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How Watchmen Killed 'R'-rated Fantasy Movies
An anonymous reader writes "Of all the Hollywood properties consigned to development hell in the reductionist policy of the last 3-4 years of bad economy, the very last to have a prospect of a green light are expensive fantasy and SF projects that fall outside the 'family' remit. Not even the addition of James Cameron to David Fincher's Heavy Metal remake has stopped its begging-bowl passage from studio to studio; Robert Rodriguez's propriety of the Barbarella remake likewise toured the world in vain, apparently unmindful of the very unusual set of cultural and demographic circumstances that caused a major studio to back an 'erotic space opera' in 1968 — and to the fact that these circumstances are not likely to reoccur. David Fincher lamented in 2008 that the creation of dazzling artificial movie worlds is limited to family-friendly output — but in the long wake of the box-office disappointment of the 'R'-rated Watchmen movie, there seems no current prospect that the adults will ever get to play with the kids' toys again." The most frustrating part of this is that Watchmen was actually *good*.
The most frustrating part of this is that Watchmen was actually *good*.
Indeed! In fact if there were an Oscar for "Best Performance by a Blue Weiner", I'm sure Watchmen would have won it.
Trolling is a art,
The most frustrating part of this is that Watchmen was actually *good*.
I wasn't very happy about the altered ending or the removal of the guy reading the comic book.
Summation 2
It would have been great without the giant blue glowing penis though.
Watchmen was an overlong, overwrought, overly wordy, over hyped, over produced mess.
It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, good.
I think if you like this kind of thing, you have to skip films and play games instead. I recommend Dead Space 2 right now.
Not even the addition of James Cameron to David Fincher's Heavy Metal remake has stopped its begging-bowl passage from studio to studio;
I'm sorry, but Heavy Metal's plot is that a guy saves a girl in a few different dimensions and gets sexual favors as a result. Oh, and the dimensional thing was caused by this evil orb. That might qualify for a porno, but not for a Hollywood movie.
It seems that the adult miniseries is doing quiet well. A 13 part Heavy Metal could be epic.
in a long long time. Waited for it, watched the legal BS about it, and enjoyed the flick when it came out. To Hollywood, if you want my money then produce more flicks like the Watchmen. It was that enjoyable. Popcorn aside, you can't figure out a better way to get my money than putting together great 40+ something old's stories for me to enjoy.
Mediocre at best!
It paid homage to the pages but it really did not translate well and it was not presented in a manner to really attract much of an audience. If you had read the comic then you wanted to see the movie. For anyone else it was pretty much "meh!". I think it would have failed if it was rated PG or PG13.
The topical material was so dated it was a nostalgia flick and nothing pertinent in the current mind set of current society. Most kids today in the PG13 rating range don't even know who Nixon or what the Cold War actually were.
The most frustrating part of this is that Watchmen was actually *good*.
Well, that was your opinion as a fan of the comic, I imagine. I am not a comic guy, saw the ads and didn't find myself particularly wanting to see it. I might Netflix it at some point, but it's not currently in my queue.
I strongly suspect the real issue is there aren't enough people with taste similar to yours to make the types of movies you want to see financially viable. I know it's frustrating - many of my favorite TV shows over the past 20 years have quickly withered - but that's life. There's no need to look for a broader conspiracy, although people do seem predisposed to finding conspiracies even when none exists.
#DeleteChrome
The most frustrating part of this is that Watchmen was actually *good*.
Well, yeah. The way I see it however, if not even Watchmen did well enough to satisfy the studios then R-rated fantasy movies never had a future to begin with.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Artistically speaking, freedom of expression is limited in the United States (and other countries, don't get me wrong) because of regulatory bodies that exist for the sole purpose of deciding what is appropriate content and what is not.
This is a fixed-position point of view in an ever changing sociological landscape and it increasingly does not make sense.
I often wonder if films like "Taxi Driver" could ever be made today.
crazy dynamite monkey
The amount of money poured into hyping the film was so ridiculous that it made me assume there was absolutely no way the film would live up to my expectations, and therefore I decided to go see whatever else was out at the theaters at the time. Once I finally watched the film on DVD, however, I will say that it did manage to live up to my expectations, which is very unusual for a comic book adaptation.
As a parent of young kids, I'd like to see more decent G or PG fare. Toy Story 3 and Tangled were good. But movies like this are few and far between. More common is junk like Yogi Bear. And even more common is the theater showing nothing but PG-13 to R movies, 90% of which are yet more horror flicks to heap on the pile.
It's not difficult to stay below an R rating and still make a good film, despite the idiotic restrictions on nudity and profanity.
This is by far the most incoherent OP I have ever read. Can someone translate this guy into English?
Really? I thought it was one of the most faithful adaptations of anything I've ever seen
I can get you a faithful adaptation short video of a dog taking a dump on the side walk. It could be the most faithful adaptation ever constructed. But you know what? It's still just a video of a dog taking a crap.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Adult fantasy can become popular, if you don't bore people out of their chairs. Watchmen was a horribly long, boring mess. Heroes is another example. It was painful to watch the last couple seasons. Folks might consider taking notes from HBO. TrueBlood = wildly popular adult fantasy. We'll see about Game of Thrones... looks cool too.
A artist/craftsman, using todays video editing, drawing, and compositing tools could make a fantastic movie based on comic book heroes. The tools are out there. It would take thousands of man-hours, but it could be done. I also think that there are people out there who would consider such work a labor of love. Computing power is getting fabulous. Pretty soon, real-time previewing a near-photographic quality 3D vector-based animation for minutes at a time, is going to be affordable for every cartoon movie-maker wannabe. The only limitation will be artistic skill--and intellectual property law.
Copyright law prevents this kind of work because copyrights last a REALLY long time. No artist or collective will labor thousands of hours over a comic-book movie if it will be suppressed by the copyright holder as soon as it sees the light of day. Trademark law is also a killer. Tarzan, Superman, Spiderman, etc. are active trademarks for brands of products. You might be able to make a Tarzan movie, but you couldn't call the hero Tarzan.
Comic books exploded in the 1930s. Why won't animated cartoon movies explode in the near future? There are lots of forgotten comics with lapsed copyrights that are out there. . . .
Sorry, not specifically germane to the article itself but more a commentary on the commentary: I know this runs counter to popular nerd culture, but Watchmen was a terrible, horrible movie. I'm sure the graphic novels were very engaging, but that movie was godawful. It just was.
But I don't think it can be made into a PG-13 film.
Alas.
The most frustrating part of this is that Watchmen was actually *fucking awesome*
When has any movie of a comic had a better sub-ending than the book? Sub-ending you ask? Rorschach's death is the real meat of the finale not the geopolitical change.
When a PG-13 movie like Serenity has a viable, enthusiastic, and most importantly a measurable fan base, and yet no studio wants to pony-up for a sequel, that ought to be a clear indicator that there is zero possibility for an R-rated Science Fiction film. Think how last year's Sherlock Holmes (albeit, not a Sci-Fi flick), which was rated PG-13, could have been darker, gorier, sexier, and clearly better had they told the story in a more graphic manner and just went with the resultant R rating. But money talks louder than art, so we get what we get, not what we want.
Tits in space? I'm there. See my previous posts related to the video "All is Full of Love" by Chris Cunningham and Bjork.
I found the movie ending to make more sense (Dr. Manhattan threatening whole world) compared to the book (aliens threatening the world).
However, there was no need for a full frontal Dr. Manhattan.
Second, IMHO, there are four audiences for films. First is the family, which is big as it can be as many as four tikets sold if one person wants to see a movie. No nudity in family movies. Second is the teenage date movie. These tend to be gross and with some nudity, but they are marketed to boys, and boys want to see teats, not penises, and also often must pass parent approval. Third are movies made for families with older teens, or adults who go and see movies, where there is something substantial in the movie. Nudity is optional, but promotion has to be done in such a way that potential viewer gets what the movie is about. Fourth is art crowd. Cinematography, story, writing is the thing. Nudity and sex is not always expected but no one is going to stay away because it is explicitly there. Budgets tend to be lower, and stories tend to be non-fantastical, at least outside the realm of believing that people with no money can afford expensive Paris flats.
