Watchmen Worries

With the release of Watchmen on Friday, there is a lot not to worry about. The visual style looks excellent, the character designs look good, the soundtrack is interesting and has a good selection of songs, and Easter Eggs are said to abound throughout the almost 3 hour film. Still, I am worried. My worries stem from fear that Watchmen will be a film without much humanity, cold, distant and sterile. As io9 points out, the setting (i.e. knee-deep in the Cold War) is fantastical to people of my generation, and many of the characters aren't easy to relate to. These are problems inherent in Moore's graphic novel, but I fear they will be magnified on screen because of time constraints. This is an ensemble cast, and Dr. Manhattan and Rorschach, a quantam-man and an absolutist, respectively, do little to provide a flavor of humanity. These are characters not driven by human emotions, and are extremely difficult for an audience to find a shared perspective with them. The only two really human charcters are the Silk Spectre and Nite Owl. These are the human protagonists, I fear, will not get enough screentime to make their stories really resonate from the audience. Compound this with a lack of time for the newstand characters and Hollis Mason, and this is my fear. I think Watchmen will be nothing if not an excellent adaptation, but I fear the heart may not all make it on the screen.