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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.
SNAPE KILS DUMBL-
wait fuck, nevermind...
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.
I have not read the book, nor seen the movie. It was great! How's that for an untainted opinion?
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
Roger Ebert
15 minutes of oblique tit vs. 45 minutes of full frontal blue dong. Feminism is out of control.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I've seen a lot of book-to-movie attempts. Some are watchable, like Lord of the Rings. Some are not, like Dune. I can't help myself. I'm nitpicky. Occasionally very nitpicky.
But I'm keeping high hopes that The Watchmen will not be too far off the mark. Why you ask?
Because Kevin Smith liked it.
Let's face it - he's probably a bigger comic book geek than almost all of us. And if it passes muster with him, it may just be great.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
It took some searching, but here's the link to TFA.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
I read the graphic novel one week and watched the Motion Comic before I saw the movie this morning at 12:00 AM. Here are a few notes:
a. The movie has a long runtime: Watchmen covers a lot of material. I think I left the theatre at 3:00 AM. Make sure you have the endurance to enjoy the entire film.
b. Watchmen can be confusing: The movie can be a bit of a challenge to follow if you are not familiar with the graphic novel. I had to explain parts of the movie to a friend who had never read the comic 10 times, namely information regarding the Minutemen and the Crimestoppers, and the differences between the two generations. The movie does a good job of giving a backstory, but it can be a lot to keep track of.
c. There's nudity. If you read the graphic novel, you know what to expect. Come in with a mature mindset, and you will do a good job. Come with a theatre of teenagers and you will get some silly snickers during some serious scenes. Anyone familiar with the comic should know which of thes I am refering to.
d. Careful if you watched the Watchmen Motion Comic: If your first experience was with the Watchmen Motion Comic, you may be disappointed at some parts. Namely because the WMC will have you expecting voices to be in a certain way. After reading the graphic novel, I watched the WMC and I associated the voice of Dr. Manhattan with my images of him. I was a bit upset hearing the voice actor for Manhattan. He did a good job on his performance, though.
e. Don't come into this expecting 300: This is a crime thriller, not a beat-em-up movie. Sure, it has some good violence and action if that's what one is looking for, however, the real meat and bones is in the storyline and how it deconstructs the superhero concept.
That's about it. They did as good of a job as was possible considering time, budget, and fanboy limitations.
That's about it...
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.
Very faithful except for the ending which is still faithful to the idea of the ending.
There were a few scenes in the first hour that were a little loose or slow. that's not it.
Here it is: The movie had a great sound track but a lousy score. The background "emotion" music (that made star wars great) was average. the sound track was the biggest change in the "feel" of the novel to me.
The characters were great except veigt was about 20 pounds too light imho.
There is a lot of stuff there for the fan which is meaningless to someone who hasn't read the comic first. It's not bad- it just doesn't connect emotionally because you see some secondary characters or scenes without the 30 panels of buildup you got in the comic.
Some things were the same as the comic but came across a LOT differently.
Never has so much swinging male private parts been on display. Much more impact when it's swinging around than on the printed page.
The sex scenes had a lot more impact and were more *real* than many sex scenes in many other movies. the awkwardness of it is frequently dropped from "hollywood reality". it was amazing. this added a lot ot the suspension of disbelief for the rest of the film.
The violence was extreme. In the panel, it's one thing-- on the screen- it's disturbing. This is not a kid's movie even if they edit out the nudity.
Was very satisfied- understood the edits and changes that were made. Recommend it- but you'll get more out of it if you read the graphic novel first.
And what is with hendrix being the new SF catch song...
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
they somehow expect an R rated movie to have fluffy bunnies farting rainbows or something.
Sooner or later someone will make a highly disturbing R rated movie with bunnies who fart rainbows and you'll eat those words.
I haven't seen it yet, but I'm going to see it as soon as I can. I was hoping this wouldn't get screwed up, and signs indicate that it hasn't.
The surest way to screw it up would have been to get Tim Burton or Paul Verhoeven to direct it; they don't seem to be able to make a movie based on a book without wanting to change things and put their own fingerprints on it. (I'd love to watch a Starship Troopers movie. Too bad we didn't actually get one.)
Everyone agrees that a perfect, 100% faithful adaptation is impossible, unless you do it as a miniseries that is around 12 hours long. The best we can hope for is that the screenwriter and director do a good job of streamlining the story and keeping the important parts intact. Kevin Smith says that this has been done.
I've read several reviews, and they illustrate how impossible it is to walk the tightrope. The movie keeps large chunks of the original dialog intact, and reviews have complained about dialog-heavy, boring long scenes. As a fan of Alan Moore's writing, I'm expecting that I will like or love these "boring" scenes. You can't please everyone.