When I look at watchmen I see a movie that did none of these things. It did not market outside of the group of viewers that understood it. It also feel to the current situation in which a movie that is not good, and does not do enough to promote the oening weekend, will fail because everyone who did not go the opening weekend will know it is not good and not go.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I think if you like this kind of thing, you have to skip films and play games instead.
Films have Australian R18; games don't. What country is taking Australian expats again?
This is as bad as the remake of Red Dawn, yeah for those who didn't know they are doing a remake of Red Dawn.
There was zero reason to Watchmen to have released as R rated. If anything I got the distinct impression they were after that so all those geeks who would see the film regardless of rating could somehow feel smug that they were seeing an serious "artsy" film, you know what I mean.
Who needs nudity to tell most of these stories? This is starting to sound like I am in MMORPG where every other word in chat is a cuss word or bigoted as if that somehow elevates the participants to a higher level of maturity or intelligence.
Just give me good stories. Nudity is a cop out, the examples all cited by the article are dwell on nudity. Sorry, Alien was rated R for violence and gore and it was a damn site better than Watchmen. It was story and the presentation of the story that mattered, not who was wearing what.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Watchman was not good. It was barely passable.
Usually when they release a film in DVD they include material that was not present in the original. "Pretty Baby" is the opposite, the DVD shows less than was in the VHS or theatre versions.
This is part of the problem with these R-rated fantasy/comic movies. Watchmen is pretty heavy stuff both from a philosophical and situational perspective. I saw the movie on a plane flying to my vacation and came off of it depressed and with a heavy heart despite the basic outcome. In that respect, the movie did its job. The adult comic genre is really a way for many artists to express themselves on very adult topics without having a huge production budget and just some decent drawing talent.
Watchmen wasn't too dissimilar to the bittersweet ending of Sin City. You liked the characters, but most of the "good" (read: likable) guys actually die. The key is that both of these comics explore the subtlety that what is good versus bad isn't cut and dried. Most people aren't really willing to spend their two hours of escape dealing with these subjects and want to see the bad guy lose because it represents their boss or ex or some other negative character in their lives.
Contrast Watchmen and Sin City with LOTR: ROTK where the ending was again turned into a much happier event than what was in the books. Now look at which of these three movies I discussed made the most money. That's what the studio execs are most interested in. I just hope the genre doesn't completely go away because of straight money concerns. Sometimes producing art for its own sake is a worth cause.
"The most frustrating part of this is that Watchmen was actually *good*"
Yes, right up until they changed the ending and basically implied that an American man, rather than an alien race, was responsible for the destruction of New York city.
I always thought that the point of the ending in the comic book was to gather the human race together, to defend themselves against an alien aggressor. In the movie, it felt as though the attack had been perpetrated by a man who was at one time in his life an American citizen...
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
Alan Moore said over and over it wasn't filmable. They tried to film it and killed R Rated fantasy movies. This is what happens when you don't listen to Alan Moore.
My company home page
Id like to see number of viewers of Watchmen vs Snakes on a Plane. I'd probably cry if I knew the truth...
Watchmen was a great story with emotion and character, along with action and a great plot. Why did it fail? *sigh*
To anybody making movies, I second this.
Or, just keep making Resident Evil movies until Milla Jovovich doesn't have the body for the mandatory nude scene.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
And yet "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" did quite well, despite being based on a graphic novel. Films that won't earn as much as they cost to make don't get made, it's simple economics. The majority people paying for movie tickets are either dating or already have kids; "adult comics" aren't suitable fare for either group. Simply put, there aren't enough guys living in their mom's basement for a film like this to make money.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
They had already been turned against him. That sham case that had him giving radiation poisoning to people? They already had a reason to think him unstable and unreliable.
It was far easier to accept than Spidey's continual problem with people believing any old set up framing him...
First, let me say that I enjoyed Watchmen. However, I streamed it on Netflix and watched it at home alone because my wife and kids do not share my desire to watch that kind of film. What people fail to realize when shopping a high-budget, non-family movie is the economics of the thing. In America today, the big money is not found attracting the 18-25 year crowd; those kind of people will go buy a single ticket for themselves - especially when it comes to sci-fi or fantasy, which aren't traditional "date" genres. The money is with the middle-aged couple with kids, who go and buy 4-6 tickets as a family event and represent a larger portion of the market. If the movie is good enough, it will appeal to the young adults as well who will go by themselves, on dates, and with their friends. When you give a movie an R rating, you eliminate a large portion of the potential market. It's like why there's not a lot of money to be made making desktop software for the Mac (outside of graphic-design), and why there's no real market for Mac games (since only a very small portion of home users have Macs).
Movie makers may try to defend their choices, saying that they have to push the envelope to create "adult" entertainment that has psychological, societal, or artistic merit. This is fine with me. However as a parent of young children, I have to make choices as well. I have to choose how to spend my limited entertainment budget: do I expose my children to media that will challenge or disturb them, or do I have a good time with my kids? For me, it's a no-brainer. If the studios want my money, they have to pander to my entertainment needs. If a director wants to make an "erotic space opera," let him fund it himself or find a market that will pay him to do it. It really boils down to the basic market principles of supply and demand.
I stopped going to movie theaters in favor of my giant TV+ DVDs, Blu Rays, NetFlix, YouTube, PS3, etc. I have my fridge full of snacks, and can pause movies at any time, and visit my clean bathroom at any time. The best part is I don't have surly teens kicking the back of my chair, talking on their phones, throwing candy, talking during the movie, etc...
If me, and people like me, abandoning theaters means no more R-rated CG overblown blockbusters, so be it. Intriguing films can be made for relatively low budgets.
If you want Heavy Metal part II, turn on your Mathmos lamp, put on some metal music, and scroll though some pr0n on Tumblr.
Watchmen:
Budget $130 million
Box office $185,258,983 (boxofficemojo)
DVD revenue $52,594,958 (the-numbers.com)
(Numbers lifted from Wikipedia.)
If "disappointment" means "we didn't make $300 million box office", then yes I would say it's a disappointment. But I think it's a miracle it made what it did considering the circumstances.
I do realize Watchmen really put the kibosh on movies of its ilk.
And it was a pretty good movie. They put a lot of effort in it, it was not half-assed.
But I think that it showed legit issues.
In essence the problem is that the story in the movie is complex enough that it's tough to really get into by only watching the movie. So really the movie is really appealing only to those who already read the comic. And no matter how good the movie is, it isn't as good as the comic because the story had to be cut down to fit the time and the media.
So ultimately, the movie ends up with little point except as a visualization of the comic. And Watchmen even did a good job of this, but it still didn't make much money.
There should be room for a few R-rated fantasy movies. And I'm sure there will be again some day. They'll just have to start with low budget ones and work back up again.
But in the end, I think Watchmen's downfall wasn't an unfortunate fluke or due to poor execution. It did really show the problems with making a story like that into a movie.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Or maybe it's because that neither Heavy Metal nor Barbarella should be remade! Barbarella was pretty bad to begin with. Heavy Metal wasn't bad, but it's very much a product of the time it was made. You'd want to remake it with different stories, and then it wouldn't be Heavy Metal any more. And lets face it, it's hard to find anyone who would defend Heavy Metal 2000 as a worth watching.
I just re-watched Heavy Metal last week, after not having seen it in at least 20 years. I was showing it to my teenage boys (the movie's target demographic, to be sure), and they were ripping it to shreds. Sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll aren't what they used to be, apparently.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
I don't think it's fair to claim that Watchmen's failure is what's causing studios not to pick up Heavy Metal. The first Heavy Metal movie came across as an experiment to see how much erotica would (a) get past the ratings board with an "R" and (b) be palatable to the American audience. The producers succeeded at their first goal; they published with an "R" rating what would get an "NC-17" if done with live actors. They failed at the second, which was convincing the wider American audience that porn was socially acceptable if animated instead of acted.
