Now that Watchmen has been released everyone has been voicing their opinions with reviewers having a field day both online and off. There has been a key problem with most of the reviews though which hasn’t been raised before. That’s the fanboy factor.
Granted, Watchmen is one of the most popular graphic novels going but the problem with the movie reviews appear to be that the critics are only judging Watchmen by how well it follows the source material. Yet totally ignoring if it’s a good movie. While these kinds of reviews may be acceptable to the US audiences who have read the graphic novel for those in other countries looking at the reviews on the major websites it’s nearly impossible to figure out if it’s a good film or not. Which should be the whole point of a review.
Without question there does appear to be a fanboy factor involved with Watchmen and it’s online presence. While this may be unavoidable, since all reviews came out the same time and don’t provide an answer to the film’s quality as just that a film, to those who haven’t seen the novel it may hurt box-office numbers. This is due to the geek/fanboy appearance that Watchmen has attained since the beginning of the year with nothing but questions on every website about some squid which could be considered a big spoiler.
There is nothing wrong with fanboys or those wishing to be assured that Watchmen has made the cross platform conversion intact, but for those considered the mainstream viewer, who just want to know if it’s a good movie it’s impossible to find out right now which could be scaring away potential audience members and dare I say it, revenue?