Film — Watchmen

After many years and many false starts, a movie that is, for the most part, frame for frame, line for line, exactly as the original comics.

In some places, the deviations are good -- the public back story unfolding as cameos behind the credits; some are neutral and clearly to economize on time (details of the big reveal); some are clearly modern zeitgeist (Ozymandias is still trying for clean cheap energy -- something that Dr Manhattan had implicitly already delivered in the original); and some are rather disappointing (how Rorschach deals with the child killer, the epilog with Dan, Laurie and Sally).

Rated 18 "for strong bloody violence", the occasional points where Dr Manhattan makes people explode into gore, or Silk Spectre and NiteOwl inflict compound fractures are quiet tame (by contrast the no more than 15-rated "Contains moderate violence" second episode of Texhnolyze had me feeling queasy with far less).

Overall, excellent!