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*.

Comments

It was OK

[Rik Sweeney]

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.

Re:It was OK

[bigstrat2003]

That depends on whether you evaluate it as an adaptation of the comic or on its own merits, of course. Having not read the comic (and having no desire to, for that matter), I evaluated the movie simply as a movie, and in that regard I thought it was excellent. One of the best movies I've ever seen.

Re:It was OK

[redemtionboy]

The altered ending made a lot more sense. A giant alien squid is cheesy and we've already seen that an attack on New York City doesn't unite the whole world (See: 9/11). I loved the movie. It isn't without it's faults. I thought by changing the scene where Rorschach kills the guy in the house with a machete instead of burning him alive actually took away from the darkness by making it more brutal. In contrast, there were things about the movie that were better than the comic, such as Rorschach's death scene. You actually see the build up and emotion in his eyes, something that 2-3 comic panels couldn't do justly. All-in-all this was an extremely faithful adaptation within the confines of the limits of a film. There is a version of the film with Curse of the Black Freighter in it, but that also makes the film 4 hours long. They definitely gave the fans the best they could while still keeping it a good and watchable film to anyone who wasn't in love with graphic novels.

Re:It was OK

[Chris Mattern]

I'm inclined to agree with you about the ending, although I think it can be argued either way. Removing "Tales of the Black Freighter", on the other hand, was the right decision. There just wasn't *room* for it. Yeah, it was neat, and yeah, it added a whole 'nother layer to the symbolism. But the movie was already two hours, forty-two minutes as shown in the theatres (with longer cuts on the DVD releases--up to three and half hours!). Adding in the Tales would've made the thing unwatchable in one sitting.

Re:It was OK

[tnk1]

I wasn't very happy about the altered ending or the removal of the guy reading the comic book.

I think the movie ending wasn't that bad in that it effectively substituted one common enemy for another. And given Dr. Manhattan's public disillusionment with humanity, it was just as plausible as the original ending. Knowing both endings, I was a lot less upset about that change than I was about the pointless diversions in the Lord of the Rings to Helm's Deep and Osgiliath, for instance. The Watchmen ending actually had the benefit of actually surprising me a little, because I knew how the comic ended and while it was similar, it was not exactly the same.

My only real problem with the ending is that if Dr. Manhattan actually decided to act out, it seems to me that the devastation would have been total. Any government that had any intelligence on him would have wondered why his action was as (relatively) small scale as it was. At least in the original ending, the enemy is not a known quantity to anyone; it can produce fear from both its sheer power and from being an unknown.

Of course, familiarity with Dr. Manhattan's progressing condition might well have caused no small manner of fear and dread in an informed observer over time.

Re:It was OK

[putch]

Blaming the attacks on Dr. M really doesn't make any sense though. For decades he'd been an extension of the American military...essentially a walking, talking atom bomb. Would the world have been united had America "accidentally" nuked a bunch of cities? It need to be an exterior threat like aliens. Maybe not an actual Squid and maybe not just attacking NYC, sure. But, framing Dr. M really makes no sense.

Re:It was OK

[Duradin]

Wasn't Tales of the Black Freighter all of 20-30 minutes? A 3 or 4 hour movie is hardly unwatchable in one sitting.

But I do agree it wasn't needed in the theatrical release.

Re:It was OK

[EvanED]

I agree. I read the graphic novel a couple months before the move came out and thought the squid ending was dumb, at a couple different levels. I thought the movie's version made it way less contrived and more believable.

Re:It was OK

[Duradin]

America's super weapon decides it's still a super weapon but not America's (or humanity's) super weapon.

Dr. M was already showing signs of "Screw you guys, I'm going home!" and in this case Cartman could annihilate cities.

Re:It was OK

[Chris Burke]

Eh, the ending did make more sense, particularly in a movie that didn't have time to go into all the bio-engineering that Ozy had been conducting, so excluding the squid means one less thing for the audience to have to suddenly accept.

And speaking of time, there's no way they could have kept the comic book kid. Constantly cutting away to Black Freighter scenes would have ruined the pacing.

