Watchmen

Me and my superhero-movie watching buddy went last night to see Watchmen. I own the book and enjoyed it, although not in the life-changing way that it has affected others who belong to the Church of High Geekery. Like most fluff that I have processed, I remembered parts of it but forgot most of it, to which my friend (who has a better memory than I for most things including this) filled me in on the way to the theater.

It has been getting pretty mixed reviews. All in all, I found it very watchable -- it held my attention for the two and a half hours without any problems. It was a superhero movie, and was about as true to the story as could be expected (while fixing the original awful ending). There were some very, very noticeable fatal flaws though:

1) The violence in it was not only over-the-top, it was unnecessarily graphic and gory. Slow motion leg breaks, cutting the arms off of people, etc. I'm not normally bothered by cartoony violence (i.e. Kill Bill or a slasher movie), but this was so gratuitous that it made both of us turn our head. And I debride abscesses for a living, and my friend slices up eyeballs (oh oh oh oh - 5 points to name the song).

2) The acting, and especially the sex scene, of the girl was just terrible.

most of all, though

3) The music selection was unbelievably awful. We both commented on this as soon as the final credits began to roll over a My Chemical Romance (ugh!) heavy metal (ugh!) cover of "Desolation Row." Vietnam war footage to "Ride of the Valkyries"? How cliched is that? A funeral for a right-wing nearly fascistic superhero set to "Sounds of Silence"? "99 Luftballoons" just thrown randomly in some scene? A fight scene to "All Along the Watchtower"? A flashback to "The Times They Are A-Changin'"? Cliched at best, totally inappropriate at worst. The low point was the aforementioned terrible sex scene set to the original Leonard Cohen version of "Hallelujah." It was almost laughably bad.