Watchmen: Midnight

Hands down one of the most thoughtful and most enjoyable edits I've seen. I do have to say that this is still not the perfect version for me, but before I get to those quibbles, let's talk about what it does very well.

The first and most obvious point to me is the changing of the music. The Watchmen story is incredibly deep and has a lot of subtlety and layers to it. What Zack Snyder's theatrical cut did was a pretty good representation of the story, but often stripped away the subtlety . This was particularly notable in the use of soundtrack music which 9x out of 10, was incredibly on-the-nose. "Hey, everyone's quiet at a funeral, let's play Sounds of Silence!", etc. Flixcapacitor has replaced these choices with equally-fitting yet more subtle songs, or with score that fits the scene perfectly.

There are a lot of additional narrative edits which limit the "in your face" approach of Snyder as well. While I think Flixcapacitor went a little heavy on the edits of sex and violence, I am thankful he took out most of the egregious "superheroics" that leave you wondering how all these characters came to have superhuman strength (while none of the comic characters have powers except for Dr. Manhattan). Sadly, there's no way to edit out Ozymandias' superhuman feats, but at least they're more limited here.

Now, on to some elements I was more mixed about. Firstly, the Black Freighter animated scenes: I'm not convinced it's a better film with them included. Always the most contentious part of the original story, it seemed rather an indulgence of writer Alan Moore's, but at least you could read through them quickly on the page. In the movie, we're forced to spend those minutes on a tale that looks totally different than the rest of the film, and really only serves to double-down on Ozymandias' theme. It's unnecessary, takes away any subtlety that was there, and adds a lot of time to a film that is already lengthy. Worse yet, despite the placement of the scenes being artful, it really does suck the momentum out of a story which is already slower in this edit for the more limited use of sex and violence. I would prefer a version without these scenes... they just work better in a comic than in a film.

The other big narrative addition is the Under the Hood 'documentary' scenes. These aren't the most scintillating, and Stephen McHattie's performance as Hollis can drag a bit in these, but I do think the added background about the Minutemen is welcome. They're also good in paying off Holis and Janet, who would be minor characters, and giving more motivation for Nite Owl's decisions at the end of the film. On the other hand, I don't really see the need to edit out all the mentions of "The Watchmen" and associated scenes. However, the movie is already struggling with length and I can't say I missed a specific scene. So overall the narrative is much improved and enriched in this edit.

Finally, as others have noted, the credit sequence at the end ultimately didn't work for me. While I appreciate it as a kind of "nostalgic review" of the story, I think it's much better served by its original intentions. It piques our interest in this group of long-ago heroes, tells us that they weren't the cheesy "gosh golly" 4-color heroes of comic strips, and transitions from the downfall of that era into our "modern" era of the 1980s. While the original Dylan song is totally guilty of being on the nose for the scene, it's also pretty perfect. I think the Smashing Pumpkins song also works incredibly well, and fits the look and tone of the film better, though. So I could deal with either song, but I'd prefer the credit sequence to be an actual opening credit sequence.... probably best placed just less than 5 minutes in, after Rorscach's opening investigation scene that ends with him saying "Somebody knows..." and looking at the picture of the Minutemen...then cut to the black and white credits of said Minutemen.

Technically, this edit is nearly flawless, with incredible audio and video quality. The edits are extremely well done, with subtle fades and transitions, both audio and visual, and I think the title cards fit well. There was only one jarring edit for me, which was in the conversation Dr. Manhattan has with Silk Spectre on Mars. When editing that scene together, it was apparent that some time was supposed to have passed in the middle, but they're standing in the same place and there was just a fade to black and a fade back up. It's very odd, and I think needed an insert scene, maybe just a few seconds of people moving around NYC and Ozymandias watching monitors or something like that. The edit was clearly made to bring their conversation together, like the comic, which is in the end, better. Overall, this would probably best be labelled "the comic book loyalist version", as it is the closest we'll ever get to that. Personally, I'm okay with small changes to even that phenomenal story, in acknowledgement that film is a different medium. But this is definitely a better version than what Snyder put together, and it replaces the original on my virtual Blu-Ray shelf.

Absolutely spectacular stuff. The 215 minute running time is perfect for the Watchmen story, the tone and structure are captured flawlessly, and you've managed to pull off the definitive film version of the brilliant graphic novel with flying colors. Jaw-droppingly good.

I have never seen the original but I LOVE this edit!

Watchmen: Midnight is masterfully done. The A/V quality isn't perfect, but this edit has breathed new life into this movie for me. Everything that needs to be said has been said already. If you love Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's masterpiece, this is the version for you.

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.