But more importantly, while you're entitled to your opinion, those complaints are not why Watchmen wasn't successful. In fact it was probably the high degree of faithfulness to the comic that ended up making it unattractive to mainstream viewers.

And on the other hand, if the failure of Watchmen resulted in a couple of horrible-sounding remakes being shit-canned (yes it sounds like both are still being shopped around, but I can hope), then I'm going to call that the silver lining.

I mean seriously, a Heavy Metal remake? Freaking Barbarella? Come on. Both have kitsch value, but you can't just re-create what made these movies (somewhat) memorable. They already tried with HM 2k, and it was crap on a crap-stick. And somehow I doubt James Cameron would go for a mostly hand-drawn style which is the only way HM could be worth anything.

I have an idea for Rodriguez and Cameron: Come up with some new ideas!

Re:It was OK

[gad_zuki!]

I still feel the original ending made more sense. The threat from an exterior adversary wouldn't unite the world in peace but it would stop the run up to nuclear war, which the comic depicts. The entire point is that the world was about to burn in nuclear fire unless someone figured out how to convince the world powers not to launch. Luckily, in real life the demand for nuclear war the Politburo wanted was slowly brought down by sane levels by a very crafty Khrushchev. A lesser man might have failed at this.

Blaming Dr. Manhattan doesn't make much sense as the Soviets would just see it as the US's own weapon being even more dangerous and might aggravate the run up to war, no quell it.

Re:It was OK

[SuperQ]

I read the comic around the same time as the movie coming out. I personally hated the squid ending. It was much more in line with "the smartest man in the world" to simply manipulate Dr Manhattan into being the scapegoat.

Re:It was OK

[Bemopolis]

Does it help if you know that the giant squid was likely a reference to the first Justice League comic?

That being said, the movie made a decent choice for an alternate ending.

Re:It was OK

[Anonymous Coward]

The handling of Rorschach was the biggest disappointment for me. I liked the fact that he's so ambiguous in the book. It's never clear if he's really pursuing some unseen foe or if he's just a psychotic, neo nazi thug creating his own agenda as an excuse to beat people up. The movie makes him a lot more one dimensional, it's never really in doubt that there is an enemy and his motives are skewed more heroic. That and the scene in the prison (they shouldn't be able to wipe the floor with so many hardened criminals, the whole point is these people have NO powers, Dr M aside, in the book they sneak in but in the movie they're taking down dozens of opponents - great action scene but undermines the whole premise of regular people posing as heroes when they're really just vigilantes).

Re:It was OK

[nomadic]

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.

Re:It was OK

[Swarley]

I think the music selection single handedly murdered the film. Great visuals, good enough acting (what was anybody really expecting?), pretty good story telling and pacing (stuck too strictly to the source which didn't always work well in film but ok), absolutely terribly music selection. A good half of the movie had music playing that was inappropriate for the scene and distractingly so, the much maligned sex scene was only the worst of many offenders in this regard. I'd love to see a Phantom Edit style recut of the film that fixes that particular problem.

Re:It was OK

[h4rm0ny]

I wasn't very happy about the altered ending or the removal of the guy reading the comic book.

The original ending of the comic book was a bit too goofy. The film improved on it quite a bit, imo. I also can't really see what the comic book sub-story really added. I mostly skipped over that when I read the comic.

Re:It was OK

[MightyMartian]

I've read the book and watched the movie. The comic, of course, has a lot more literary "space", as indeed do most books. When writing a screenplay for a movie that is going to be at best 2.5 hours long, you've got to decide how best to pursue the basic narrative. Stuff got left behind, but all in all the spirit of the original was maintained. Yes, the ending was altered, but the point of the ending was not, so I could live with it. Curse of the Black Freighter was left out, and how could it not be? How would anyone have figured out how to put into a film what amounts to a comic-within-a-comic and still manage to maintain a narrative thread? Books, including graphic novels, have narrative luxuries that movies do not have. To put the Black Freighter into the movie would have a) required at least another 15 minutes of screen time for a movie that was already pushing 2.75 hours (in essence making a 3 hour film), and b) would have been quite difficult to work into the plot, because strictly speaking, the Black Freighter works at right angles to the plot. It would certainly have pleased well-versed fans but would have left anyone unfamiliar with the original story confused.

