Watchmen: Director's Cut is now available on DVD!

Watchmen is a off the beaten path tale about a group of former costume crusaders who have split up after many years of serving together as comrades in arms and are now having to face each other again due to someone or something killing off one of their former members. It plays out much like a detective noir tale with superhero trappings along the edges. It is important for the viewer to understand going into the film that this is not your typical superhero film as Watchmen is something completely different. This is an extremely graphic story and they don't pull any punches (or hold back on the blue genitailia).

Lets start off by pointing out how this is the most faithful adaptation of any book and or graphic novel to screen that I have ever seen. Yes there are some minor changes. Every fan knows  they changed the ending a bit and how they removed the Black Freighter and Under the Hood interludes…but honesty, the movie didn't suffer as a result. Even with the slightly changed ending, the point of the story definitely gets across.

So when it was announced that there would be a Director's Cut of the film, most fans got pretty excited. While the theatrical version did a great job staying true to the comic, there were still a lot of things that didn't make it. A lot of fans were hoping for more overall development for many of the side characters (i.e. Hollis Mason) and unfortunately this hyped up version fell short. Yes there is an additional 24 minutes of footage, but most of it contains short clips that were interjected to make many scenes longer. A lot of the conversations are longer but really don't make a major difference as far as conveying the points of the scene for the movie. There were very few major additions, and the ones that were added felt pretty forced. We would have hoped for some scenes involving the Rorschach test or maybe a bit more than the minimal inclusion of Hollis' murder (which although it was a small thing, it was handled very beautifully). I'm not complaining about not getting the giant squid…but if you are going to include more content, why not make it count?

Special Features on 2-Disc DVD Set
-The Phenomenon: The Comic that Changed Comics
-Music Video: Desolation Row (My Chemical Romance)
-Digital Copy (Theatrical version)
-11 video journals

Overall
Watchmen is a very long but overly solid movie. If you were a fan of the comics then you will either love it or passionately hate it. I must say that I am pretty disappointed with the additions that made the Director's cut. While it does continue to make the film that much more faithful to the comic, it misses the opportunity to include several important missing pieces.

ComicsOnline gives Watchmen: Directors Cut on DVD – 3 out of 5 signs that the End Is Near.