Finally saw the movie on PPV. The movie was definitely not that brave and overstylized everything. But that was all fixable and arguably would have been insisted upon no matter who made it. What was not fixable was bad tone and bad casting in a lot of areas.
Overall, the movie was too often designed to be acted and viewed like it was an old 40s film noir flick, which is fair, because the book gives that impression, but when Rorschach's mother told him she should have aborted him and it sounded like it was straight out of The Hudsucker Proxy, you knew nothing in the movie could possibly be taken that seriously. They should have taken the emotional theme of this movie in equal parts from Dr. Strangelove, Oz, and the penultimate episode of every season in The Wire.
And why was it necessary to hire young men and women made up to play parts 20 years older than they are so that they could take like three photographs and ten minutes of background footage of them when they were younger? Adrian Veidt looked like a 12 year old in a well-funded children's production of Our Town. Even The Comedian, who was easily the best at looking realistic in various ages, looked like he was going to get the latex knocked off his face in the first scene.
Alternately, they should have just decided to go in completely the opposite direction and gone full-blown Southland Tales. Having the guy who played Kramer's friend in Seinfeld was a good start, but they didn't go far enough. Kenan Thompson as the prison psychiatrist. Bob Odenkirk and David Cross as the detectives. The mom from The Facts of Life as Sally Jupiter. Adrian Grenier AS VINCENT CHASE playing the sleazy investigative reporter. At least that would have been fun as an exercise in how angry and grizzled you can make Alan Moore seem.
Either that or I think I might have liked to see Werner Herzog somehow forced to make this movie against his will. I think his concept of superheroes would have been a perfect fit.
