which, in 1977, seemed inconceivable as a motion picture. I drew pictures of my favorite characters and moments from the book - drawings I wish I'd kept - but gave them away to an avid fan. Years passed and it became a fuzzy memory of wizards and hobbits.
When I finally saw the premiere of the first film I was stunned. There, up on the screen was the book, memories of how I imagined it flooding back to me. There were moments I could swear I had sketched in the same way. Were these enhanced memories, distorted by what was onscreen, or did Peter Jackson and his production team just nail it?
I picked up a copy of the trilogy and began reading it to set my mind straight. I was curiously disappointed, not by the accuracy of the adaptation, (it was pretty spot on) but by how tediously long and dull some of the chapters were. Jackson injected an energy and passion for the material that was parallel to my youthful enthusiasm for it. I was amazed at the herculean task of adapting such a long and detailed epic into an enthralling film trilogy, and while reading it anew, understood why parts were excised or changed.
I believe successful 2-hour film adaptations capture the essence of the material, like a fond memory, or a photo album. I know that Zack Snyder put a lot of his own passion for the graphic novel into his Watchmen. This is a film made by a serious fan. Perhaps we'll get his impression of it and it will ring true to our memories of what we liked about it. I would rather have that feeling when seeing it than having a fresh, detailed comparison going on in my head.
I may actually appreciate the film more if I read the comic book/graphic novel after seeing the film, knowing how complex it can be to get it right.

I see your dilemma. In order to fully enjoy the movie it might be better to freshen up on the comic first, so you can discuss among fellow readers how cool (or not) it was to see this or that being included on screen.

As a critic, I see where watching the movie cold would be more appropirate for judging the adaptation as an actual film. Personally, I say go ahead and read it again because most critics compare the film to the book anyway. The movie should still get some kind of score on how it well it adapted its source material.

I find it very unlikely the ending will be the same, and it would probably get a bad laugh if it was, probably the only way it would work is if it was a hand drawn animation film. I look forward to the movie not as a fan of the book so much as a fan of alternate history movies, which there aren't a lot of.

The movie should stand on its own. I wouldn't read the comic beforehand. If it's sitting out and tempting you, shove it into the back of the bookcase. Out of sight, out of mind.

Twenty five years ago, I made the mistake of rereading Frank Herbert's Dune before the David Lynch adaptation premiered. Seeing the film made me go practically out of my mind with anger; I don't think I've ever hated a movie as much as I did three minutes after the house lights came back on.

I've since come to appreciate Lynch's vision of the "property," especially in its production design and other technical aspects. It still stands, in my opinion, as a badly flawed adaptation of the Herbert novel, but I also think it's a pretty interesting movie in its own right. I'm fairly certain the refreshed acquaintance with the novel sent me into the theater with a lot of preconceptions that Mr. Lynch wasn't necessarily interested in fulfilling. I'm also pretty sure that that's my problem, not his.

I would advise you NOT to reread Watchmen before seeing the film, for all the reasons you and others have previously mentioned. Go into it as fresh as possible, and take it on its own terms -- hopefully, you'll have a great time with it!

I would say don't read it.

This sort of thing can go either way, but I'll take a recent example from my movie viewing to illustrate my choice.

This week I'm going to force myself to sit down and watch "Atonement". I'm doing this basically because I like having seen all of the films nominated for best picture. However, I'm very afraid. I read the book about three years ago, and liked it very much. McEwan's novel is one of the most truly "literary" books I've ever read. I doubt that it's essence can be transposed to the big screen. And, since I rarely read a book twice, I'd rather keep my experience pure.

I know that this experience doesn't closely correlate to your own, but I guess my point is that you are so far removed from the source material, that it will be easier to see the movie on it's own terms.

I can only hope and pray that hollywood never gets it's hands on Jeffrey Eugenides' "Middlesex".

Jim, just read the damn thing.

As I understand it from IMDb.com, Alan Moore has dissociated himself from the project, which is not surprising because he seems to be one of those "arty" writers who takes his job seriously. I don't blame him - just look at the history of films that have adapted his work (From Hell, which is more like a guilty pleasure, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V For Vendetta).

