I Watched the Watchmen… Then I Read It Too

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So, I went to see the movie Watchmen as soon as it came out and had a hard time describing my feelings for it. I really enjoyed the film, but it was very different than I had expected. Instead of the normal action packed superhero film, you had more of a though provoking tale of a nation spiraling to its own doom, heroes of questionable character, and the occasional action scene thrown in for good measure.

I really enjoyed the quirky characters trying to uncover a plot bigger than they could ever imagine. They lived in a slightly different world than our own at that time, but you could see how our world could have easily been brought down a different path.

So, as I was having problems deciding on my overall feelings of the film, I decided to see where it originated and picked up the graphic novel, “Watchmen” at a local bookstore.

After waiting a little while to let the movie sink in, I began reading and was interested by the way the story in the movie closely followed the one in the book, but also, the extra information that you found in the book.

There are a few main differences between the movie and the book.

The first is the information that ends each chapter. Watchmen Graphic Novel is a comprised of 12 chapters. At the end of each chapter there is included extra data. In the beginning, we get excerpts from the book written by the original Night Owl. Later on we get psych evaluations on Rorschach, newspaper print about Sally Jupiter, and an interview with Adrian Veidt among other pieces.

These are really nice additions to the story that help fill out the great characters that we are only allowed to learn about for the one book.

The second difference is the comic within a comic. One character that continues throughout book that seems to portray the voice of the common man is a newpaper vendor on the streets of New York City. We see the headlines of the most current paper and he gives us insight into what the reaction to such events would be.

He has one customer who seems to be there everyday. He is a young black man who usually sits quietly smoking a cigarette and reading each new issue of a comic book while the newspaper vendor speaks his mind. We get little insight into the reader, but we do get pieces here and there of the comic that he is reading about a man who is on a ship that is destroyed by a ship of undead pirates. He washes up on shore and buries his shipmates before realizing that the pirates were heading in the direction that they were, back to their home city. In a frantic rush, he digs up his shipmates and makes a grisly raft out of them. After some crazy turns, he eventually makes it back home, but as he arrives, he believes that the pirates must have already arrived and those living would be the ones that turned on the others and made deals. So, he kills a couple out for a midnight ride before heading to his home. Once there he kills a man before his wife enters. He flees, only then realizing that the pirates had not come and that he was a murderer. He swims back out into the sea ready to die when he sees the ship and has another realization. They have come for him alone.

I have to say that I did not get very much out of the story in a story aspect here. I realize that there are supposed to be parallels between the two, which I would occasionally pick up on, but for the most part, it just slowed down the read and occasionally jumbled it up a bit. I was much happier with the end of chapter data than I was with this element of the story.

The third major difference that stands out is the method of destruction that Adrian Veidt uses. In the movie, he just has explosions, whereas in the book he has the giant extraterrestrial octopus that kills people with its psionic shockwave when it dies. This I’m a bit passive on. I thought that it worked fine in the movie the way it was. However, in the book it is a culmination from some earlier information that makes the payoff better.

So, in the end, I have to say that I liked both the movie and the book form of Watchmen. Judging them by each other, I would have to say that I enjoyed the book a bit more. Both are well worth the while though. I do have to disagree with those that hold the book aloft as one of the great books or even comic books. I think that the distinction here comes from the comic within the comic. Those who hold it on such a pedestal must have enjoyed that aspect much more than I and probably took more from it than myself as well, for I can easily see this as being one of my more favorite comics, at least, had it not been included.