[jeffgrant]

Friend of mine just posted his thoughts on the movie, after just seeing the midnight showing (in NY):

Just got back from the midnight showing and I have quite a lot on my mind. There are still quite a few things I need to digest, but I can say some things for sure...

First off, if you haven't read the graphic novel, don't see this movie. I wouldn't say that it's a bad movie, but compared to the novel, the experience you get from this movie is terrible. All of the people I saw the movie with had never read the novel before and all of them loathed the movie. The transliteration just does not translate to the screen the way Snyder did it, and I'll get to his **** momentarily. Honestly, don't ruin a great graphic novel for yourself by predisposing yourself to the story in this form. You'd really be doing yourself a disservice to be turned off to this incredible story by seeing this movie.

As for the movie itself, you could see Snyder's fingerprints all over it. Every action scene was slown down and overdramatized, while the same was done for much of the dialogue as well. The flow of the movie was terrible, and while that's something I was personally able to overlook because of my appreciation of the story's nuances, it isn't for the casual moviegoer.

The worst aspect of the movie, though, far and away, was the music selection. I can't describe how many scenes were ruined due to terrible background music, completely destroying the intended tone of the scene. Whoever was in charge of music for this movie needs to be shot. Maybe I'm more aware of this stuff after reading Tucker's blog, but I can't put into words how negative of an impact the music had on the movie for me. You'll cringe multiple times.

When you get past that stuff, and I know it's saying a lot, it was quite a good movie, but that has pretty much everything to do with the source material and nothing to do with anything else.

On the bright side, Haley as Rorschach was outstanding - he truly embodied the character and most every scene with Rorschach was great (and they kept almost all of his scenes in the movie). Akerman as Laurie exceeded expectations, but that's only because there were no expectations for her. The rest of the cast was serviceable, even Veidt, in spite of one of the worst casting decisions I've ever seen.

The changes to the storyline at the end of the movie are acceptable, given no mention of Shea throughout the movie (trust me, it was long enough as it is). Honestly, I think a few scenes could've been cut out. Almost everything from the novel was put to film, but the nuance was lost amidst terrible execution and flow, while it was virtually impossible for anyone who hadn't read the story before to keep up with the endless onslaught of characters.

Overall, terrible execution and direction were redeemed by an incredible story, one great performance, and a few serviceable ones. I guess I can find some relief in knowing that Snyder didn't rewrite the story; it's just a shame he did such a piss poor job in executing it.