After being blown away by Raised by Wolves, then our immense disappointment with Lovecraft Country, we decided to continue on with this HBO rollercoaster and try Watchmen. It looked good and I had heard some positive reviews. My only real hesitation was that I never did love the source material.

My initial disappointment with the 2009 movie was with the trailer. It was amazing. Smashing Pumpkins with the Beginning is the End is the Beginning and the only dialog being the Comedian’s, “God help us all,” and Rorschach’s, “The world will look up and shout, ‘Save us!’ and I’ll whisper, ‘No’.”

HO-LY-SHIT.

Who wouldn’t want to see that movie? I think that is still my all time favorite movie trailer. But whatever feeling that trailer elicited, that wasn’t the feeling of the movie. The movie itself was beautiful, but it wasn’t what the trailer promised and it was done by Zack Snyder. And as many of you know, there’s no love lost between Zack and me.

It was a few years after I saw the movie that I decided to read the graphic novel to see if maybe I just didn’t like the movie version. Nope. I will begrudgingly admit that the movie adaptation was almost perfect. Zack Snyder actually did a really good job. I think Watchmen was one of, if not the best adaptation of a graphic novel to the big screen I’ve seen. But it turned out I was just meh on the whole story.

So I wasn’t chomping at the bit to see the HBO mini series.

But it didn’t matter what I thought of the source material. The HBO series is just damn good story telling. The filmmaking itself is a homage to the old movies that you study in film class. Every angle of the camera, every shot’s frame, every single music cue is there to help tell the story. And I was surprised at how they sprinkled in hints and clues that only someone who had seen the movie or read the comic would understand and get excited over, even those of us who didn’t love it.

I’m not going to spoil any of it, just say that you should check it out. It’s an amazing story with an even more poignant points that I don’t think would have hit as hard had I not watched it in 2020. Go check it out!