Watchmen is a piece of meta-literature - it is as much about its story as it is about the process of telling a story. It is also deeply rooted in the context of comic storytelling. These are perspectives that are unlikely going to be represented by "the visionary director that brought you 300".

The safe bet is to re-read the book. While you are reading the words, imagine a literal interpretation of how someone might adapt the pictures from the book into a film. Chances are that experience will be more fulfilling than actually watching the movie. I might be wrong, but you should always account for any observed trends.

A confession: I am NOT a huge fan of graphic novels. I am a movie geek. That being said, I have not anticipated a graphic novel adaptation this much since SIN CITY (2005). This film looks like that one crossed with a FANTASTIC FOUR parody. I would only reread the book if you have the time before 3/6. Otherwise, wait till you've seen the film... I finished FEAR & LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS the day I first saw the movie. Same with REQUIEM FOR A DREAM. In the case of FIGHT CLUB, I'd ironically read all but the final two chapters before seeing the film - which turned out to be rather different... Ah well.

I reread the graphic novel about a month ago after not having reread the series for the 20 + years following my purchase of each Watchmen issue as it came out. I was captivated by the material all over again. I've also viewed the Watchmen Motion Comic adaptations available on iTunes and elsewhere. I have been trying to loan either the graphic novel or the motion comics to anyone likely to see the film, before the film comes out. I have high hopes for the film and nothing I've seen or read of it so far has dampened my enthusiasm. I think the film will do very well, and I hope folks have a chance to read the original work before the the film becomes the de facto standard for the characters and story.

Watch it without re-reading.

I watched the Lord of the Rings without going back to the books and only picked them up again after I'd seen all three movies. It helped give it its own experience.

On the other hand, I've seen every Harry Potter movie having read the book ahead of time (and sometimes, fairly close to when I saw the movie). I thought of all of them as adaptations, not works that stood on their own.

Having just watched the BBC miniseries State of Play, I know that they movie based on it will disappoint, because I'll constantly be comparing it to the version I'd just watched. But eventually the movie with be added to my Netflix list, it will make its way up the queue, and by the time I watch it, the story is going to be a little more fresh.

(Yeesh. I started writing this when there were four comments, hit "preview," and now there's 37! But eh, here's my two cents...)

I admit I only read Watchmen after the first trailer came out last year, when so many people were telling me I should read it before I see the movie. I agreed I should, but it was sort of the opposite situation for me -- I didn't want the experience of watching the movie first to cloud the experience of reading the comic. On top of that, I watched Sin City and 300 before reading the comics they were based off, enjoyed both of them greatly, but wondered if I would have appreciated them more if I was familiar with the books they were translated from going in. So with Watchmen, I decided I wanted that touchstone to refer to.

I think that's what it basically comes down to -- how do you want to set up your experience? Do you want to watch the film in terms of how well it succeeds as a translation, or how well it works as a film on its own terms? Since the very idea of the film is based on it being as close to a direct translation to the comic as possible, I'm more curious about the former.

After reading the book, my anticipation for the movie predictably heightened, but it's more out of a... clinical curiosity, I suppose you could call it. Many people have said it's "unfilmable," and after reading it myself, I kind of agree. I'll avoid spoilers here (or avoid possibly bringing up memories of spoilers I guess?) but there are certain passages in the comic that seem impossible to translate to film literally (that is, panel-for-panel) and have them work the same way they do in the comic (and without having the movie feel like a slide-show). So more than anything, I'm just curious to see how Snyder solves those problems.

It's also an odd situation since, as Brandon mentioned, they've already announced there will be an "ubercut" on DVD that'll add about an hour's worth of extra content to the movie, including the animated "Tales of the Black Freighter" sequences edited in. So in a way, this theatrical cut kind of feels like an advanced preview of what the real Watchmen movie will be a few months later... which just adds a whole other level of curiosity for me. Will the shorter version actually work better as a film experience than the longer cut? Will the longer cut be "better" just because it has more of the comic in it? And so on...

Don't re-read them. I'm not very good at keeping adaptations separate. If I read and love a book first, no matter how good the move is it never seems good enough. If I see the movie first and love it, and then read the book, I can love the book without losing appreciation for the film.

