Comic's coming along in between stretches of work and neck induced headaches.

Just saw an advanced screening of Watchmen.

Good News: Rorschach, and the actor who played him, kicked major ass.

Bad News: Everyone else sucked, and sucked hard.

I guess I'm prejudiced because I read the book, but the performances were all flat, like they were just breezing through the script. Revelations that were supposed to be shocking ended up being anti-climactic, in part because they cut out so much of the side story. Basically, the book is just impossible to condense down to movie form, even at 3 hours. There's too much you have to know in advance in order for the answers to the questions that drive the plot to have any weight. I think this lead to the acting coming off as phoned in, since the actors might not have read the book and only knew what they read in the script, thus they didn't understand their characters like they were supposed to. The end result being that the actors didn't sell it and I for one wasn't able to buy it.

Long story short, they should've made it as a 12 part mini-series.

The worst offenders acting-wise were Laurie Juspeczyk (they just call her Laurie Jupiter in the movie), The Comedian and especially Adrian Veidt. His performance in particular during the climactic scenes at the end were just plain wooden. Again, they cut out most of his backstory, so he just came off as Mr. Creepy Guy.

Again, the guy who played Rorschach definitely got him right. He was obsessed with a black-and-white view of justice, damaged, ragged, uncompromising, quick on his feet and just plain psychotic; just the way I like him . His performance, especially during his final scenes, stood out like a sore thumb from the rest of the mediocre acting he was surrounded with.

Plus, the movie does LOOK good, and there's plenty of geeky details for fans to pick out, but that sort of thing is par for the course anymore. Eye-popping effects and gratuitous sex/violence are a dime a dozen, even when they're good. If they just gave a damn more about telling a halfway decent story with all that technology. After all, It's a STORYTELLING medium, Mr. Snyder.

I also noticed that Alan Moore didn't allow his name to be put into the credits, as he is well known for disavowing any filmed versions of his works. Between this and the film version of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I can understand why. The only film of his comics that was any good to me was V for Vendetta, which is strange considering how overhyped the Wachoski Brothers have turned out to be.

Just read that there's going to be a Director's Cut coming out in July, plus the DVD's going to have the Tales Of The Black Freighter side plot as an extra. Will have to wait and see if this redeems the film in mine eyes, though I don't see how it'll fix the flat acting.