Previously Viewed: Watchmen Director's Cut (2009)

Who Watches the Watchmen Director's Cut? If it isn't obvious, the answer is I did. I watched the Watchmen Director's Cut. Now, there was some confusion today as to whether or not a Director's Cut or an extended edition could be considered a new movie. I actually only watched this just for fun as I'd seen Watchmen when it came out in theaters. First day if I recall correctly. But some people said they wanted to hear what I thought of it, so I'm writing this in addition to a new movie later today. So here you go, bonus article! More after the jump.

So for those who don't know, Watchmen is based on a self contained, but very long, comic book of the same name published by DC comics. I actually read the comic in anticipation of the movie first coming out. The characters are separate to any other franchises, so they won't be running into Superman or Batman who inhabit the same fictional world as eachother. In the movie as in the comic, the story begins with one of the few superheros in the world being murdered. The rest of the movie is a nearly page for page, frame for frame recreation of the comic book as the remaining heroes try to solve the mystery of their murdered friend. It's a dark take on the usually lighter genre of superheroes.

The cast of characters is quite large, and so a lot of the movie is spent thoroughly introducing them and fleshing out their personalities and their relationships to each other. It may make the movie quite long, the Director's Cut is nearly 3 hours long, but by the end you certainly wouldn't be able to claim that you didn't know or care about this group of people. Obviously one person may like some characters more than others, but there's a little bit for everyone here.

Rorschach, my personal favorite of the cast

So I guess we're here to talk primarily about the Director's Cut, so lets talk about some of the differences to the original theatrical release. This version of the movie is approximately 26 minutes longer and includes mostly small changes like an added line of dialog here or a few extra frames there. These little additions are peppered throughout the whole movie are are pretty hard to pick out unless you had memorized every scene. Most of the additions are lines that are directly from the 1986 comic book that could be considered slightly inappropriate for a theatrical release today. One such line is spoken by Rorschach questioning the sexuality of one of the other characters. It's little changes like that that would fill the majority of a list if you were to make one. However there is one huge scene added late in the film that shows one of the older heroes throwing some punches and simultaneously reliving his glory days. This scene is brilliant, and it's a shame it was removed from the movie. However I can also understand why it was removed as it has little to do with the main plot, and also the acting job of the thugs he beats on is abysmal at best. A shame really.

Anything else that can be said would go the same for the non-Director's Cut of the film. Beautiful effects, great acting, great dialog, superb cinematography and high paced way over-the-top action. The way they've nearly perfectly converted this classic comic book onto the big screen is simply astonishing. All locals, costumes, scenes and even the actors themselves look like they've jumped right off the page. Excellent movie and as close to a love letter to comic book fans as there could be. The Director's Cut just adds to that to round it out and make it even more faithful to the source material.