If the movie is even decent, specific memories of the book will come back, and re-reading them again afterward should be a pleasure.

Don't re-read. Watch.

Snyder's "300" did some nice tricks to transpose Miller's static images into motion, but other than that, it wasn't a great film. Neither was "Sin City" which was static to the point of slavishness. Let's not even speak of "The Spirit." But as Moore and Gibbons already did the story-board for a "Watchmen" movie, Snyder has to really ignore their work to screw it up.

We shall see.

Anyway, it works well for the format it's in now, and the Snyder is a separate entity. Who was the author who, when told the movies had ruined his book, went to his book-shelf and said: "Nope, it looks fine to me."

Paul Haggis did the adaptation of "Casino Royale." Remember the Billy Wilder counter-argument to "You're only as good as your last movie?"

For me, the name that tells me the movie's going to stink is Akiva Goldsman. There's not a script of his I have ever liked. There is no "best." And he's the most popular guy in town.

JE: I've liked some of the things Haggis has worked on (credited or uncredited -- "Flags of Our Fathers" to "Casino Royale"), but there's usually at least one egregiously overbaked moment that is unmistakably, ruinously Haggisian. Akiva Goldsman is widely reviled among writers, who openly wonder how he keeps working: "Batman Forever," "Batman & Robin," "Lost in Space," "A Beautiful Mind," "Constantine," "I, Robot," "Cinderella Man," "The Da Vinci Code"...

As a comic book fan and reviewer and film fan and reviewer, I'm inclined to first ask what you want to get out of the film... do you want to view the film as a film with as freshest eyes possible? Or do you want to measure how successful the movie adapts and diverts from the source. I think if your intent is the latter, you can do so rereading the source even after viewing.

With regards to the quality of the film, a fellow comic book reviewer said to me in an email discussion recently:

'I've never felt you could make a "great" movie out of Watchmen, only, at best, a good one (since so much of its greatness is unique to its medium). But there's enough good story at its core that I'm hopeful we'll hit that "good" level.'

Even if Watchmen does make for a successful movie viewing experience, it will be a much different experience than the comic. A film like High Fidelity was just as brilliant a film as it was a book, despite it's modifications, so it can be done.

All: Thanks much for the advice. OK, here's my plan: I'm going to (re-)read just a little ways into "Watchmen," to get a feel for the tone and the visuals and the world in which it takes place. No more than about 1/4 of it -- maybe considerably less. Then, with a better idea of what has been adapted, I'll see the movie, then read the whole novel. That's the best balance I can come up with between having a feel for the source and still watching the movie afresh...

Jim, if you can put "Watchmen" down after reading a mere first quarter, or less, you're a stronger person than the rest of us...

JE: I'm gonna try! We'll see if I succeed...

If you want to re-read the book and have a sort of light version of the story, you can do it in a day and a half. If you want to invest time in looking at each little picture and looking for all the neat little hidden messages that reveal plot points better than any dialogue, you will need to grab the online annotations and dedicate a good hour per chapter just to begin to grasp the story. This book uses cinematic language and techniques you will recognize, but, like Kubrick, you need to re-watch to take it all in and understand it more.

Split the difference.

Read a copy of the "Watchtower" just beforehand.

My policy, both personally and professionally, is to avoid reading a novel (or a similar work) when I know an adaptation is underway, for the very reasons you explicated. And I have been known to break my policy for any number of reasons, but mostly when it comes to re-reading material I already read once long ago. (I re-read each of the "Lord of the Rings" volumes about six month before the respective films came out.) It is hard to sort it out the experiences, the anticipations and expectations. For the record, I re-read "Watchmen" a few months ago, the first time since I first read the original collected work back in the eighties. But I'm also quite interested in the art of adaptation. I remember when James Ellroy went on the publicity tour for the film of "LA Confidential" with Curtis Hanson and talked about how Hanson reworked the details of the plot to find a way to be true to the stories of his characters. That's the way I like to approach adaptations. Plots are series of events. Stories are about the journeys that characters make, about ideas and emotions and transformations. That's what I try to be responsive to when I see a film adaptation.

