Review Detail

This one is really brilliant and convinced me that there's something to like about superhero movies other than goofball parodies like Kick Ass.

Living in a country (Germany) where US-style comic books were never ubiquitous, the genre was hit for six when the first over-hyped Nicholson Batman movie was released back in the 90s. In comparison to European comics like "Lucky Luke" and "Asterix" the prejudice was confirmed to many that superhero+movie equals superdumb. Alas, subsequent batman incarnations didn't manage to counter this perception - until Nolen's Dark Knight, that is.

However, having access to this re-graded and re-edited Watchmen I keep watching it again and again. The pacing might be too slow and the runtime too long for the big screen, but the documentary and comic interlacing hits the spot. Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but the mood of the costume heroes looking back on their origins with the embedding in the Nixon era gives this movie depth beyond a pure action flick.

I cannot recommend Watchmen:Midnight 2014 highly enough, just a small points deduction for the lack of an audio commentary which I've come to love from editors like Hal 9000 or Last Survivor.

And one point less enjoyment because "life" seems to consist solely of humans, personally I'd find more than enough reasons to save the planet just for the sake of all the wildlife which doesn't have any part in building hopping malls or oil pipelines as Dr. Manhatten criticises. But then again, this isn't the fault of this edit and the stance is probably true to the comic book source.