Honestly, I don't see how anyone can with a straight face say that the reason animated erotica isn't blockbuster-level successful in America is because ONE comic book based movie flopped at the box office. I doubt that (fantasy + rating) is the issue; I'm sure that a well-done Punisher movie could be quite successful with an "R" rating (assuming it could outlive the horror that John Travolta delivered in 2004). The producers of Heavy Metal simply wish that there were a mass audience for fantasy porn, and there just isn't.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
I mean, in the comic Nightowl and Silk Specter was the kind of heroes that doesn't kills, as opposed to Rorschach after some point of his life. On the alley fight Silk Specter puts a knight on a thug throat, most of the essence from Watchmen was lost on this unnecessary violence. Watchmen could be told as a PG13 movie, but it would not made it a movie for kids.
Just saw this article yesterday about how the Bioshock movie was put on hold indefinitely because of its R-rating. It's too bad because I think Bioshock could make for an interesting movie, especially since Gore Verbinski refused to censor the movie down to a PG-13 rating.
The PR for the movie frankly didn't really make me want to watch it. Like Walk Hard, which I consider a GREAT movie, the PR didn't make it seem like a movie I'd want to watch.
Was Watchmen really not a good movie for today, or was it just marketed poorly?
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
The problem with Watchmen is really a US problem of mass perception.
There's so much advertising for big budget movies that people come into the theater with certain expectations. Not expectations that the movie will be "good" or "bad", but expectations of a certain type or level of action, suspense, etc...
IMHO Watchmen is a *great* movie. I use it to showcase my projector room whenever friends are over, and we constantly go through the whole Blu-Ray. Watching them stand in awe of the movie is a great feeling. The movie is really really good, the only gripe I've got with it is the love scene with the Owl. But hey, every movie has at least one useless scene.
No, the problem isn't R-Rated or PG13-Rated, it's that most people are given certain expectations too early before watching movies, and trailers can only convey a single emotion associated with a movie: love, laughter, violence, or eye candy, for example. And for a movie like Watchmen, it does it a major disservice.
http://comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=74095
he gave up the next pirates of the caribbean to do a bioshock movie. this is the guy who directed the american version of the ring. it would have been amazing. alas, tis not to be
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Star Wars actually had to make an effort to not get a 'G' rating.
You may be there, but are you old enough to be allowed into R rated movies or did you by a ticket for another movie and sneak in?
Look at all the great fan films out there. Some of the effects are quite impressive. As technology improves, individuals are able to create better and better looking films on a shoestring. So a group of fans could get together and make their own Watchmen, or Heavy Metal, or any other special genre piece they wanted. One big advantage they have is that they can get their original vision onscreen more or less intact; it doesn't have to be approved by a committee of suits or hew to what some poll says audiences want to see. So in principle we could get films approaching the quality of novels rather than the usual mass media pap.
Seriously... someone out there thought that Heavy Metal was *worthy* of a remake, or is Hollywood *that* desperate? What next, a remake of "Cool World"?
If you want a Heavy Metal remake CHEAPLY, just buy up a ton of Hentai Anime, dub it and release to theaters. Problem solved.
Maybe the reason they can't get funding for that stupid idea has nothing to do with Watchmen, and everything to do with it being a stupid idea.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
There is this pervasive "common sense" among media outlets that adult material does not sell. Make a game that Wal-MArt will not carry, gamers will ignore it. Make a film that children cannot be taken to, it will not sell DVDs. Does it really make sense? The multi-million dollar porn industry certainly laughs at that one, all the way to the bank. Give geeks movies and games with sizzling hot sex and gritty, satisfying violence and rate it R - they will flock at the doors to give you their money.
Seriously-- if they had John WIlliams create the score we would have liked it a lot better.
The movie sound track gives you clues how to feel about the scene. My daughter complained the Watchman soundtrack actually misled her and gave her a jarring feeling. It would set her up to feel one way and then expect her to feel another way.
It was also TOO grisly. There are things that played in the comic book which should have been toned down by 50% in the movie. You don't need to zoom in on the blood of the exploded criminal dripping from the ceiling.
The penis was a lot more of an issue when it was 2' long and swinging around on the movie screen vs being 1/16th of an inch long on the comic book page.
It was a good and faithful adaption. Very good casting.
The ending changing was acceptable.
---
On Barberella, -values have changed a LOT since the 60's. Sex is more acceptable, cheating is a lot less acceptable (I just watched "1,2,3" with James Cagney and his cheating on his wife was accepted and only an annoyance to her- today that wouldn't fly. it was jarring). I like Barbarella a lot. I like the entire Heavy metal type of work tho.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I can't believe I'm typing this but I think they failed to properly promote it. I've never read the comic, but I heard about the movie last year and watched it (netflix I think - can't remember). I thought it was great! I wish I'd been able to see it in the theater.
It made more than its budget. Sure it wasn't nearly as good as they had hoped, but it didn't exactly LOSE money right?
Instead of waiting for somebody else to do it and whining when they don't, why don't you invest YOUR millions and take the risk? If you don't have the money to make it happen, whose fault is that?
The world is not black and white and there is no simple good vs. evil plot like Hollywood would like all of us to believe. Movies are an escape and I surely don't need a "happy" ending in every film. I love movies that explore darker themes and the subtleties of human behavior. This is far more interesting that the "hero" movie where the hero ends up with the girl in the end. That is so cliché'd to death in Hollywood, it's extremely boring.
Watchmen was actually very good and graphically very well presented. Sin City is also one of my favorites. I could care less how much money a movie makes for the execs, that is completely irrelevant to me as a viewer. What matters is the quality of the story, the presentation, the acting and the believable characters.
I say bring on more adult-themed fantasy/comic based movies. It's fine to make movies for the kids, but come on, kids are not the only ones who see movies. Give us proper adult-themed movies that are enjoyable and entertaining to watch. Stop pandering to the lowest common denominator.
My friend barfed in his pants halfway through the movie (hilarious story, he was drunk, went to the bathroom to chuck, then failing to do so sat down to crap, then immediately leaned forward and barfed in his now-pulled-down pants) and I was relieved I got to drive him home instead of sitting through the rest of the movie.
There was so much "let's talk about stuff and be really deep and shit and check out this scary flashback" - which maybe reflects the comic well, but doesn't translate into a very good movie. It took forever, was boring, and unlike the comic, I couldn't put it down half way through and have a sandwich and think about the cool stuff happening. Perhaps watchmen just was't a good choice for a movie adaptation, or maybe it was poorly made, either way, I hardly think it qualifies as a really great movie.
Ze Atomic Device! It iz Ztolen!
Personally, I've skipped out on tickets for a few movies that I found interesting simply because they were rated PG-13 when I felt the story couldn't be faithfully retold without an R rating. This is especially true of many of the graphic novel remakes. Every time a studio decides that they need to cut a few scenes to bring down the rating and make a few extra dollars, they're actually gutting the character development. A couple scenes can make the difference between a truly fantastic story and a mediocre one. Do you really make more money that way? I realize times have changed a bit, but when I was younger I went to see plenty R rated movies. This, of course, was back in the day when families went to the movies TOGETHER rather than seeing it as an opportunity to ditch the kids at one theater while mom and dad catch the latest romcom or drama piece. My parents had no problem taking me to an R rated movie so long as they thought I would enjoy it. I would rather take my children with me to see a rich, well developed, R rated movie than drop them off for some campy fart-joke of a PG-13 one.