JE: Thanks, Sean. I agree: When an adaptation works on its own terms, I don't think you care about whether it sticks to the exact details of the piece it's based upon. "Revolutionary Road," for example, is technically faithful to the dialog and the general structure of the novel (although, for one thing, it fails to put enough emotional emphasis on the Laurel Players' production of "The Petrified Forest" at the beginning), but it misses the essence of the novel by miles. The moments of pre-cognition I have when re-experiencing a forgotten book or movie or piece of music are usually vaguely emotional -- apprehension, expectation, the feeling that something funny or sad or disruptive is about to occur... I know what you mean about the difference between "plots" and "stories" (though I often use the terms interchangeably) -- and those are worthwhile distinctions to keep in mind. But at some point "what happens" can't be separated from everything else, because it's all part of the same experience. When you find yourself talking about a movie's "plot," you're usually doing so because its story didn't work. Ellroy's right, of course: Movie adaptations have always tried to find cinematic ways of transforming the experience of other media from which they've been adapted. "No Country for Old Men" felt like it had taken the book by Cormac McCarthy that I had read and put it in front of my eyes -- but obviously it can't be a page-by-page illustration of the novel. Comics, at least in theory, could be used by filmmakers as storyboards. But would that that really be the most "faithful" way to transform them into movies?

Speaking of The Shining, this string of repeated posts reminds one of "All work and no play..."

JE: That was weird. Something happened to the blog software for Scanners and Roger Ebert's Journal and they just replicated the most recent post all down the page. I thought I saw Lloyd...

I guess you get the best of both worlds. You've already read the book, and liked it, but can see the film, essentially without any baggage and enjoy it (or not) on it's own merits.

If I were you I would just watch the movie.

But since I am me and I haven't read Watchmen even once, I am probably going to read Watchmen before I see it.

K, if you didn't even remember the character of Dr. Manhattan, then why would you even go see this film? You don't deserve to go.

This is an odd case, because I think Snyder should stand on his own and be judged as a director, and not get indirect accolades for a pre-existing classic. But usually I'd advise to always read the source material first - you OWE it to the original author.

If someone felt the need to make a movie version, then, as an artist, they ought to have something more to say apart from the original material, something that can be readily judged on its own merit.

Wait, Jim. As with the Dark Knight fans of this film bring a lot of unacknowledged baggage to their critique. Not reading the comic might be a way of sidestepping that critical open manhole.

Also I hope the 46 postings of Mr. Adkins comments reflect a glitch in the server and not the poster.

was a technical glitch - now I see 50 different posts, not the same posting repeated 50 times.

Okay, Mark Adkins really believed in what he wanted to say...

I read Watchmen for the first time only 3 or 4 months ago in anticipation for the film. I've been reading comics my whole life, my Dad owned a comic book store during my High School years, which is why I think I never got laid, but I never read Watchmen until just recently. It obliterated and rebuilt my childhood in the short time it took me to get from cover to cover. Will I expect the movie to do the same? No.

It's a tough one. Usually I like to see the movie first, then read the novel. Because there's more in the novel...it's richer...deeper...more story sometimes. But in this instance, I'm glad I read the graphic novel first. There was something pure about experiencing it for the first time in the way that it was meant to. I think in a way that will also enrich the movie, because there will be differences, and experiencing those characters coming to life, if done well, will be thrilling in a good way. That's how I felt about "300"...the other Zack Snyder film based on Frank Miller's comic series (I liked the movie more.)

I'm not going to give you an answer. That's just how I felt about it.

I'm not sure I understand the "judge the film on its own merits" argument. Shouldn't you be more worried about judging the graphic novel on its own merits?

JE: Not if I'm planning to write about it as a movie critic. Folks have had 23 years to evaluate the graphic novel on its own merits, before there was any movie to compare it to. Book critics don't often have this problem, since the books are published first. I wonder what the protocol would be for reviewing a novelization. I suppose you'd have to see the movie first, to see what the novelization adds to it -- though in some cases they're written before the movie is finished!

Read the comic within a comic about the marooned man, since it's been cut from the feature, but will be released on video starring Snyder's 300 star Gerard Butler.

Ah, Paul Haggis. Or as my father calls him, Stanley Kramer without the subtlety.

