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Watchmen Watched
In a blatant attempt to make my movie-going a valid business expense, I'm putting together some notes on Watchmen, and providing a place for you all to discuss it. The first thing I want to say is that I had high hopes: If you ask any serious comic book nerd what the most important book is, they will probably give you one of two answers, and "Watchmen" is the right one. So really Snyder, the director of 300, could only do wrong. Fortunately for me, he was very true to the book: just like 300, many sequences are shot-for-shot from the comics. Some stuff didn't make it, and the new ending has a different meaning to me (one that really isn't as satisfying, but is certainly cleaner). But what I can't say is if it was a good movie or not. I sorta wish I could get an impartial opinion of someone who isn't a nutty fan of the book to tell me how it stands as a movie. I imagine a bit slow, wordy and maybe a bit confusing in parts. I'll leave full reviews to others, but I enjoyed the picture and suspect you will too.
You want replies from people who aren't huge fans, but you posted this before most people get off work today. Only a true fan would skip work/school to watch a movie.
I've not read the book (I just finished chapter 1), and I'm seeing it tonight at 9:30; if you still want the viewpoint of a non-obsessed fan, check back tomorrow for my reply to this post.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Too much graphic sex and foul language.
It's rated R for a reason, and several plot summaries I've read use words like "dystopian" and "gritty" so it boggles the mind how so many people are upset the movie isn't "family friendly", like they somehow expect an R rated movie to have fluffy bunnies farting rainbows or something.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
You're right. I see an "R" rating and immediately think "family friendly".
Watchmen is like Star Wars. You must experience it at age 18 or younger to appreciate it. Youre just too old. To adults, the characters are unrealistic, the plot is uninteresting, the love story silly, the ending illogical, and the tough guy machismo boring. To kids and teens its nectar of the gods. Its firmly in the realm of nostalgic stuff.
Growing up sucks, eh?
Maybe they're upset because Watchmen, despite its fairly uncompromising storytelling, was not what you would call and R rated comic. With the exception of Manhattan's big blue genitals, sexual references were fairly tame. Violence, while present, was rarely all that graphic, relying more on setting, dialogue and subtlety for it impact rather than outright gore. As to foul language, Watchmen contained it, but I cannot recall the novel being excessively laced with profanities in the manner of, say, Killzone 2 for example.
Regardless, this movie will disappoint fans. It must. As a medium, film is inherently incapable of producing a work with as much breath, depth and contrast as Watchmen, or any other graphic novel, or indeed any other type of novel at all. Movie buffs may disagree with me, but I think it stands to reason that no film of any reasonable length has the time and opportunity to engage with the viewer in the same way that a novel consistently engages with its reader.
A reader can hover over every frame in Watchmen for five minutes if they desire. A reader can dwell over a paragraph for a similar amount of time. A film director simply cannot avail of this kind of engagement in his movie, except in a handful of scenes. It is both a strength and a weakness of film as a medium, but it puts serious limitations on the medium.
People seem to have an irrational desire that their favorite novel/comic/game/whatever be paraded in front of the masses in the form of a movie. I cannot understand this point of view. If something is good, then it doesn't need validation in the form of a Hollywood epic complete with marketing campaigns and happy meal toy lines. If anything, good works should not be subjected to this kind of crass spectacle.
When I see "pundits" debating the "themes and imagery" of the Watchmen movie on TV talk shows, a little piece of my love for the novel will silently die.
May the Maths Be with you!
Hilarious... ly backwards.
Especially since in Dr. Manhattan's case, no one is capable of understanding his point of view. The man just decides to appear on Mars and then wills into existence a huge glass fortress. The level of power necessary to bend time and space to your will like that is staggering.
While, all Rorschach does is complain how he is the only one capable of seeing things as they are and bitching about the state of the world.
Watchmen is interesting because each character represents a facet of human nature.
My twitter
So you watch porn on the Internet, and accept that humanity only exists because of "huge massive sex scenes" for eternal ages,
but you got problems with sex in a movie?
Don't you see the problem in there?
Double standards at its best.
No, I don't see the problem there. I see that you're jumping to conclusions about the GP's reasons for wanting the sex scene cut down. You're acting like he complained about there being sex in the movie at all.
I don't care if tits get shown in an R-rated film, but I don't want to sit for several minutes watching people pretend to have sex, while listening to Leonard Cohen. That's what this one was, and it detracted from the point of the movie.