If you had payed attention reading the comic, you'd have seen that chronologically Dr. M choses to wear less and less clothing. Going from a jumpsuit to some shorts to some weird thong looking thing to just the full monty. It's a metaphor for his decreasing concern for humanity and it's silly rules and taboos. He becomes less emotionally attached to people and wears less clothing (which is a very human custom compared to any other animal) as an outward display of that. I'll admit that the connection was not as clear in the movie as it was in the original comic so if you had only seen the movie it would have just seemed like excessive nudity.
It's not even that one particular movie can ruin the chances of other, completely unrelated movies. It's simply that the whole premise of 'rating' a movie based on specific content without any context is a stupid idea. So there is some nudity in Watchmen. So what? Do you think a pair of breasts is going break the fragile little mind of a 10 year old? Yes, I'm sure some people think that, but why should the nation as a whole suffer from it? Let them start their own, even more conservative rating system, one which the general public can ignore.
To compare things, I just looked up the rating for Watchmen in the Netherlands. It's 16, which is the highest rating we've got. (it's all, 6, 9, 12, 16) This isn't that unusual. For example, it was the same rating given to the Dark Knight. It's probably due more to violence than nudity.
Taco says it was a good movie. Then Escort comes in implying the only reason Taco liked it is because he is a fan of the comic. Escort then goes on to admit that he has not seen the movie.
People, Escort is making comments about a movie has never seen. Why is that modded up?
It's easy to create fantasy that doesn't require an R rating, if the screenwriter just keeps BOTH hands on the keyboard.
If a movies good or not very few movies will get my ass into a theater to pay $8-$13 to see a movie one time. The last movie I saw in theater was Iron Man 2 and that was because I saw Iron Man 1 in a theater and it was awesome. As for watchmen it never caught my interest even if it was "good" just wasn't very interesting to based on the plot even after I looked over the comics it never made it onto my go see list like Xmen, Batman, Iron Man, and Fantastic Four. Even after I watched the DVD it was good but if i went and saw it in a tether I'm sure it would of been disappointing kinda like Spider Man was for me. The next movie I will be seeing is Thor simply cause it will tie in with The Avengers
It had a $60 million estimated budget and only a $30 million domestic gross, which means it lost gobs of money, especially when percentages are taken into account. Losing money is in no way, shape or form "doing quite well."
Not only did it ruin the party, the motion comic version makes for a far superior movie without the inferior human caricatures that pollute all hollywood productions.
People that make (pay for) movie production are greedy. News at 11.
Movies made for art tend to be low budget. Big budget movies are a business commodity. It is controlled by making as much money as possible and that is largely about hitting the largest target audience as possible. Why pay for a movie that will be restricted to who you can sell it to, its not good business.
I hate it, but that's just how it is.
That's why I am glad of the revival of the TV miniseries. I am looking forward to HBO's Game of Thrones. However if they ever tried to make a actual movie on the books it would be an utter failure. If ANY fantasy series were to be R rated it would be Game of Thrones, and if they made a movie out of it, it would most certainly be PG13. However considering past (excellent) series that HBO has done, they don't have to pull the same punches that the big movie producers seem to have to.
My big hope for the future of movies is that technology is making movies less expensive to produce.
The more expensive a movie is, the harder it is to make the movie; and the more the studios start to mess with the creators of the movie. "We don't want that quirky unknown actor you like; you need to put in Johnny Depp." "The test audiences didn't understand the ending; you need to change it to make it clear that the good guy won." That sort of thing.
I read an interview with John Cusack right after Grosse Pointe Blank came out. He said something like "I'd love to give you a great story about how we fought the suits to realize our vision, but the reality is we were spending so little money that nobody cared about us, and we were able to make the movie the way we wanted to."
So, I predict that within the near future, it will be possible for a director to make a movie completely pure to his/her vision, by keeping the costs really low. Shoot everything with digital cameras. Have the special effects done at some unknown small computer effects shop in Korea or somewhere... or possibly even done by American university students for free. Hire unknown actors who will work just for the experience and accept royalties instead of big up-front money. (Or hire actors that Hollywood has already chewed up and spit out. I can think of several actors I liked who never got much respect in Hollywood.)
As for actors, you never know: you might even get semi-famous or famous people, as long as the time commitment is low. http://5secondfilms.com/ has had Peter Sormare do a couple of shorts for them, I presume for free. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was able to film all of Angelina Jolie's scenes in three days. Once Upon a Time in Mexico got all of Johnny Depp's scenes filmed early, and they had time to just improvise a couple of new scenes with him before he had to leave.
If you visit TheForce.net you can see a whole bunch of "fan films" that were done on a really tiny budget. The special effects are, in many cases, not bad at all.
I've seen plenty of stuff on TheForce.net that is better than Batman & Robin or Aeon Flux. For me at least, the best special effect is a good story; if I like the story, I'm quite willing to overlook a lot of other stuff.
I predict that not only is what I imagine possible, it is pretty much inevitable. Modern consumers have so many choices, that it is now impossible to drive everyone to see the same movies (or listen to the same music). Markets are fragmenting based on consumer's tastes, so it will be harder for movies to become true blockbusters. Keeping costs down and appealing to a specific demographic is one strategy for dealing with this, and I expect to see a lot more of it.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Or a variety of other reasons why these types of movies aren't being made. I hardly see how The Watchmen could have a significant impact on the future of these movies given some other reasons. How about :
- Family values? This isn't the free-loving 70's any more, the original target demographic for these types of movies (according to the article). People just might not be that into these types of movies, much to the dismay of the author. People get all uppity now if they see a nip slip on daytime TV in america (not so much in europe) so they're probably not going to dig this type of movie.
- Portrayal of women? Look at the pictures in TFA - do you women want to go see this movie if the main actress is basically a sex doll? Look at the comic book portrayal of the aeon flux main character, then the movie adaptation. If the movie character had the comic book outfit, I really doubt I could have convinced my girlfriend to see it. Studio's aren't going to spend millions on a movie if no women will see it
- MPAA - these movies would all get an R rating at the minimum, and possibly an X rating from the MPAA. An NC-17 rating is basically a death sentence for the movie, because most theaters won't show it. Major retailers like walmart won't carry the DVDs.
- Availability of porn? Ok, this one's a long shot - but a 14 year old doesn't need to see a movie like this to get their dose of virtual titties. I know that when I was younger I'd watch Heavy Metal or something on the late night TV if it happened to come on. Not so sure about now, the internet and easy access to porn & tantalizing web comics might have ruined that for this generation
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
Sure, to late teenage guys who don't have parents who forbid them from seeing it, or girlfriends. There are quite a few of them. Most won't see it more than once. Some under 25-ers might also see it.
When you're making a movie that costs tens of millions of dollars or more, it isn't great to start out by eliminating anybody with kids or a significant other from your potential audience.
Watchmen did offer more than just sex scenes, which is why it didn't absolutely crater. However, most of the elements that got it the R rating were really things that didn't advance the movie. I mean, I don't mind the odd sex scene but I really don't need a cheesy porno flick in the middle of the film that really has nothing to do with the plot.
The movie was not good. It showed why a frame-by-frame remake of a comic strip into a film is a bad idea, while at the same time showing how messing with your source content in the ending can render the previous 2 hours a waste of time. The fact that the creator washed his hands of the project long before filming began should say enough by itself, but the lack of passion and understanding shown in the film undermined it from the get-go.
As for the viability of 'grown-up' fantasy or sci-fi films, one only has to look at the kinds of films that still perform well in the theaters.Kids' films, the yet-to-be-justified 3-D 'experience,' and films acted and directed well enough to create a buzz due to the quality of the 'skill position' performance [forgive the bad analogy]. Everything else gets released, brushed aside, and queued up to be streamed at the leisure of the audience.
The adults these movies are aimed at have raid schedules, kids they can't take along, or an addiction to reality TV. Maybe all three. Dropping $40 at the theater is one of the least-efficient ways to spend your discretionary entertainment budget.