First off, great blog all around. I LOL'd about the naked blue man thing.

I actually haven't read the books, but I am, well.. dark and nerdy if that makes sense. So I don't know why I haven't checked them out already, but certainly don't want to read them right before release and have any sort of expectations.

Personally, I loved 300. It was an orgy of visuals and sounds, with a distinct style. Pure entertainment. Either way, Snyder has a good eye for detail when it comes to artistic style, so the movie will be incredible to watch. Couple this with an interesting storyline that I have yet to enjoy, I'd say my $9 will be well spent :)

JE: "Comics, at least in theory, could be used by filmmakers as storyboards. But would that that really be the most "faithful" way to transform them into movies?"

This is exactly why I don't like the movie adaptation of 300. If filmmakers like Zack Snyder are only interested in the visual aspects and how to translate and animate these immovable images, they only recreate precisely one part of their source material, therefore they don't create something new and original and fail to capture other important aspects of storytelling in general.

I won't remember 300 for being a good movie or faithful visual translation to the graphic novel by Frank Miller but, as Hamid Dabashi from the Columbia University, NY wrote, "This must be the most bizarre mixture of astonishing visual experiment with CGI and sheer political stupidity. If we ever forget what George W. Bush's America felt like, it will take only ten minutes of 300 to remind us.

Just want to touch on sometimes having to see a movie once to clear your preconceptions. This happened to me with Dark Knight. I love the Joker in stories like Arkham Asylum (mostly this one), The Killing Joke, and Dark Knight Returns. Ledger's Joker is not that Joker, despite the fact that Ledger and Nolan supposedly studied at least a couple of those comics. On the first viewing of the film I was disappointed with his interpretation and did not consider myself a fan of the movie.

I've now seen it 3 times total, twice in IMAX, and am contemplating whether to see it again tonight in IMAX, the last day it will be there.

As for Watchmen, I've wondered myself whether I should re-read it now, although I've read it 2-3 times total and know most of the story. In my opinion any non-film critic should certainly read it first because there is no question the source material will be superior, and you'll have a better experience with the book if you don't already know the whole story from the movie. In your case though, see the movie first, and like you said you might remember a lot of it as you see it anyway.

"Comics, at least in theory, could be used by filmmakers as storyboards. But would that that really be the most "faithful" way to transform them into movies?"

Exactly! I think that the idea of using comic panels as storyboards is completely misguided. Because comics are, by nature, a static medium. The best comic book storytellers use that static quality, and the ability to vary the size and shape of panels, to capture moments that best express the dramatic point of the drama, and to guide the reader through the page graphically, leading the eye, slowing or speeding their journey (through the amount of detail in the art or the amount of text in the frame). The sense of time and motion is utterly different. I find the "faithful" adaptation of "Sin City" to be very static: the film's momentum stops dead to watch the next plash panel. (The most cinematically effective scene to my mind in "Sin City" is Tarantino's contribution, a simple and subtle scene in a car where the camera is responsive to the characters and not to reproducing the graphic punch of Miller's visuals.) Sam Raimi and Christopher Nolan are much more adept at translating the comic book iconography to the big screen. Raimi's exhilarating shots of Spidey swinging through New York City delivers a sense of momentum and movement and freedom that comics can only hint at. He evokes the energy and graphic drama of the comics by rethinking the action in fluid film terms.

If I were YOU and I had your old copy of "WATCHMEN" at my side I would start READING IT right away. But as I am not YOU (I am ME), I would just wait for the movie.

For every Harry Potter movie, I see them twice. The first time I'm distracted by noticing every way in which they changed it from the book. The second time, I enjoy it as a movie. I say you definitely should reread Watchmen before the movie comes out.

A particular problem with this adaptation is the seeming gap between Moore and Gibbon's low-key, relatively mimetic approach in the text, and Snyder's (appartently) hyper-stylized, ultra-slick approach as evidenced in the film's trailers. If anything is going to screw you over when it comes to enjoying the film, it'll be breathing in too deeply the graphic novel's atmosphere of everyday mundanity, which can't help but undermine the film's downright silliness in terms of stylistic excess.

