Watchmen: Midnight

October 23, 2011 @ 9:29 pm

Firstly I want to say say how disappointed I was with Snyder’s Watchmen. He completely missed the point of the comic and tried to make an ultra-super-look-how-bad-ass-I-am-movie. My brother-in-law loved the movie though and bought me the Ultimate Cut to try and prove how awesome it is. I never watched it.

Now, onto the real review:

Video/Audio quality: Perfect. Nothing looked or sounded off at all. 10/10

Editing: Nearly flawless. Seemed pretty damn seamless. The only noticeable error was a quote title card fading away too fast. I believe it was the quote at the end of “Watchmaker”. On a personal note, I would have enjoyed fading in out between the title cards instead of cutting to/from black, but it didn’t detract from it at all. 9.5/10

Entertainment: Without going into too much of what scenes I liked and didn’t like, I’ll say that there were still a lot of scenes that made me shake my head. I was VERY happy to see the deletion of the opening scene with Nixon and the fight scene in the Comedian’s apartment. As well cutting the overlong prison riot/fight scene was excellent. IMO you could have cut Night Owl swooping out of Archie as well, but that’s my opinion.

I really enjoyed the Under the Hood segments intercut between the chapters. And you stopped that style at the correct point in the edit, letting the second half play out naturally.

I still feel that Watchmen is pretty terrible, but at least I was able to get through the whole movie and after two hours found myself just watching it without my inner commentary.

7/10 (original theatrical cut was 1/10)

Presentation: I loved the scene selections. Makes complete sense to break it up by chapters. 10/10

Summary: Technical quality was superb. Even though I still hate the movie, I hate this one way less.

review posted 12 August 2011 in the forum

I really enjoyed this edit. The editing together of under the hood and the extended cut did indeed feel more like the graphic novel, and i appreciated the changes in music, although only the opening credits felt weaker to me. I really liked Bob Dylan there, but maybe I'm alone in this. Regardless, great choice using Phillip Glass and his haunting music.

The film felt better fleshed out, and I didn't find the headings/cuts to under the hood too distracting. The intermission felt unnecessary though. I just fast forwarded it, as others may do as well. We're used to long dvd's (aka lord of the rings) and I also found it odd that the under the hood segments abruptly ended. Did you try spreading them across the whole film? Perhaps that was distracting in the climax of the film. Removing the super human feats was also appreciated, and thank you very much for getting rid of the Halleluia sex scene! Talk about unintentional laughs.

One more thing, I would have removed the line after Rorschach says "gotta use the men's room", and silk spectre replies "aww you gotta be kidding me". Bad joke, poor delivery. But that's all. Very enjoyable edit, improved the original. Great work and congrats on Edit of the Month!

I always thought that the "Under the Hood" bonus featurette was the best part of the whole Zack Snyder Watchmen project (along with the opening/now-closing-credits). This cut's choice to integrate that featurette alongside the chapters of the story bring the whole movie closer in line to the comic, which can only be a good thing, adding emotional depth and pathos to a movie that needed them, given how many moving parts there are to the plot. The music, colour grading and sequence of events all add to the film, and the only thing I can hope is that somehow someone manages to integrate the alien invader footage from the TV show into this cut, and then we'll just about have a perfect Watchmen movie. Until then, this one is damn close.

There have been some very detailed reviews of this edit already, so I will try to keep this short.

Does this edit do what it sets out to do? Absolutely! This follows the flow of the book as perfectly as you can get! I loved the edit over all and would highly recommend this for sure!

Subjectively, there are things I could do without, but everyone is going to have there own feelings on things. So if there was anything I would change personally it would be: 1. I don;t think the Black Freighter needs to be in the movie. I think it's more if a distraction and takes away the focus from the main story. 2. The chapter subtitles are not necessary. People who are watching this and not realizing that it's just more closely following a comic wouldn't understand what that is for.

Things I liked a lot: 1. The overall flow of the main narrative is just way better. 2. I also like the addition of the documentary in the movie. It's a nice way to add context to the story. 3. I even enjoyed the addition of the black title cards throughout. 4. The musical changes were great! 5. The general snips that were made were perfect. Not too much and not too little. Even the (for lack of a better term) slow-fast-slow-fast fighting has been cut back. That always kind of bothered me in the original cut. I think it works well in 300, but not in this movie.

This edit has been my first encounter with the Watchmen movie. (Before this raises suspicions let's remind that we're required to *own* the original DVD, not to *watch* it!) I'm a big fan of the graphic novel, but my extreme dislike of Zack Snyder's style more than anything made me avoid the movie until now. Won't waste much space in my opinions on the non-edit aspects on it other than saying that I found it just as ugly and mediocre as I expected from its director, liked some bits, disliked others, but the worst thing was not what was left out or the changed ending, but Snyder's approach with the music video/commercial aesthetic and all that goddamn slow motion.

Still, reading about this edit's changes, I seem to agree with all of what was cut, and that this is probably much improved over any theatrical cut. I agree that Black Freighter has no real purpose without the squid, I agree that without Under the Hood Hollis Mason seems to be pretty much superfluous. And all what was cut looks like disposable filler, resulting in a well paced and reasonably entertaining edit (I say reasonably because every time I started enjoying the narrative, along came a damn slo-mo shot that ruined everything and annoyed me to no end). Given the circumstances, and as a fan of the graphic novel, I enjoyed it a lot as an edit, if not as a movie.

But, I think more could, and should, have been cut or modified. For starters, I'd like to see the opening credits sequence gone. I understand it has a lot of fans, but to me is an interminably long exercise in Snyderness that not only is unneeded for the narrative but contains a pair of howlers. Silhouette kissing a woman in the middle of a crowded street, in plain sight for everyone, in front of a photographer, in 1945? The Comedian murdering Kennedy, without any ambiguity whatsoever, shown to us even before we know who the Comedian is? Please. The movie would be better served by starting directly with the Comedian's button on the street, just like the source. Also, the Snydermotion should have been fixed or minimized whenever possible, particularly the changes of speed within the same shot. I feel this is possible in most cases. I'd also suggest minimizing distractingly obvious CGI such as Rorschach's grappling hook, and as much of Nixon as possible given that his makeup is a complete joke. And in this case, many scenes that are lifted verbatim from the graphic novel but didn't work as cinema, should go (all through the movie, but I'm thinking particularly of much of the climax in Ozy's lair).

Am I being too harsh? Maybe, in the sense that it's a matter of personal taste about a style I don't like. If you like Snyder, you'll probably love this cut. If you don't like Snyder, I still think it's worth watching, but know how to expect. As for me, I'd love to see a version 2 that at least fixes the slo-mo.

Video and audio quality was good enough, though the video showed a bit too much artifact and obvious compression, even for a 3 hour movie it could look a bit better since it's a DVD9 and bare bones. The editing itself was masterfully done and indetectable.

So I insist, anything bad I can say about this is the fault of Snyder, not Flixcapacitor. Overall, a strong firstling and a recommended edit.