While TFA is theoretically about Hollywood not making SF/Fantasy movies - it's really an extended rant about Hollywood not making movies that are nominally SF/Fantasy but show lots (and lots) of female skin.
Watchmen actually grossed a lot of money. They just spent too much making it. "It was the sixth highest grossing R-rated film of 2009" according to Wikipedia. It killed 'R'-rated expensive movies, not necessarily 'R'-rated fantasy movies. For example, District 9 made a lot of money because of its small budget.
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
I watched Watchmen - or I should say I saw it and I can barely remember anything about it. It just wasn't compelling in my opinion. It is interesting that opinions about this film range so widely from awful to freakin' awesome. I must be somewhere in the middle.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
I have no idea what was going on in that movie.
I don't want to be a snot, but I think part of the problem really is the narrowness of the audience. From my perspective, the only way the sentence "Watchmen is pretty heavy stuff both from a philosophical and situational perspective" makes sense if you precede it with "For a comic book..." or "AS a comic book...." Most of the reason Watchmen is interesting is because of what it has to say about comic books. As a critique of the Reagan era, the movie came too late. The Reagan-era was already at that point repeating itself as farce. Anyway, so, to my mind, you're have to be a certain age, and still interested in comic books. That's definitely me, and it's many people here. But it's not really my students--who uniformly didn't get it, or care about it, UNLESS they were some sort of comic bookstore nerd already. That last category was ready to watch it on some sort of meta- level, happy to think about in the terms of the nostalgia the film's opening invites. But it couldn't be effective solely on the terms of nostalgia, because it was insisting on thinking about nostalgia, unlike say Raiders of the Lost Ark. However, yet again, it was thinking in terms of the comic book medium. I think one reason V for Vendetta did better is because it plays--not just with Thatcherite England's fascist flirtations--but with the extremely familiar Orwell 1984 narrative, one so popular that even that the (somewhat dopey) famous Apple ad could trade on it.
I love adult sci-fi, however when you look at that list of examples, it's easy to see why they aren't going anywhere. They're all remakes of movies that have been done. Surly there is at least one original script floating around hollywood? Does every movie have to be a remake, or based on a comic book?
There are plenty of vehicles that can get you to a good box office hit. You just need to chose the right ones and keep the budget low. The trick is to blend it with another genre.
- Godzilla is always good. Big stompy monsters always are a classic.
- Anything with realistic aliens/other worlds also is good - Avatar 2 could easily be told as a more grim and dirty story without any real problem. Nature is not kind, gentle, or pretty. Even science fiction like Serenity was easy - the plot almost writes itself.
- Anything with realistic disasters is also good. Just as long as it isn't the idiots at the Sci-Fi channel doing it on zero budget with the same ending every time.
- Conan and similar epic smash the monsters type stuff never gets old, either. But it does need to be more about the acting. Very few if any special effects is the rule here. The Lord of the Rings series is a perfect example - the CGI didn't feel like overt in your face CGI. There was very little flashy effects.
- Kung-Fu (which is fantasy - heh) never gets old, either.
- Super-archaeologist/inventor/scientist saves-the-world is always a good thing.
Instead of trying to reinvent old junk, they need to be making NEW junk. It's as if the people running the studios brains all stopped in 1999 and now they don't do anything new at all. If nothing else works, just grab any of the things out of Japan, Korera, or China and run with it.
1: No more video game tie-ins unless it's very well done and makes a little sense. Tomb Raider or Uncharted would be watchable. Diablo 2/3 would be a disaster. Great game, but a disaster in the making on film. Prey also would suck. Dialog and puzzles are human. Firing off thousands of bullets isn't much to work with unless it's a war movie.
2: Make new characters. Hire unknowns. Take a page from George Lucas when he was starting out (and ignore everything afterwards) - low tech and a good story beats flashy and written by corporate wage-slaves and professional script writers. Do not reinvent the wheel.
3: Unless you are Stan Lee, don't attempt to make an old classic movie or comic book over again. Even Paramount finally figured out that you needed a reboot of the Trek franchise. Now, if they would only make a TV series of/with that cast... Reboots and new stuff are fine. But never go backwards.
I'm just grateful that the movie was as true to the comic as it was. I went to see it twice in the theaters, once with my friend and once to an IMAX version.
The nudity was great. It's just glorious to be watching a movie with nudity in it, because I know there's a lot of people who don't want us to, in order to pander. Of course, not being 15, I don't go to watch movies FOR that purpose, but it was nice that the comic book, which had nudity in it, was echoed correctly. The big glowy blue swingy-dong was great! The failed (and successful) sex scenes really told a lot about those characters. Rorschach was also wonderful. I dunno, I really liked this movie, one of the few good ones recently IMO. If it kills the genre for awhile, whatever, at least we finally effing got Watchmen out of it instead of like, the D&D movie.
Speaking of development hell and R rated sci-fi, what is the deal with Ghost In The Shell?
I didn't read TFA, but why is Watchmen considered a box-office disappointment? According to this it grossed $185 million and had a budget of $130 million.
Maybe the studios are tiring of unimaginative attempts to fleece some money out of them for yet another forgettable remake of another forgotten film. I know I am.
Can anyone think of a reason to remake Barbarella or Heavy Metal that is more engaging and compelling than any reasons for remaking The Man Who Fell To Earth or The Quiet Earth or RoboCop? Oh wait, an R-rated remake of that one is already in the works. Guess the article was mistaken.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Not sure if its down to the rating: I think the real problem is that Watchmen was a movie with an arthouse-sized target audience and a popcorn blockbuster- sized budget. If it had been made on Mini-DV for $50k then it would probably have been seen as a huge success. Serenity probably fell into a similar trap - and it wasn't R-rated. Maybe if we want intelligent sci-fi we're going to have to use our imaginations and live without high-end special effects ("Gattaca", "The Man From Earth", "Moon" anybody...?)
Of course, the other problem is that although Watchemen (the comic) was revolutionary in its time, it took too long to get to the screen: in the meantime we've had big-screen deconstruction of the vigilante superhero myth up the wazoo from other movies (without big blue cocks and explicit rape scenes). Heck, The Incredibles was almost a family-friendly version of Watchmen!
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
I don't think she's ever had the body for the mandatory nude scene. And I say this will all due respect to her acting and singing talents: Ms. Jovovich desperately needs a couple cheeseburgers.
Blade Runner was once considered an unwise endeavor.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
I really loved Machete it was R lots of violence not a ton of hardcore sex which is ok but still an awesome movie.
I'm sick of Shrek/Twilight-esque in 3D bs.
Almost all people I spoke to loved the LOTR movies (there was some discussion if they were actually better than the book). The only thing they really did not like that much was the ending - way too long, it seemed like there were three separate endings. Of course, this is not dissimilar to the book, but then again, maybe it wasn't that great in the book either.
There are plenty of adult-themed movies that are enjoyable and entertaining to watch. They just don't happen to fit into the "fantasy/comic-based" category.
Incendies is a recent one that would appear to fit all of your requirements, except the events don't happen in a spaceship.
Um Hello? it was an R-rated Fantasy (well.. super-hero-ish sorta action film.. but that's fantasy..) movie that did well at the box office.
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
But I loved the watchmen and hated district 9. I got the point of district 9 after five minutes and after that it was just pouring salt on the wounds. IMO, the violence and hatred in District 9 is far more obscene than the big blue glowing penis ever could be.
You're spot on there. I have a friend who is completely unapologetic that he sees movies for escapism. He flat-out states he doesn't want to think about it, he just wants brainless fun where the good guy wins. Which is refreshing that he understands that's what he wants and knows he won't like something that's in any way different, but sad in that he also states that is what everyone should want and basically no one should even be allowed to make anything different.