(I talked about this at some length in a comments thread over at The House Next Door some months ago:

http://www.thehousenextdooronline.com/2008/10/links-for-day-october-24th-2008.html )

The nagging issue for me then is one of presentation -- or "style", I suppose, though I mean more the overall nature of the story-world and how it is communicated to us ... so both story and storytelling. Earlier comments regarding the difference between "plot" and "story" are getting at something similar, I think -- since they're also about capturing the "feel" or "spirit" of the work, rather than its mere plot-points -- but still don't quite account for the surfaces with which the story and its world are presented to us. (Pursue the address above for more details.)

I actually have a similar problem with Jackson's LotR trilogy: it never fails to surprise me when a claim is made for its accuracy as an adaptation. (Meinert has done the honours above, in this case.) I just don't understand it. Here, films and source seem miles apart to me in everything but design*, and I have difficulty believing that any film adaptation could have captured the "feel" of these books less. Even Ralph Bakshi's abreviated attempt in the '70s seems "truer", despite its many stylistic infelicities. At root, Jackson's bombast is simply antithetical to Tolkien's matter-of-factness, and the films are all big-budget emotional bludgeoning with next to none of the novel's humility. But in the interest of staying on-topic (and not stirring up the pot too much)....

(*Which remains a triumph of carefully researched and astonishingly detailed work on the part of the design team.)

Another comment from The House (from a different thread) that neatly summarises my objections to Snyder's purportedly "visionary" approach:

"It's possible to adapt a graphic novel without putting the whole story in artificial, distracting 'graphic novel' quotes. It would have been nice if somebody had pointed that out to Z.S. The new Watchmen trailer is going to play for people who haven't read the book the same way The Spirit trailer played for every sentient being on Earth."

Seems apt to me.

What this all boils down to: I'd leave plenty of room between the comic and the film before going to see this sucker. The deeper you are in Moore and Gibbon's world, the dorkier Zach Snyder's feels. It's been months since I finished reading Watchmen (just about the same time the big trailer push began, actually) and I feel much less hostile towards the advertising campaign now than I did then. My memories are foggy enough that the atmosphere of the book doesn't interfere entirely with the hyper-slick badassery of the ads, but clear enough that the event-like excitement the trailers are promoting seems appropriate, since this series really does change the way we look at superheroes and the medium in which they most flourish.

I’m an artist; classically trained but with a background in Animation. And I basically live in Vancouver where they shot they “Watchmen”. I even had to navigate around the production crew at times when a shoot was underway and I was trying to get home, etc. So I’ve seen some of what appears in the film trailers from a pedestrian point of view, without all the CGI elements to be added later in Post. And that, plus having read the graphic novels, is what informs my point of view. Ie: how I’ve arrived at it.

Imo, Americans can’t film graphic novels the way the English can write them and to a certain degree, film them. Case in point “The Dark Knight” as directed by Christopher Nolan; he’s from London. And even THEN it wasn’t gritty enough for me; as much as I liked it.

What American directors/actors like and admire about the work of graphic novelists, is ironically what a studio will never allow them to film – for it striking too close to home. Moore in particular has a dissident-minded sensibility and there’s a lot of social-commentary in his stuff; which ends up getting watered-down to appease the Studio suits who are just bankers looking to get your butt in a seat.

Ie: go ahead and read the novels again. It’s not going to improve or ruin the film adaptation. It was never possible to do justice to the “Watchmen” unless you did it as a mini-series on a specialty cable network (uncensored content.)

I know the production crew in Vancouver worked hard on it, but from what I’ve seen now in the trailers, it looks like a really expensive episode of Smallville.

"I suppose I was just thinking, 'That'd be a good way to start a comic book: have a famous super-hero found dead.' As the mystery unraveled, we would be led deeper and deeper into the real heart of this super-hero's world, and show a reality that was very different to the general public image of the super-hero." - Alan Moore on the basis for Watchmen.

Reality means grit, real dirt. Not CGI dirt. Remember when the Joker was walking away from the hospital in the “Dark Knight” just before he blew it up? Remember how that felt?

That’s how I always hoped an adaptation of the “Watchmen” would feel. And since it doesn’t, not based on the trailers, why I think it’s best to divorce yourself from the start and just appreciate it as an entity unto itself and judge it on its on terms when you see it. Does it entertain you?

