Well along with this and his opinion on Paul and Bayonetta, I've never disagreed more with Bob.
I would have never seen this on Wednesday, if I hadn't scored a free screening ticket. Though in the end I admit that I enjoyed this, I can not take someone serious when they say that it was in any form imaginative or heartfelt, feminist, or empowering.
The extent of imagination in this movie was some guy thinking "You know what'd be dope? A trippy ass story where Alice In Wonderland was kicking ass with a machine gun and samurai swords. And there'd be some complicated dream world thing, I haven't really worked that part yet, but it'll be deep and meaningful." The heartfeltness extended to the fact that the creators put effort into it and enjoyed what they're doing. To claim that it is feminist or empowering is as misguided as the claim that girls gone wild, strippers, and porn stars are feminist, empowering themselves because because they reclaimed their feminitity and showed independence by choosing their line of work. (In reality porn studios and viewers think little more of them than objects.)
Zach Snyder is the epitome of style over substance and excessive visuals. He's just a Michael Bay who likes painterly style filters and able to pick respectable scripts. Although commendable I don't care how much work and detail he went into plugging as many details as possible through reference and production design into Watchmen, because he completely missed the tone. Watchmen was written and illustrated as a melodramatic story with a prevailing aura of dread. When I first read the book, I got the impression that at any moment any character could die and that that impending doom would befall the world and that we were just waiting for the timer to click. Snyder's interpretation was awkwardly strung together with no pacing and overwhelmed by his obsession of injecting slow motion scenes and pornographic violence. In the book we were alluded to the theory that the Comedian may have played a part in the JFK assassination. Since Snyder knows no subtlety, he decided to show within the opening of the movie: JFK being shot and the camera panning to a closeup of the Comedian with a smoking rifle at the grassy knoll. All before any characters are introduced or developed.
I will admit to the fact that Snyder is a great craftsman and technical director. However it would be disingenuous to claim that his work is much higher than pandering to nerds simply because he scatters minute amounts of sociopolitical issues into it. And it's sad that the lure of sugary technicolor, CGI, explosions, and girls in cute costumes fools people into thinking otherwise.