[He has trouble with empathy sometimes, obviously]
I thought I read somewhere, that it wasn't the Watchmen's fault alone but the combination of it plus the Punisher R rated movie flopping around the same time that signaled the death knell for R rated comic book movies. The only Comic R-rated movie made since was Kick Ass which earned about $100 million worldwide on a $30 million budget. Watchmen made $185 million worldwide on it's $130 million budget and Punisher War Zone only saw $11 million worldwide on it's $35 million budget.
Nudity, graphic violence, expensive special effects and big name actors are not necessary to make grown up films. More often they are crutches for a lack of good story line and good writing, rather than intrinsic thereto. Star Wars and Serenity were not R rated, nor even particularly big-budget. By contrast, the special effects tour-de-force Avatar's underlying story was juvenile and T&A would not have changed that.
It was good but I can see that it would never have been a hit regardless of R or PG-13 ratings. It just did not have any sort of mass appeal. Blaming its lack of success on the R rating is just a cover story for the real problem.
I mean, I don't mind the odd sex scene but I really don't need a cheesy porno flick in the middle of the film that really has nothing to do with the plot.
Actually, while it wasn't important to the plot it was to the character development. The whole point is that Dreiberg is so messed up as a person that he's totally impotent even with his dream girl until he puts on the Night Owl suit. A big part of the entire comic series is just how badly being a "superhero" will mess with your personality- virtually none of them are fully functional human beings anymore. This too is why we needed to have the blue dong- Manhattan's increasing nudity is a sign of just how detached from humanity he's become.
Now, was it a *good* sex scene? I'm not so sure they did a great job on that one- when I rewatched the movie I fast forwarded past it since I understand the point they were trying to make, it wasn't all that interesting and there are plenty of other places to see boobs.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
I have to comment on this one. How does the love triangle between Silk Spectre II, Night Owl and Dr. Manhattan not have anything to do with the plot?
It wasn't just the R rating. It was that it was 3 hours long. That's what dissuaded me and most people I know from seeing it in theaters.
The actual linked article is called "The dismal future of 'R'-rated fantasy and sci-fi movies", and Watchmen is barely mentioned at all. The Slashdot title makes it sound like there's a big discussion about Watchmen, but there's virtually nothing.
Bjork has breasts? News to me.
I'm gonna get a little pissed here and go Larry David on you all, fuck you and all you fuckers who think that what some smuck said is of value.
And yeah I do value writers but dammit if we have to have a meeting every damn time they want to change the draft then fuck them.
In short, TFA says that The Watchman was too highbrow for the profit center of what the Jews who own Hollywood like to accept. IE The profit margin was too low. Fuck you and fuck them.
You think your next story about some bridge is gonna bring in 100m? Fuck no, it's gonna be about space you dumb fucks. That is where sci-fi is at and that is where you are gonna make your money. Stop being a fucking noob and learn to know where the market is.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
" Zardoz " has:
Sean Connery running around in, for want of a better description, a red leather hooker outfit , including thigh-boots
A flying stone head that vomits guns
a more concise formulation of the philosophy imparted upon the Georgia Guidestones
Also, in " Heavy Metal ", you also had the recurring character " girl with humoungous round bazoongas " tying the vignettes together.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"The Kings Speech" is another example of just how ludicrous the movie ratings system is. It got an R rating simply because the doctor was trying to get the king angry and asked him if he could say the "F" word. Of course the response was a few sentences of vulgarity. There was nothing in the movie that could be described as sex scenes and the vulgarity was short in critical to the overall theme of the movie. A R rating just for a short scene where the "F" bomb is thrown? WTF?
To me, people murdering each other is not particularly family-friendly. Even when the "good guys" are murdering the "bad guys", who surely had it coming.
Show tits, ass, sex, whatever and it's immediately deemed to be family- un friendly, even if nobody is being murdered, maimed or otherwise harmed.
Watchmen is like the Citizen Kane of comic books --and that's not a good thing.
Citizen Kane was heralded as a great film, but most of that praise was due to the technical and cinematic innovations, rather than the plot. As a result, modern audiences, who've grown up used to seeing those techniques in every movie, generally have no idea why Kane was ever considered great.
Similarly, Watchmen more or less invented the postmodern supehero comic. At the time, its gritty anti-heroic take on superheroes was groundbreaking, fresh and original, which is why it is so well loved by older comic fans. But because it was never made into a movie or TV franchise back in the day, people outside of the comic book community were never exposed to it until now.
The problem is that modern audiences have already seen dozens of similar dark takes on the superhero genre in films and TV. Those people don't know (or care) that Watchmen was first; to them it's just another take on a well-worn theme. Watchmen has become a victim of its own success, to the point where just seems dated by comparison to later works that took its themes and further developed them.
The use of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" for the sex scene made me laugh. After that, it was impossible to watch that seriously and not as nerd parody. IIRC, their accidentally triggering the Owlship's flamethrower was straight from the comic book.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Watch the movie and read the comic. The sex scene is totally relevant to the plot, you just have to THINK about what you're seeing and look at the deeper meaning. It's there.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
"Watchmen was actually *good*."
It sure was. Did you know that there was a movie based on it too?
And yet Spiderman 3 was the best-selling of the whole franchise, and Peter Parker was very ambiguous in that flick.
Not at all. He was the victim of a villainous alien suite. That is not nearly the same thing as being a real anti-hero. His real character never changed. He is still one of the more goody-two-shoes heroes ever invented. Nice try though.
I think he was taking about sexually. ZING!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
You'd think that if so much of their investments are based on movie 'ratings', that they'd get better ratings. The current system that attempts to shoehorn everything into a 'sliding scale of moral righteousness' is very obviously total BS.
The criteria for classification are also BS. It's basically arbitrary other than: violence is bad, sex is *real* bad.
Couldn't they just use a series of symbols to indicate content, (maybe some color coded as well for 'severity') and leave the moral judgments up to the parents where they belong? Something like that is simple enough and gives parents more information than the PG=GOOD, R=BAD that we have today.
I don't ever look at ratings and wouldn't care except for it makes the product worse. And predictable, but I guess that's the point. Make the same unoffensive movie over and over again and cash in!
I thought that overall the movie was pretty well done (I have not read the comics.) I think the reason it didn't do as well as hoped was not the actual rating itself, but some of the reason for the rating. Violence, nudity, adult situations, etc. are all pretty common in well-performing R-rated action/fantasy movies. But the gore (did we really need to see that much detail when the guys arm was broken), and the overwhelming dark overtones made myself and others leave the movie feeling slightly disturbed.
Slightly less gore, and slightly more levity could have gone a long way to improving the box office performance in my opinion.
I think the squid ending was more interesting and a better ending for the comic, but there was no way they could have stuck the squid in the movie, had it make sense, and clock in under 6 hours, so I thought the change was a good move.
There was a problem with the comic book ending though: If Dr. Manhattan isn't turned into the perceived villain by the Ozzy's plot, why would space squids be any more of a problem than the Russians? If Dr. Manhattan is still fighting for the 'good guys' (for earth as opposed to against it), why would the countries of the world band together?
The movie solution actually makes more sense when you consider that for Ozzy's plot to work, the world must be alienated from Dr. Manhattan.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Watchmen did $185,258,983 in gross revenue, and it cost about $130,000,000, a 42% profit. Everyone in Hollywood (and most people in New Jersey, for that matter) knows that R-Rated films don't generate summer blockbuster money. Which means, regardless of the subject, they can't cost as much and be expected to generate crazy profits.
Take a real summer blockbuster: "Iron Man 2" grossed $623.4M and cost about $200M.. a 311% profit, the kind that pretty much ensures there will be an "Iron Man 3". On the other hand, an equally big budget summer film, "Price of Persia: The Sands of Time" grossed $335M and also cost $200M, even as a Disney "tent-pole" film, and with Jerry Bruckheimer, only a modest success at 67.5% profit.
-Dave Haynie
The squid ending to the graphic novel version of Watchmen, was supposed to be a bit "comic book-y".