As long as it doesn’t blow chunks the way “the Fantastic Four” did, I’ll be content enough to accept it for what it is – and isn’t. :)

"I suppose you'd have to see the movie first, to see what the novelization adds to it -- though in some cases they're written before the movie is finished!"

In almost all cases. And often the script has changed, or even more often, the filmed version of the movie, by the time the novelization is in production, and so sometimes novelizations can vary quite strongly from the finished movie. (I say this as someone who worked as a book copyeditor, and as a very junior inhouse editor at Avon Books a couple of decades ago, including on a variety of novelizations; this is why, for instance, the "novelization" of Robojox by Joe Haldeman is so different from the finished [quite bad] movie: the movie was revised several times while we had to keep the finished book manuscript sitting for about a year, and there was no budget -- as there almost never is -- to pay for a major rewrite of the novelization.)

Sorry, let me correct my momentarily confused memory: the script was endlessly written and revised by Joe Haldeman; we got someone else to do the novelization, whose name I'll leave out of the story. And the title eventually became "Robot Jox" in the final version.

(Joe Haldeman wrote about the experience of writing his script here.)

http://home.earthlink.net/~haldeman/biolong.html

I agree with Kevin J. Olson's negative reaction to Snyder's name (a la Haggis). The marketing pumps the man as a "visionary director" because he loads his films with masturbatory slo-motion shots. That seems to be his only trick. I hope the movie is good, but wasn't excited by the trailer.

I read the book recently, and agree that its structure makes it very hard to film in a single go. I'd almost compare it to LOST's first season, the way it gradually reveals the backgrounds of each characters. It's definitely an interesting piece, though, and hopefully the film will do it justice.

(And I've heard some very negative thoughts from people who have seen it—not sure if they'd read the comic or not, as I didn't want details since I haven't seen it yet. I'm not passing any judgement myself, but wanted to balance out the rapt anticipation and positive word Jim cited in his post.)

I am going into the Watchmen experience as a total virgin to the story. I have never read the graphic novel - or compilation of comic books - whatever is the proper way to refer to it. I am looking forward to the experience. I will write a review and tell you how I feel.

I was in a similar dilemma whe the Lords of The Rings film was about to hit the theaters. I have read the book when I was fourteen, and excited by the prospect of a film adaptation read it again a couple of months before going to see the movie. There were two reasons for that:

1. I wanted to experience the book, one more final time, without the images of the film coming to my mind and polluting my imagination of the characters and events.

2. I wanted to judge how close to the source material the movie adaptation was.

Well, I think reason number one is a pretty valid one in justifing a read or re-read of the source material before experience the same story in another medium. Almost 8 years have passed since the release of the Fellowship of The Ring, and still today everytime I think about the book's story, Frodo comes in the shape of Elijah Wood and Stryder has the face of Vigo Mortensen; that's a sad collateral effect of book/film adaptations, once you have watch the film they take away your faculty to visually imaging your own world when reading again the book. Reason number two on the other hand is not really that important. You can do that "book vs. film" comparison anytime you want after watching the movie with fresh eyes and mind.

I would read the thing again. I am in the process of reading it for the 10th time, and my g/f is reading it for the first time. It is better to read the book, and get the full pleasure out of it, THEN watch the movie, for the movie will always be but a pale shadow of the literature, and you do not want to have plot of the books ruined by a movie you may or may not like.
I try never to see a movie if I am interested in the book and have not read it yet.

Personally, I just read the book this week, mainly because it's supposed to be a major graphic novel, and I didn't want the movie to ruin it for me. I always strive to separate the movie from its source material, but I wanted to experience the story in its original form, since it is hailed as a landmark of the medium.

So since you've already read it, Jim, you might as well not re-read it. But I did just read Harry Knowles gush over a laughably bad fight scene, so I'm not holding out much hope for the film.

I've read the book a few times, and it seems the movie is shaping up to be pretty different. Better, even.
That said, go ahead and read it if you want. What's the worst that will happen?

