Who Directs The Directors Cut of Watchmen?

Who Directs The Directors Cut of Watchmen?

This week we see the release of the directors cut of Watchmen showing up on DVD. You just have to ask yourself how much Watchmen are you willing to watch. The regular theater cut of the film was already long enough as it is, the directors cut adds about 20 minutes of footage and not all of it is actually worth adding into it.

You have a lot of footage that is extended by a couple of seconds here and there. I mean, did that awkward sex scene need to be that long to begin with? Well, you get more moments like that all around! It seems that every scene has a couple of seconds tagged along it and it doesn't always fit.

Along with adding more violence, because what would a directors cut or extended cut of a film be without more violence? That's always a selling point when it comes to DVD/Blue ray sales - Can we market this as more bloody/gory than it already was? And the answer to that is yes. You see more fingers get blown up in slow motion as well as more violence in general. Which with the slow motion effect that the director uses, really makes you notice it a whole lot more.

The most relevant edition to the film is the addition of Mason's death scene. This scene was very vital to the comic book because a group of thugs mistake the original nite-owl with the nite-owl that is currently in action. They kill him in very cold blood and the scene is pretty damn violent. While I think his death should have been in the original theater cut, it gets overshadowed here a little by the amount of graphic violence this graphic novel turned movie can protray.



The other question with this dvd is if it's really worth the title of directors cut? You see, there's going to be a Watchmen Ultimate Collectors Edition coming out in Decemeber.

So really, what's different with this Directors cut and the Ultimate Edition? It seems that the Ultimate edition has the Black freighter material woven into the movie. That's an added 20 minutes to the film's length. They're also putting in a couple of extra scenes with the news stand characters. So you can add another 5 minutes of footage there at the very least.

On the whole, it'll make the movie an even more direct translation of the comic. Pretty much picture for picture, you wont be missing out on anything. Well, you wont be missing out on anything but the contents of your wallet. So this begs the question of why double dip so much? I mean, seriously. Why would you release essentially the same movie three times on DVD?



The answer is clearly for money. It's no secret that the movie didn't do all that great in terms of box office take in. Something about the long feel of it and it losing a little bit of the meaning of the book didn't mesh well with the audience. Maybe folks weren't expecting something that made you think of what it is to be a good and bad guy. Perhaps the film failed in protraying that exactly like the book? It's not like many people even read the book. It was one of those comic books that was always praised highly but there was always a 80% chance that if you read comics, you never got through the book as it has a lot of small print and detail to this world of watchmen.

But at least they let us know in advance about this release, right? It's not like you'd want to suddenly be caught off gaurd after buying this on Tuesday only then realizing that an even better/different cut together version of the film was being offered for sale in a couple of months.

So this Tuesday, don't be one of those who buys the directors cut. Not unless you really want to long to buy the next version and the uber next version that they release after that. Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and wait for the best version to be released.