Perhaps I am mistaken, but it seemed that the point of the entire series was to (a) throw in every literary device and bit of grotesquerie that the comics code was inveighed against, and (b) to show how juvenile (obviously) the resulting super-good-vs-super-evil stories had become (think Super Skrull, super-breath, super-hearing, super-boweling, etc.).
B/c it was so well done in the first instance, I did not see the movie and have no desire to do so.
Barbarella exists.
Why would anyone need a remake of it?
IMHO movies would be much better if the studios decided to spent money on movies that aren't here already.
bickerdyke
So, clearly the triangle does. However, extended sexual activity between them isn't really necessary to advance the story.
It seems a bit out-of-place (writers having fantasies, perhaps?), but perhaps its biggest negative impact is the legions of people who wouldn't end up seeing the movie as a result of it being there.
Watchmen made for a distinctly average movie.
Would have worked soooo much better as an animated short film as it really didn't have enough plot, character depth or action to stretch onto the big screen.
Why? The movie was incredibly lame. It was only saved by Jane Fonda's gorgeous, supple, young bod...
I'm sorry, I forgot what I was going to say.
You know - I read the graphic novel in preparation for watching the highly anticipated movie, but I only watched the movie once. Personally, I didn't really find the movie all that awesome. But I have to say - I never even *noticed* that Dr. Manhattan was actually entirely nude and that his tallywhacker was out there for all to see. It was only after one of my friends reviewed the movie from his perspective - a review which consisted almost entirely of the repeated phrase "blue penis" - that I even became aware of it. This isn't a slam on the actor's assets - just found it strange that it seems that the movie was all about blue dick for so many people...
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor
I'm not sure how to respond...
On the one hand I think you're saying that erotica can be successful (your example grossed $25M in the US, $190M worldwide - not quite in the same league as The Godfather , which grossed $135M domestically & $245M worldwide; but still respectable), which kinda supports what I was trying to say . Perhaps the reason Heavy Metal III isn't getting picked up is because it just doesn't compare well against the other animated erotica available out there.
On the other hand, this one outlier, doesn't make a trend like "summer action blockbuster": I've never heard of anyone looking forward to the "winter animated erotica" season. Other posters saying that cultural acceptance of Barbarella was a product of the 60's probably have a point, and I'd guess that your 1972 film was riding at the tail of that cultural wave. As much as horny men across the nation may want it, I don't expect AMC and Cinemark to fill 2000+ American theaters this year with a cartoon about having sex - that's what I meant by "blockbuster-level".
Regardless, for any director to point at a single film (that he didn't make) and say "they made me fail!" is patently ridiculous. I'd sooner believe that his project is weighed down by failures in his own script, previous movies in the same series (IMDB reports the '81 effort as breaking even on video sales, and its fans routinely ridicule the 2000 film), or cultural norms not accepting that kind of work. Bonus points for all three in this case.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
It will be out soon on blue wang. Ray! Blue ray!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The market for R-rated titillation has been reduced. If you want porn, you can get all the porn you want. Of course, as Ozzy Osborne complains, in porn, there are no surprise endings.
Today, if there's sex, it needs to be fully integrated into the plot. "Dollhouse" had some of that, but their better episodes were more like action-adventure bits. "Aeon Flux" tried, but despite a nicely put together production and a very hot female lead, didn't quite succeed. "Serenity" had the Companions, but in a supporting role.
Suppose the Companions had a political agenda, and they were trying to influence events through sex. Now that has potential.
All they have to do is make multiple cuts, one for each rating. Mark one "The Director's Cut" and you are done. Make the money back for investors with the PG version, let the R version live on as the canonical version for true movie fans and for a future, better time. Ideally, this would all be in one digital copy, inside an app that can play whichever version you want, then cinemas could play the PG version by day and have R showings at night. Similarly, home users could buy one iTunes Extra with buttons for each version, and play whichever version they prefer.
Just stop it.
It's cynical, immature and just plain STUPID.
A remake of Barbarella? Are you kidding me?
Let's do a remake of Hollywood! One where all the cocaine dealers have moved out and the current executives have been lined up against the wall and shot!
Yeeeehaaa!
Ok I'll concede the Cohens doing True Grit is fair enough once I discovered it had nothing to do with 'Marian' and was based on the original novel.
Aside: Yes Watchmen was brilliant, I would go as far as to say. I was very surprised and pleasantly so.
Hollywooden: Do more like that. Don't do any more remakes unless they are by the Cohens and go back to the original book.
you're telling me that people like david fincher and robert rodriguez (mr. diy, himself) can't just use their own money? i never understood this.
...
I'm hoping the upcoming George RR Martin fantasy series 'Game of Thrones" from HBO will be successful enough to give us adults back our R-rated fantasy entertainment/storytelling.
And this is why books will always be the only one true medium for storytelling expression.
I tend to get really annoyed when animated movies use the same old big names you'd see in regular movies.
I'm familiar with that trend.
Especially when they go ahead and make the character look kind of like the actor.
An ink suit actor, in other words.
Why not just make it live action in the first place, then?
There are plenty of reasons to animate: child characters, non-human characters, zany violence, extensive violence, magic, etc. might be cheaper to do with animation than with traditional live-action special effects. And by the time you've animated 10% of the movie, you may already have the resources to do the other 90%, even if only so that the art styles don't obviously clash.
Maybe I'm strange but as a teen I never lacked a girlfriend and cant recall any of em who objected to Tits In Space. Somehow the woman I married does not mind em either. She and I went to see The Watchmen in the theater and even though she never read the comic, generally dislikes long movies and did not get the cultural references because she is not American she said she enjoyed the film and thought the sex scene was pretty good for the story.
As with many things, YMMV
What you point out about your students kinda confirms my suspicions of "how can anyone who did not grow up with the Cold War enjoy this story?". The counterpoint to that is that my wife who grew up outside the US, had never read the comics, had a good time watching the movie.
If you want a crappy R-rated comic novel adaptation see the Spirit. Was Samuel Jackson in that? Damn, he's in everything these days. Although the Spirit was more like anti-Sin City.
... the blue penis. Seriously. The rest of the movie was a blur.
I think you are a latent fag because you're afraid of GWAR shows.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Paul's letters are pure and simple rantings of a paranoid, self loathing 'sex addict'.
Whatever someone is hung up on, that's them.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Tits in space
Sure, to late teenage guys who don't have parents who forbid them from seeing it, or girlfriends. There are quite a few of them. Most won't see it more than once. Some under 25-ers might also see it.
When you're making a movie that costs tens of millions of dollars or more, it isn't great to start out by eliminating anybody with kids or a significant other from your potential audience.
Well, those Swedish "The Girl Who ..." films were worth seeing several times.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
(Just a note, I'm going to assume anyone reading this knows that there are lots of spoilers)
Well, sure, you could take out the attempted rape, the sex scene between Night Owl and Silk Spectre II, Dr Manhattan's nudity, the scene with young Rorshach seeing his mother having sex with a client, the sex scene between Dr Manhattan and Silk Spectre II and any others I'm forgetting. They're all parts of the story though. The attempted rape plays a major part in the characterization of the Comedian and the Silk Spectre and is one of the defining moments of their relationship. The sex scene between Night Owl and Silk Spectre II I've already talked about. Dr Manhattan's nudity is important to his characterization. The details of Rorshach's childhood are extremely important to his characterization. The sex scene between Dr Manhattan and Silk Spectre II is important to defining their relationship at the time of the story and also as another demonstration of how far beyond human he has become. All of these things are important to the story. Sure, you can cut them out and just imply that they happened in some other way. Possibly through narration: tell, don't show as opposed to show, don't tell. Of course, you could also just have made the entire movie in one room at the New Frontiersman with one reporter reading Rorshach's journal aloud for two hours. Boy, what a movie that would be.