I viewed 9 minutes of Watchmen clips pieced together (about 9 or 10 clips total) on YouTube earlier today and my expectations were instantly lowered. Some of it played well enough but other parts made me cringe a bit (think of a slick and glossy slow-motion fight sequence with really bad rock/heavy metal music). Maybe those scenes will work better within the established style and tone of the movie as a whole as it plays out, but I dunno now... Just searched YouTube for the clips again but they appear to have been taken down now.

If your goal was to write a criticism of the book-to-film adaptation, then the book should be read first. However, since (I assume) you want to review the film as its own entity, I say hold off on reading the book until you see the movie. In the case of a work like "Watchmen", it will be pretty much impossible for the movie to even come close to being the book's equal, and being really familiar with the book will probably only heighten your awareness of this. Judge the movie on its own terms, then read the book.

Kind of (but not quite) off the topic, I kind of feel like I want to defend the approach Zack Snyder seems to be taking with his direction. Granted, he's no Scorsese, but by attempting to basically bring the graphic novel to life, maybe even frame-by-frame, he's (a) doing what a lot of fans of the book want, and (b) being faithful to Dave Gibbons' remarkable artwork. While these may not be the loftiest goals, I can't exactly fault them, either. And let's not forget that this kind of approach has worked wonders before, specifically in the case of Robert Rodriguez and "Sin City". Personally, as a fan of the book, I'm pretty excited to see what Snyder puts on the screen.

I saw an early screening of Watchmen last night and I must say, I'd urge you to see it before revisiting the graphic novel. I read it for the first time three years ago, thought it was absolutely brilliant, and never got to read it again before viewing the film. Now, I wouldn't call myself a Zach Snyder fan by any means, but after watching interviews, I admired his urgent enthusiasm for bringing The Watchmen to life.

To avoid any spoilers, I won't go into detail, but sitting through The Watchmen was like doing Calculus. Being such an enormous fan of the book, and having a strangely good memory of the source material, I practically had the book unfolding in the back of my head while in the front I was viewing the bittersweet, occasionally dead on, and often exploitative and wrong interpretation.

Thus, I didn't quite watch a film as much as I dissected it, digested and enjoyed parts and vomited out the rest. This is one movie that I will not be able to assign any star value because it boils down to the depressing maddening fact that it is The Watchmen on screen. It's not so horrendous that I can dismiss it as a hollow shell, laughable, unimportant, and reinforcing of the fact that the book is a stroke of genius. Yet it is not so good that I can copy paste my endless praise that I wrote about the graphic novel onto my review of the film. The to mediums blend and ruin each other, causing me some of the most inner conflict I've ever experienced over a film adaption.

I'll be interested to see what you think of the film, Jim, especially since you will have seen a picture when I endured a mess of emotion and personal connection with a story I am deeply passionate about.

Jim,

I am a big fan of Alan Moore's work, and Watchmen is one of my favorite comics. I also have no intention whatsoever of seeing the movie. One of my many reasons is that it's simply unnecessary. Why watch a film that tries so hard to be the book when you already have the book in the first place?

Coming from that perspective, I would say this: since you must see the film, see it without reading the comic first. The film is Watchmen as filtered through the imagination of one of its readers. I don't see how that could be anything but a disappointment if you've just experienced Watchmen filtered through nobody's imagination but your own.

The movie is a giant storyboard.It is perhaps the most sequential comic book in history.The Treatment wreaks of movie capability.You should read it.Critique it as a film and love the book as literature.More questions(interesting ones) will arise , if you are a post-read viewer.Would you have done so with V for Vendetta? League of extra-ordinary gentlemen? that might prove to be a great answer.I always loved answering with a question.I hope you enjoy it.

p.s. do you respond to these??

Jim, I'm right where you are: I read Watchmen once, around 1996 or '97. I thought it was OK, and today don't really remember much of it, either. I haven't seen or read anything of it, except for the still frame image at the top of your blog. So knowing that, here is my One-Second Movie Review: "Seriously, did I have to see that guy's blue wang?"

JE: "The blue wang, closely related to the blue-footed booby, is native to the Galapagos Islands..."

The big selling point for Watchman the movie is that it stays true to the graphic novel. With that in mind, I say it is preferable to read the graphic novel one more time before seeing the film.