Rorschach kills Dumbledore!!

Wow.

Saw Watchmen last night.

As far as a post-birthday celebration, once again, it certainly could have been worse. Not many people can say they watched a movie with the Ninth Doctor. More on that later.

So I made sure to text everyone whose numbers I had the exact time and directions of the movie. Lots of people had made dinner plans with their families already; Leah actually had the backbone to tell me she doesn’t like “boy movies.” Jack and the two Sarahs were actually enthusiastic, while Anna, Kelly, Garrett, and Lisa expressed mild interest.

I took the metro right after Grammar to La Defense, where I bought, according to the video screens they had up in the waiting area, the 26th-to-last ticket. Birthday coincidence? I quickly texted everyone that I could buy their tickets now, but no one answered me in time. The show sold out in the next fifteen minutes.

I had two hours to kill, so I walked a big circle around La Defense. I was awed by the architecture and how well all the whole district seemed to be put together, as if according to a colossal urban feng-shui. I think that if the French had had to build Paris from scratch with modern equipment they would’ve come up with something along these lines.

For dinner I had my first French fast food experience at Quick, the leading French burger chain. My Super Giant burger was weird; exactly like an American burger but... French. Dunno how to describe it. But one thing I noticed was that it wasn’t nearly as filling as any burger I’ve previously eaten. If anything, it only served to make me hungrier. Does the Quick corporation possess some kind of hunger-inducing magic à la C. S. Lewis’ White Witch? Well, that’s established: Quick hamburgers = Turkish delight = EVIL

At 7:30 I went back to the cinema to get my place in line. That’s where I met Chumps (who totally looks like Christopher Eccleston and speaks English with a British accent, hence the above remark), his girlfriend Christina, and their friend Greg. Greg and Christina are American, but Chumps is French. Greg and Chumps work at the same school, where Greg teaches English and Chumps teaches computer science. Christina is an artist. We talked about the comic and other stuff. Then the film started.

One would be hard-pressed to say that it’s as much of a work of art as the book is; that said, it’s still amazing. It starts off incredibly strong, the opening sequence alone is worth the price of admission, but towards the middle it slows waaaaaay down. Fortunately it picks up again and finishes just as strong as it started. I did have some issues with it, mainly the sexing-up of Silhouette’s character, and no one explaining the origin of the cat Bubastis (Veidt genetically engineered her because he wanted a particularly pharaonic pet). It’s so violent that one is tempted to call it “300 with superheroes,” although the violence here is choreographed so as to make you cringe rather than cheer.

Rorschach is amazing. He IS the movie. There are so many ways that they could screw up a character like that, but they actually get it exactly right. The Comedian is brilliant, too.

As for the changed ending, those of you who haven’t read the book will go “Huh.” But those who HAVE will be FREAKING OUT because you’ll wonder why the original writers didn’t think of it, because THIS ending makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE than the SQUID MONSTER one. Yeah, yeah, spoilers, the book has a squid monster.

I’m gonna see it again. Maybe tonight.