Interestingly, if you cut the length of the movie by about a minute and a half by removing anything explicitly sexual as well as all nudity (not the same thing as sexual) and left in all the murder of a lesbian superhero and her lover, murder of a bank guard/superhero with an inconvenient cape, murder of child-eating dogs, revenge murder of a child killer, genocidal scale murder, murder of mother with unborn child, murder of bystanding CEOs and secretaries, murder by poisoning of murderous assassin, murder by particle disintegration of hard-working scientists and engineers, murder of an innocent genetically engineered tiger-thingy by particle disintegration, murder of a comrade in arms to hush him up, murder of an old man by a bunch of idiots, murder of height challenged crime figures, murder of murderous convicts (could probably claim self defense there), murder of a murderous superhero/government agent, murder of John F. Kennedy, implied murder of Woodward and Bernstein, lots of killings that aren't technically murder because they were in warfare or were technically police actions, grisly violence of all kinds, dogs gnawing on a childs bones, dismemberments, horrific beatings, accidental deaths by particle disintegration, etc. etc. then you'd probably manage to get a PG-13 rating. Wierd really. Of course, you could also take out all of that stuff, but then you'd have a much shorter movie. I suppose you could add some talking animal friends and a few musical numbers...
I actually like movies with talking animal friends and musical numbers. I actually like all kinds of movies. I liked the Watchmen movie. I liked the comic as well. My favorite movies include some with R ratings and some with G ratings (no nc-17s or X-rated or whatever among my top favorites, but there's no reason there couldn't be if they were good movies, I can think of plenty of books I like that might need that kind of rating if they were done as movies). For all of those movies, the tone and substance of the story really would be hurt by either "sanitizing" it down to a lower rating or "dirtying" it up to a higher rating. They are what they are.
Still, it would be nice if, when the movie came out, you could automatically get a censored version for anyone it needs to be censored for and a regular version for everyone else. That way, the kids could all pretend to their parents that they've only seen the censored version rather than pretending that they haven't seen it at all the way they do now. The broadcast model of theaters and TV is a problem there, however. It's logistically problematic to have multiple versions of a movie out in the theaters at the same
...with Watchmen wasn't the ending. I think they should have kept the fake alien invasion and just not have used the giant candy space squid. My main gripe was how much they cut or rushed so they could squeeze in action scenes. I felt like they lost the feel of the story in the process.
The most frustrating part of this is that Watchmen was actually *good*.
Watchmen was extremely disappointing for a number of reasons. As an Alan Moore fan who reread Watchmen compulsively (didn't we all? :P ), it was a bad experience.
The good: The movie started well, especially visually. The camera work was consciously mimicking the comics, and there were some pretty clever ways of going over the backstory without hitting the audience over the head with it. Also, the soundtrack was badass.
The bad: Dialogue directly lifted from the comic was stiff and sometimes out-of-place without the correct context of scenes missing from the movie. The pacing was awful, and the scenes were seemingly cherry-picked from the comic and strung together.
The ugly: The silly CG Dr. Manhattan.
There's more to say, but I've admittedly wiped much of the movie from memory. It was bad as a solitary piece of art, and it was bad as an adaptation of the comic. The source material deserved better treatment and so did the audience.
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
Sorry, but Watchmen was a horrible film. It was the ultimate pretentious adolescent fanboy movie. It bombed because it was bad.
And a rigid censoring system only matched in Iran, North Korea and a few other heavily religious states in the middle east, and a different, but probably equally strick system in China.
What I find worse though. Violence, torture and gore are allowed from age 12, mild erotica is first from 15... So basically children are "taught" that violence is good and love is bad. Sic
And no wonder Hollywood is bleeding money... They are only allowed to make boring movies or remakes of old movies. Ofcause blaming internet piracy that no one buys their boring crap.
Ultimate Cut is where it's at. I tried rewatching the theatrical cut but stopped half way through and started watching ultimate cut.
At 3:36 it takes a while, but includes tales of the black freighter.
13.6GB torrent out there somewhere.
anyone who has not watched ultimate cut and has mixed feelings about the film would be doing a disservice to themselves if they don't pick it up.
I hope your next line isn't "but i liked Kick-Ass".
Let me explain my point. All these 3 movies (Watchmen, Scott Pilgrim, Kick-Ass) are based on comic books, and are the most recent high profile comic book movies.
Scott Pilgrim was good because it was relatable. I could relate to at least a few of the characters, and the gaming references. And it ha an imperfect hero unable to get the girl until he learns something.
Watchmen is all about assholes, and the one who seemed like should be the biggest asshole ended up as the only one willing to do what was 'right' before what was 'subjectively the best to protect the world'. All the heroes and assholes learned something (maybe except the blue dick).
After a few changes from what happened in the comic book, in Kick-Ass the hero learned to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and at the end he got the asshole girl. Nothing substantial learned.
All of these movies try to show "losers" and assholes in a conflict. All of the movies had added slomo combat scenes (slomo combat sells, obviously). 2 of 3 of these movies makes the "losers" learn something. The third movie was trying its best to be "mainstream", and in this process it became shallow, and ended with the hero learning nothing (except to kick ass).
So there is your "mainstream" movie. We, the anti-social and different people (doesn't that sound scary), are not looking for a movie which is "different". We are just looking for movies that has a point at the end (preferably a good point).
Screwing up the ending dishonored the fangeek base.
Weenie wagging dishonored parents who want to bring kids to a comic book movie.
I mean, there's an advanced cinemagraphic technical called CAMERA ANGLES that could fix the second problem and retain the integrity.
But about the first? Nah. Nothing can be done when they toss the source material.
And they could have softened down the sex too, and saved the harshest stuff for an unrated dvd release. A softer approach to sex is shown to actually improve box office draw (in many years).
Hey, Hollywood, how about not basing your decisions on the tepid reception of an unfaithful nerd movie?
I mean, Watchmen is a terrible example, if you're making the argument that "SFX-fests are only profitable if they are family-friendly."
Likewise, the original Matrix is a terrible example of that argument's counter-point.
I might just suggest that whether the movie is well-written or original is a better indicator of whether it will make money if it is an R-rated SF/Fantasy film, regardless of the SFX budget (assuming the effects are passable, at least).
But Hollywood as a corporate culture, doesn't know what a well-written Sci-Fi movie is. Actually, I'm pretty sure Heavy Metal and Barbarella aren't in that category. Maybe Cameron should stop screwing around and just try to do Battle Angel Alita already, and stop testing the water with more crap.
Very well said.
I notice no one objected to the use of a smiley button in the movie. Most people will not even be able to tell you if a cat was in it or not.
You're arguing extremes. You don't need to have extended sex scenes bordering on pornography to depict most of the things you describe. PG-13 movies have sex scenes all the time. You just need to be creative about what you actually show, and not go overboard on it.
Hey, I still enjoyed the movie, and occasionally watch it again on video. It just isn't any mystery to me why the average red-state American didn't show up.
Watchmen was, honestly, pretty bad. Not only was the storyline so disjoined that you almost never knew what the hell was going on until the very end, but the ultimate story ended up being terrible.
To be clear, the smartest man in the world assesses that the Cold War is really bad and could kill billions of people. In response, said smartest man in the world deliberately kills millions of people and blames it on Dr. Manhattan to unite the world, claiming that it will result in the best possible scenario.
There are two reasons why this is an asinine plot. First, it wouldn't work -- world unity against a common enemy is quite fragile (just look at national unity against al Qaeda after 9/11). Second, and more to the point, it's not the best of all possible worlds, as the result is far inferior to the result that obtained **in the actual world**, and that had already obtained before the comic was released.
Epic philosophical fail.
I think you may be remembering it as considerably more explicit than it actually was. Also, I'm not sure what extremes I'm arguing. I was talking about what's actually in the movie and what would still be in the movie even if you took out the very small amount of sexual content. That one scene that bothers you was in the movie. It's a tiny part of it, but significant. If the event hadn't been shown, it would have needed to be implied somehow, so why not just show it? Who does it harm exactly?