Who's Watched the Watchmen?

**** SPOILER FREE ****I have Saw it last night with my wife.A little background: Watchmen was bought for me in 1989. I wasn't a huge comic book fan - much more fantasy and sci-fi - but the graphic novel presentation was fantastic, and I was quickly hooked. I can't say how many times I have read it since, or how many hours (days?) I have spent deconstructing it with friends. My wife wrote a critical analysis of it as part of her BA (or MA, can't remember which), long before we met.Reviews by fanbois have been somewhat polarised, so I was rather nervous entering the cinema - I ws dreading being bored or appalled by the film. So what did I think...?I cannot begin to express just how much I loved it on first viewing. I was sucked in from the opening frames and did not come for breath until the end. I was IN the comic. The characters were alive around me. The joy at seeing the frames come to life was immense. Now, I must admit that being so overwhelmed by the experience means that I'm in no real position to express an objective opinion on the piece as a whole. It was impossible to distinguish comic from screen, so to all those naysayers who say that just about all of Moore's depths of satire were lost, I say BULLSHIT, but I cannot promise that I wasn't simply projecting my knowledge of the literature into the cinemtaic experience. BUT if the film enabled me to do this, then what more can I ask? Would someone with no knowledge of the comic come away from the film with a full appreciation of Moore's ideas? Not a hope. But neither did I, on just one reading of the comic...The new ending? It has some possible flaws that have been mentioned around if you dig into it a bit, but on the whole it worked well. I'll say more if we get to spoilers. Other issues: there were some weak deliveries at times, and some lines that needed a tweak to sound more natural, but I would be hard pressed to tell you where these occured. I'm sure a 2nd and 3rd viewing will make me more critical. But for now, I am still wallowing in the delight of last night's experience.

But of course not actually delivered by Rorschach in the comic Anywy, believe me when I say that Jackie Earle Haley IS Rorschach. It is incredible. And Rorschach's line for me is his last, the very simple "DO IT!" , and god does Jackie deliver...

That's what I like about the UK 18 rating compared with the US R rating. It means we don't have to put up with the above Interestingly, before the film, they were advertising special 18+ only viewings for films of all ratings.