Who Watches the Watchmen?

Me. For over two and a half friggin' hours. I, like a lot of people, left the theatre thinking, "What the heck did I just see?" It's not that it was a bad movie, in fact it was very good, it's just that it was a bit confusing. Right when you thought you knew where the thing was going, it would veer off and spend fifteen minutes exploring some other plot line. Thinking back on it, the movie was really a twenty hour mini-series crammed into a time frame that would allow two showings a night.

The characters are fascinating, the violence is brutal, the special effects are seamlessly integrated into the story, and there are plenty of cultural references for those of us who came of age during the 80's. (Like when the bad guy is explaining his motivations, the elevator music in the background is "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Tears for Fears.) Of particular interest to me was the episodic storytelling style which relates to the stories I'm writing. Each new event that occurs in the movie has some kind of tie-in to previous events and leads to some new event, all while remaining separate. That's the thing I'm trying to capture while still driving towards a crescendo. Watchmen does this very well both on the macro and micro level. In short, if you like this sort of thing then this is the sort of thing you will like.