Watchmen Movie Trailer Is Out

I forgot to mention the other bit of exciting comic book movie news this week: DaSpudMan noted that the Watchmen trailer is out — from the Director of 300, which spawns mixed feelings at our office. But it looks pretty good.

Comments

Mixed Feelings definitely

[Izabael_DaJinn]

Mixed feelings sums it up for me as well!

I have fond memories of my first boyfriend reading me the Watchmen, and many scenes in the trailer looked like they were taken right from the comic panels so I should be excited--but I don't know...

The Comedian didn't look like quite like the vicious rascal I had hoped he would (but I only saw him for a few seconds so we'll see.)

Ozymandius's costume looks completely different (I miss his purple one!), and Silk Spectre's costume is pretty generic looking.

Nite Owl looks too much like Batman. (Sure they are similar characters, but very different also. I feel Nite Owl is not a very "dark" character, and making him into a 2nd rate Batman would not be doing his character justice.)

Also I thought Rorshach's voice was a more distinctive monotone. He sounds just like any random guy whispering in this.

And they didn't show any footage of the "vintage" comic book characters (i.e. the first generation Watchmen) so bummer on that.

But based on the production clips it seems like the director is really trying to be true to the story and look of the comic, so as long as they don't change the ending I don't see that it could be THAT horrible, no matter if Alan Moore has already disowned it (he disowns like ALL his movie adaptations, doesn't he?)

That said, I still wish Darren Aronofsky had taken over the directorial reigns.

Btw, is Smashing Pumpkins doing the soundtrack or is that just for the trailer?

Re:Mixed Feelings definitely

[Czarf]

This is from memory way back in the eighties, but I seem to remember that Moore originally wanted to do this as a "parallel world" using the DC characters, but the company said no. I could be misremembering. But Night Owl was supposed to be this world's batman, and Dan Dreiberg struck me as the only really decent character of the whole bunch. As such, I'd expect him to be less "dark" than the other characters.

The Watchmen characters were originally supposed to be the characters DC purchased from Charlton Comics. When DC decided to use them in their universe instead, Alan Moore created new characters based on them. Nite Owl is his version of the Blue Beetle.

Re:Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[the phantom]

I would suggest that you read through these essays by Ms. Le Guin. The sad fact is that authors rarely have any input in the film-ification of their work.