I didnt feel lost, and will be purchasing the graphic novel soon. Great movie, aside from that godawful sex scene and just plain stupid dream. Haha. :P
Rorschach Rorschach Rorschach!
He was what the Joker was to The Dark Knight, in my opinion. Ruled it. And such conviction. :)

It was nearly 3 hours bro.

Really?
It totally flew by for me, too. I loved it. Felt like the perfect length.
Also agree with Lenny -- didnt see the ending coming. One of my favourite endings ever.

The DVD/BluRay cut in 15 minutes longer, then there's the Black Freighter short with Gerard Butler which is an hour.
So I guess you could say Watchmen is more like 4 hours.

I don't remember the movie having a Black Freighter scene ( at least not in theatres) but that was a bit of a relief for me. I get the point of Black Frieghter (he's like Rorschahc) but personally , i found it dry, dull and incistent ( did i spell that right?)

I've never read the "graphic novel". I could not follow this movie at all, I though it was a poor movie that was just based on gratuitous violence and titties. I was going to walk out a half dozen times but then the movie picked up a bit and then it slowed down and I was lost.
Thumbs down from me, but this seems like a fanboy movie that you either absolutely love, or you just aren't into it.

Are hour long films still considered shorts?

What's wrong with gratuitous violence and tittehs??? Best combination ever in a movie.

Really? Of course people with their own opinion will either love or hate ANY film in existence; which means every film ever put to celluloid is a excellent film in your humble opinion?
For me, after reading the novel, it was a bit of an intelligent choice to drop some of the more mundane aspects, you seriously cannot do a proper full on adaptation otherwise only fanboys would ever get it and the film would flop.
Fans will scream that's it's been chopped but they must remember it isn't their property; it's for everyone otherwise it would still be a novel and never see light of day. The only problem I have with it is that there's nothing in there to explain some things that the fans will understand but others won't.
Some parts have been dragged out like the sex scene whilst other sections were whefully short of detail and the music was a annoying mess. Apart from that....it was OK.
Seen better and I dare say there are far, far better people out there who could have made a better movie.
4.5 / 10 It IS pretentious, it IS boring for a fair portion and if the bullet time effects were removed it would be over and done with in half an hour.

The only film that they did that was good was the first one, the second one is nigh unwatchable these days.

I enjoyed the film.
As for the people that couldn't follow it, they're just not that bright. Heaven forbid a movie assume that their audience is capable of thinking while watching a movie. You guys must have hated the Godfather series. You'd never know what was going on.
Seriously, though. If you didn't understand the movie, you'd get lost in the book as well. Because it's more complicated. The movie kept what it needed to tell the story. There's a lot of side and back and parallel story action that goes on in the book, and I'm afraid your heads would explode trying to fathom it.
It's not a matter of whether you've read the book or not. My friend that I went with didn't have any questions, and he hadn't read it.
I think you went in with your brains turned off expecting mindless comic book action, but you forgot that this is Alan Moore's seminal work that you're going to be watching.
I thought it was as good an adaptation as we're going to get, considering the source and its hugeness/awesomeness.
And as far as the bullet time complaints go, they're only half valid. Yes, they were used in every fight scene, but there are only about 4 in the whole movie. Beginning, alley, prison, and South Pole. Combat was less than a quarter of this film. It's not as big a deal as you make it out to be. Also, I think it's more that you're sick of the effect than the fact that it was overused.

The voice of reason is so good to hear. People talk so much crap online. Ugh.
Im not a fan of the slo mo stuff in movies either, but I didnt let it ruin the movie or anything. Get over it. :P

Saw it over the weekend, and in my opinion it was incredibly non-terrible. The portrayal of Dreiberg, Rorschach, and Dr. Manhattan was spot on, although I don't think there was enough differentiation between Rorschach and Kovacs (to say nothing about the time given to Rorschach's background being far too short). Although naturally a lot of content was cut from the book I think the cuts were done decently enough to still leave the core story, and quite a bit of the background still managed to be included (the opening sequence that covered much of it was excellent). The soundtrack was hit-and-miss, sometimes working quite well, but at other times sounding like amateurs were put in charge of it. The amount of violence and time devoted to fight scenes was also increased quite a bit; I personally thought this was unnecessary, but given the ADHD movie-goers these days I can understand why it was done.
There were two big issues that I had with the movie, though. The first was the portrayal of Veidt, who came across as far too cold and sociopathic. He was basically portrayed as villainy from the very beginning, rather than portrayed in the same thoughtful way as in the book. Cutting out his tears of joy after seeing peace coming about, as well as removing his moment of doubt in his final conversation with Jon further removed the two moments where it's really shown that despite what he's done he still truly cares about humanity. Having him replace Captain Metropolis at the Crimebusters meeting also made him killing the Comedian seem too personal an act.
My other major beef was the numerous small changes made to scenes that were completely unnecessary and yet made major changes in the way scenes and characters came across. Laurie and Dan killing their muggers. Rorschach's punishment of the child killer and the portrayal of his transition from Kovacs to Rorschach. The aftermath of the blast being so sanitized instead of horrific. Dan being present for Rorschach's death. And the one I hated the most, the change in how Dr. Manhattan left at the end. His kiss with Laurie was pretty much the opposite of him looking over a sleeping Dan and Laurie in the book, and the removal of his final conversation with Ozymandias robbed Veidt of his moment of doubt as well as completely cheapening the "Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends." line that was instead passed off to Laurie, giving it pretty much no impact at all in the movie.
So while it was worth seeing, and, as I first said, non-terrible, it still unnecessarily screwed up a lot of things that were important nuances to the story.

seriously though, if I want to watch porn, I'll just go to (color)tube and save myself the ten bucks.