When I heard that they were making Watchmen into a movie, I switched on the obligatory fountain of curses. Sure, Alan Moore's works have been hacked up before, so we ought to be inured to it by now. Watchmen is a bit special, though - set in an alternate history where Watergate didn't happen and Nixon ran for several terms, where America won the Vietnam War thanks to their all-powerful superhero Dr Manhattan and where the Cold War between the USSR and America is fast escalating towards inevitable nuclear holocaust worldwide. Spanning two generations of American 'heroes' and presented in a deliberately non-linear fashion, it's also arguably one of his most difficult works to translate to a movie (Moore himself remarked that it was 'inherently unfilmable'). So that's enough cause for a fresh round of fist-waving.

Now that I've seen it though, there's not much wrath - mostly indifference, with a hint of sympathy. The thing is that Zack Snyder has really tried, which is more than can be said from some other comic book adaptations. But trying's no guarantee of success, as is evident here.

First - the good points; the movie looks great, and you can tell they threw a ton of money at it. The characters look good, there are some huge magestic setpieces and most scenes tend to be highly orchestrated. That segues into the second point - in most aspects, they've tried to stay true to the original as far as possible, which is not always to their advantage when you consider the nature of the source material.

For example, some of the non-linear sequences such as Dr Manhattan's time-skipping narrative feel a little contrived and long-winded onscreen, even though they don't go through most of the stuff from the comic. At other times, it feels like they're trying to rush through large amounts of text since they're on a tight timeline (even a running time of nearly 3 hours isn't enough to squeeze all the important parts in), whereas in the comic, you could go through the philosophical prose at your own leisure, which is crucial with someone as verbose and detailed as Moore.

But to their credit, the big plot point that they've drastically altered towards the end doesn't feel much like sacrilege. In fact, I can even understand why they did it - to keep the average viewers from getting thoroughly bewildered by a movie that had probably already alienated them by that point.

What hurts the movie the most is the small things. For one, nearly all the characters talk like they're giving speeches all the time instead of actually conversing. Also, Malin Ackerman is easy on the eyes, but not all that great an actress, which hurts the character - the rest of the main cast put in decent performances (was a good call using relatively unknown actors, although that may have had more to do with the holdups that occurred during the Fox-Warner Bros tussle), but some of the bit parts are sort of camp. The 'homages', such as Flight of the Valkyries playing while Dr Manhattan demolishes the Vietcong, and Nixon's war room being made to look like the one in Dr Strangelove, feel more like parodies than anything else. As for the soundtrack, they should have taken a cue from casting and avoided throwing all those iconic songs in - for some reason, they just felt out of place and distanced me further from the movie.

Finally, it just doesn't seem to have captured the soul of the source material. It's like it's an action movie imprisoned in the guise of profundity - the few moments that it does get to flex its action chops, it goes over the top. All the action sequences in the comic aren't really typical - they're mostly clumsy and a bit depressing, more in line with the anti-superhero gist of the story. The movie characters, on the other hand, go about it like a bunch of gleeful ninjas - you can see why, since it's being pitched as an action movie and this is technically the only action in it, but it still doesn't ring true.

The failure is less thanks to the efforts of the filmmakers than the nature of their ambition. While many comics today are unashamedly made as film storyboards in the hope of being picked up by a studio, people like Alan Moore are all about exploring the artform to achieve what cannot be done in other mediums such as film. Watchmen is deceptive in that there's a strong central story that's being told, but there are also countless peripheral story arcs presented in many different forms, all of which add to what made it such an impact. The movie just ends up being less fleshed-out and more tedious than its source. I can't see fans of the comic being satisfied, and I also can't see people who haven't read the comic being able to follow and enjoy the movie comfortably over a 3 hour duration. Then again, I can't see people who haven't read the comic following this review too well, either. For what it's worth, it's the best movie made from an Alan Moore comic yet.