Oh no, not another Watchmen Review

Sorry, its the law, if you have a blog you have to express your opinion of Watchmen, its a tradition, or an old charter or something.

Me, I liked it. A lot. I'd watch it again, in fact I'd even pay over £6 (but less than £20) to see it again.

Ok, not much of a review, but this will include a ramble. One is a random outside theory. See I've been reading posts on forums etc about Watchmen, and its interesting how there is divided opinion even amongst those who read the original comic. My theory about this is as follows. I read watchmen years ago, but on seeing the film my knowledge of the greater exploration a comic with no time constraints meant somewhere in the back of my head I had the extra bits of story not covered in the film, and so my enjoyment of the film was augmented by my prior knowledge of the backstory. Those who thought the film was Ok tended to be complaining about how elements of character were lost through their lack of inclusion, which is a fair criticism. Its also why I'd really like to see some reviews from people who are not critics, perhaps like super-heroes but haven't read Watchmen as it would be interesting to see if not knowing the source material does anything.

But this is not what I want to rant about. Indeed if I was going to follow this thread I'd be gushing about how damn lucky we are to get such a good film made of Watchmen (Considering Snyder got presented with a PG-13 script with possibility of franchise). That's the great thing, if it flops at the box office we don't care, in fact hope it does, that way no-one will try and make a half baked sequel.

But I digress before i started. One of the things that is bothering me is that before the film is even out a week people are talking about the directors edition DVD, which will include extra scenes and have bits cut in such as elements from the "Tales of the Black Freighter". Now my inner geek should be relishing the longer cut, because the proles just can't sit through 4 hours of film, but it bothers me. See, way back when Blade Runner: The Directors Cut came out, it felt more like it was undoing studio interference, which is a good thing. Aliens: Special edition was probably the first one that I can recall where they really just added a few extra scenes that were originally cut, good scenes mind, bucking the trend that all too often something is cut for a reason. What I'm really getting at though is to Directors, if you want these bits in the film, put them in. Lord of the Rings was one of the most prominent to do "Extended" editions, with extra bits not seen in the cinema, and indeed announce their release more or less while the films were still showing. I personally feel part of the skill of being a Director, particularly working on condensing dense works such as Lord of the Rings or Watchmen into a cinematic length you can sit through without your bladder rupturing, is to do so without leaving stuff out. There seems to be more of a habit now to say "Yes, this is the cinematic release, but wait till you see what I'm putting on the DVD"

There are many times i will forgive a directors edition. I hear good things about the Directors Cut of Daredevil, which undid studio interference and made it more of a hidden gem in the super hero films that it already is, and the Special Edition with re-jigged effects of Star Trek: The Motion Picture really improves on the original and (Listen up George Lucas) is probably what I'd call the textbook on how to do a Special edition. I'd be very interested to see what a Directors Cut of the mostly poor Avengers film (The Uma Thurman/Ralph Feinnes one) would be like as one reviewer likened it more to a bout of "When studios attack" and similarly Shatner has always wanted to do a Directors cut of Star Trek V.

When there has been resistance or interference that only a good box office or support on DVD can allow you to overcome, then yes, by all means, make a special edition, release the film as you wanted to, let us judge who was right. But Watchmen, Lord of the Rings, they were great already, if you wanted to add more, we'd have sat through it. Ok in watchmen if they are giving the option to see the black freighter stuff intercut or not then that's fine, but really, anything else you could have added in.

In short, unless there is a very good reason not to put footage into the cinematic cut, put it in there, because I'm getting bored of people talking about how much more awesome the DVD will be.