WARNING: This post has a lot of spoilers for both the Watchmen movie and graphic novel!
I very recently (about 30 minutes ago) finished reading the graphic novel Watchmen. After having seen the movie, it is impossible to not compare the two. First of all, in general I enjoyed the comic book more. They had more time to fill in details, the impact was often a lot greater, and you actually feel like you understand the characters to a greater degree. But the movie did get somethings right, and even did a better job than the book in a few instances.
The first thing I wanted to talk about was the detail. The movie is limited by time of course. Even at 2 hours and 42 minutes, the movie cannot hope to show all of the detail that is present in the graphic novel. A few examples: The entire Black Freighter story is completely removed. Rorschach's journal doesn't have as much detail. All of the background documents at the end of each chapter are either completely gone, or summarized. While all of these don't seem terribly important, they help the reader figure out the background of the story, and even explain some things that are ambiguous in the movie.
This brings up one of my chief complaints of the movie: super powers. There is only one character in the comic book with super powers: Dr. Manhattan. After the movie at least one person I talked to said: "I really like how the super powers are never explained, you just see they have super strength." Doh. None of them have super powers! They are just supposed to be good at hand-to-hand combat because they trained and because they did it constantly. This is explained quite clearly in the comic book through Hollis Mason's (the original Nite Owl's) book Under the Hood. He explains how the original masked heroes were just a bunch of people that wanted to fight crime, and it is obvious that they had no powers, they were just ordinary people.
Another complaint I had with the movie is the increase in violence. Now, I completely understand that the action needed to be updated and increased. But the brutality of some of the fight scenes was just ridiculous! And the one that bothered me the most was when Rorschach told the story about the man who murdered the little girl. In the book he chains the man inside the house and leaves him with a rusty saw, informing him that the saw will never be able to cut through the chain. Then he sets the house on fire and waits outside to make sure he doesn't escape (with only one arm). I think that is much more brutal than chopping his head with a cleaver! But I guess it just wasn't graphic enough for Hollywood! The comic book made the violence moving and impactful, while I felt the movie only made it graphic and unneccesary.
The last major complaint I had with the movie is the lack of imagery used in the scenes of devestation. In the comic book, dead bodies are strewn in the street and you fully grasp the horror of what occurred. In the movie, what do they replace this with? A crater. I know the method of devastation was different, but I didn't feel like the imagery was strong enough. Which leads into my next point.
There were a few things I think the movie did better than the graphic novel, but the only one I really want to mention is the response Dan (Nite Owl) gives to the horrible disaster Veidt causes. In the comic book it goes something like this: "Oh no! You killed millions of people! Wait, Dr. Manhattan says we shouldn't tell anyone because it'll ruin the peace? Okay I'm in on covering up 3 million murders." No debates, no emotion, just a look of defeat and he agrees to cover up the biggest lie in human history. And his next actions are even more absurd. Laurie (Silk Spectre) tells him about how she's feeling and the least important thing she mentions is that Jon (Dr. Manhattan) knows that Laurie and Dan are together. Does Dan comfort her or join in her grief over 3 million innocent Americans being murdered? Nope! He asks her, repeatedly, if Jon is upset that they are together. What a caring hero. Now, in the movie on the other hand, Dan is very upset, and even begins to beat Veidt. He is in tears for the remainder of the scene and shows incredible grief when Rorschach is pulverized by Dr. Manhattan.
Overall, both the book and the movie were excellent, And I enjoyed both immensely. But if forced to pick which is better I would have to pick the graphic novel.