I read an interview with the director, Zack Snyder. He said the movie studios pushed on him to cut some of the more shocking scenes, such as a rape, and a scene where a pregnant woman gets shot; but the scenes were important to the story, and he got them kept in. In the book, the alienation of Dr. Manhatten is shown visually in the way he stops bothering to wear clothes; this is kept as well. The pirate-themed side story would have made the movie too long... but they filmed it anyway and it will be available as its own feature on DVD.
I read that Zack Snyder gave each actor a copy of the graphic novel, and authorized them to edit their characters' dialog to more closely match the graphic novel. I have real hope that this movie will make me happy as a Watchmen fan.
P.S. Alan Moore is not happy with it, but as far as I can tell, he is automatically not happy with any attempt to turn his work into a movie. You could get Peter Jackson with an unlimited budget, and he still would not be happy. I read that they offered to have him help with the adaptation, but he declined. (Which makes perfect sense... that way he can complain about everything, and no one can say "well, you had the power to change that, why didn't you?")
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
You're right. I see an "R" rating and immediately think "family friendly".
Happy Tree Friends?
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?
So I'm reading some of the reviews/opinions about the movie, and I'm pleased to see that a lot of people seem to get the idea that most of these "superheroes" are just people in costumes. Night Owl has all the gadgets etc., but he doesn't really seem to have the temperament to be a hero. Plus, though he may have all the gadgets and everything, it's safe to say that the Owlship can fly for the same reason that the sky is full of dirigibles and people smoke weird cigarettes with bubbles at the end -- namely, because of Dr. Manhattan.
Dr. Manhattan, we are told, is the only one of the bunch with any superpowers. And, unfortunately for all the rest of the so-called superheroes, he has the ultimate superpower -- basically, control of time and space. Nobody else is ever going to match him. Might as well close the book. The catch, however, is that all this godlike power has made him (quite naturally) detached from humanity.
OK, that's all well and good so far. But I always thought that one of the major, MAJOR themes of the novel revolved around Ozymandias, and the reader's slowly-dawning realization that there might not be only one superhero in the world. There might be two.
Dr. Manhattan may be the world's only literal comic-book superhero, but Ozymandias represents more the Nietzschian "superman" -- a normal human being who has transformed himself into the ultimate that the human race can hope for. He's billed as "the smartest man on Earth," sure -- but the mere fact that he [REDACTED] shows that he's also one of the top physical specimens on Earth, too. That guy was one tough mofo! And by the end of the story, we see that Ozymandias really, actually can catch a bullet in his bare hand; it's no parlor trick.
So the ultimate question is: What does it mean to be a superman?
We've shown that it has distanced Dr. Manhattan from humanity. But it's easy to say "that's only natural, Dr. Manhattan really isn't human anymore," and maybe in fact he is redeemed at the end. But Ozymandias is human, yet his superiority over the rest of us seems to have isolated him in exactly the same way as Dr. Manhattan. Maybe he can't fly to Mars, but think of him sitting in that big chair at the bottom of the world with his cat for company, watching rows of television screens bringing him images of the decay of civilization. Think about what he decides to do about it. Is there humanity in his plan? Is he a hero? A villain? Does he find redemption?
Does the world need supermen? Is there even a place for them?
I always thought these were some of the major themes of Watchmen, but I rarely hear them discussed, and it's not clear to me whether they're represented in the movie. (Are they?)
Just thought I'd throw it out there to give us all something to waste time with on a Friday afternoon. Cheers!
Breakfast served all day!
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!
Something about killing superheroes?
Something about how real masked vigilante would be, the fetichist, oversized-ego, psycho-past, nostalgic underwear-over-pants kind, and the problems they would have if they really existed. Add to that an intrigue and a very good naration, and you have one of the most incredible novel ever written.
Oh and it's 11$ on amazon (the whole 12 chapter in one tome) in paperback. Make yourself the pleasure of increasing your culture ;)
Of Code And Men
Make yourself the pleasure of increasing your culture ;)
You have no change to survive make your time.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
The entire book is built off of the brain monster: it is a reference to Starro, the alien starfish that is the first villain the Justice League fights together, and symbolically it represents how Ozymandias's plan is to force the world to band together.
It's also the final and most important element of novel, which is the deconstruction of the superhero genre. The octopus punctuates that deconstruction and really says something clear about super heroes: The monster-of-the-week has appeared, and this time there is no last minute batman plan or newly developed superman power that can stop it. All of the heroes are gone. None of the heroes ever were heroes. Not to mention that Ozymandias, the real villain, has shown himself to be as much a part of the game as the others despite his claims to the contrary. His ends-justify-the-means attitude is just as arrogant as the other Watchmen's.
Understanding the octupus is really, really, important in terms of the book's literary value.