We went to watch the new Watchmen film over the weekend, a week after its premiere in Malaysia. We could have gone earlier, but we’d been meaning to go watch The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for a while now but one thing or another kept getting in the way, so we finally went for that last week. As I’ve posted before, I’d read the graphic novel the film is based on, so I knew what to expect going in and loved it. Judging, however, from the people who walked out before it was over in the cinema where I watched it and the overheard chatter about the film afterward, not to mention how poorly it’s been doing at the box office, it’s clear that most people either disliked it, or went in expecting a completely different kind of film.

After reading the discussion thread on the film on QT3 (much of which I should mention is very insightful and contributed a great deal to the opinions I’m expressing in this post), I found that perhaps the single best description of it is one posted by game reviewer Desslock: a $150 million art house film. Watchmen is not your traditional big budget summer blockbuster. It’s not even a superhero film in the traditional sense. It’s really an independent, art house quality film made for a very niche audience. It so happens that this one features superheroes as its characters, cost about the same as your typical Hollywood blockbuster, and was marketed to a mass audience who in all likelihood were led to expect something in the vein of Spiderman or Iron Man.

Continue reading The world isn’t ready for the Watchmen film →