Given that I'm a young, carefree superhero fan, Watchmen is so far the best movie I have seen this year. I passionately recommend that anyone with even the slightest, passing interest in the movie go see it as soon as possible. It deserves your money.

My brother was the one of us who wanted to see the movie most, but he also wanted to read the book first. So, I got the book from the library, and he read it, after which I was to read it, then we would go see the movie together. He finished the book in two days, which would have left me ample time to finish it myself before going to the movie yesterday except that I was completely preoccupied with reading Sherlock Holmes, and so I didn't finish it in time. Before seeing the movie, I had only gotten to the part in the book where Dr. Manhattan runs away to Mars. But this, I think, was pretty much ideal.

You see, even though I do read American comics (DC in particular), the art form in general as produced by the American comic book industry doesn't appeal to me or please me nearly as much as movies do. In short, I like comics, but I like movies better. And reading only the first few chapters of the book Watchmen set me up to have a perfect moviegoing experience when watching the movie Watchmen because I was able see in the opening scenes of the movie how incredibly faithfully the director followed the comic--the scenes through the investigation of The Comedian's death are practically frame-for-frame identical to the comic panels--and so could appreciate the amount of respect the filmmakers had for the source material and could also feel the fan's thrill of recognition, and yet, since I hadn't read to the end of the book, I had no idea how the story ended. I began the movie able to appreciate how similar it was to the comic and ended the movie able to be completely surprised by it, to appreciate it according to its own merits. By the time the credits were rolling, I was completely blown away. I missed seeing the names of all the top-billed actors, in fact, because I was too busy crying.

Luckily, there is IMDb, so I looked up all the main characters when I got home. Particularly impressive to me were Jeffrey Dean Morgan who played The Comedian, Patrick Wilson who played Nite Owl II, and Jackie Earle Haley who played Rorschach. Haley more than anyone else struck me as a very talented actor and a perfect choice for Rorschach ("perfect" is a word I used a lot when discussing the movie with my brother afterward). He was so expressive, so incredibly genuine and whole-hearted as his character, that not even a mask which completely obscured his facial features could keep the emotion from coming through. I knew before I even began reading the book that Rorschach was going to be my favorite character, and now, regardless of any favorite-character bias, in this movie, Jackie Earle Haley is my favorite actor. I hope that more good things come to him as a result of this movie, and I hope that, too, for Patrick Wilson who played an equally brilliant Nite Owl.

For my literature class at college, I would like to write an essay on the art of adapting movies from other sources, and when I do, I'm happy that I will be able to use Watchmen as one of the shining examples of the best adapted screenplays ever written and filmed. Much respect to director Zack Snyder.

May justice come to us all.

I watch the watchmen.

P.S. All of this isn't to say, though, that the movie is flawless; it's just that the negative elements of it aren't things I wanted to point out here, few though they may be. If you want to hear my objective criticisms of the movie, you're welcome to ask me personally, but my reigning opinion is that Watchmen is absolutely brilliant.

EDIT: Second viewing just as good. Going again tonight. Lucky me.