That really did look fun. It sounds like this event:
So I was at On Your Bike @ London Bridge on Thursday and I could hear all this screaming and shouting going on. Chap explains that it was the fans premiere of Watchmen and that they had hired out the entire street (underneath London Bridge station) and put in loads of extras playing various roles: holding banners, playing prostitutes (in some racy lingerie), skateboarders, people with ghetto blasters), and then loads of fans queuing up to an entrance with the sign 'Utopia' and American cars trundling down the road. Very cool!
(I've been trawling the thread for some history).
So we finally watched this yesterday, 20-odd years since I read the comic, which I loved. I really don't care how
faithful adaptations are, so I was happy to watch with an open mind.
Mixed feelings. I think it has some brilliant elements but the main concept doesn't really hit any marks. You don't really need this big Bond-on-steroids armageddon story to make any points about human weakness (or whatever subtleties I missed). I think the Batman movies hang together better (well, the first one anyway), not trying to over-egg the pudding.
But the elements are brilliant. Rorschach is nearly as good as on the page, the visuals really worked with Dr Manhattan, and lots of nice ideas about what caped crusaders would actually do in the 'real' world.
My main gripe - as with Sin City - is the graphic violence. You just don't need that level of visceral detail; the scenes where you hear the gunshot, or see the blood seeping away worked much better than e.g. where we see someones hands angle-ground off.
Many blockbusters get this right - Silence of the Lambs, Batman, Bond movies - so why get it so wrong?
So 7/10. Maybe. I think N liked it more (and she never read the comic-book).