Re:It was OK

[MightyMartian]

All I have to say is that the Watchmen adaptation was done by someone who knew and loved the material, whereas you look at the awful V For Vendetta adaptation, and you see someone using a story very much based in 1980s sensibilities as some sort of Bush-era parable. I'm a fan of both graphic novels, which to my mind represent the summit of "comic books" and set out Alan Moore as one of the great writers of the last thirty years, and I felt Watchmen was as good an adaptation as you could get on the screen, but thought V For Vendetta was just a gawdawful pile of crap.

Re:It was OK

[gknoy]

http://www.google.com/images?q=orchid

Enjoy! :D

Re:It was OK

[Scrameustache]

That depends on whether you evaluate it as an adaptation of the comic or on its own merits, of course. Having not read the comic (and having no desire to, for that matter), I evaluated the movie simply as a movie, and in that regard I thought it was excellent.

In the book the Big Plot at the end was about a million times more over-the-top and super-villainy. It focused humanity's fears towards an alien menace, whereas in the movie it focuses the anger towards the superhero. Also the giant green cunt balanced out the giant blue dick.

I prefer the book's craziness, but I can see why they shied away from it.

Re:It was OK

[morari]

I mean seriously, a Heavy Metal remake?

It's my understanding that it isn't intended to be a remake. It will be another collection of separate short stories, like the original film adaptation was. This is in opposition of the far inferior Heavy Metal 2000, which was one long plot.

Re:It was OK

[Scrameustache]

hated the squid ending. It was much more in line with "the smartest man in the world" to simply manipulate Dr Manhattan into being the scapegoat.

The comic book ending illustrated the scale of his madness...

Re:It was OK

[morari]

I mean seriously, a Heavy Metal remake?

It's my understanding that it isn't intended to be a remake. It will be another collection of separate short stories, like the original film adaptation was. This is in opposition of the far inferior Heavy Metal 2000, which was one long plot.

The problem I have with what has been proposed for the new Heavy Metal is that a lot of the people involved have shown themselves to have a strong fascination with CGI. That's not what Heavy Metal is and doing so would ruin it. Heavy Metal 2000 already suffered from that in a lot of ways, where the majority of the film was poorly done cell animation, with a lot of the action being outright computer generated 3D crap. Nevermind that it was one long, boring plot line instead of multiple threads... oh, and most of the music sucked. :(

The original Heavy Metal is still a favorite of mine. Few things beat the sequence that takes place aboard the B-17. Slain crew members come back as zombies, all to the awesome riffs of Don Felder's "Taking a Ride". If nothing else, that song makes the sequence.

Re:It was OK

[Culture20]

The problem with the movie ending is that Dr M was human. Superhuman, yes, but human nonetheless. From Earth. The proper response to a Dr M attack is to grovel in fear, because even if he leaves, another Dr M might be created some day. The squid ending has the logical conclusion of forcing countries together to fight the outside enemy (and much more in line with veet's character as a student if history).

Re:It was OK

[DurendalMac]

It wasn't that there was an attack on Manhattan, it was that there was an attack on EARTH as far as anyone was concerned. It sure looked like some gigantic alien blew up New York. There's a pretty damned big difference between that and some planes hitting the WTC.

Re:It was OK

[SuricouRaven]

He blew up American cities too. That's a quite clear proof that he has gone rogue and is no longer under their control.

The biggest problem I see is that M can be duplicated. He was a lab accident. Ozy managed to duplicate the equipment himself, in order to buy a few seconds. Every government in the world would be trying to duplicate the accident, and sooner or later they will succeed - and not with just one scientist, but with the most patriotic and loyal soldiers in their army. And lots of them.

Re:It was OK

[putch]

It might be evidence of him going rogue. And maybe the Soviets would even accept that. But there's no way they'd feel compassion or sympathy for the United States considering it was US that weaponized this force. It's akin to changing the ending of Dr. Strangelove to involve world peace.

Re:It was OK

[elrous0]

I never read the original comic book, so I don't really get all the fanboy angst over altered endings and such (or why it really even matters). But I'm a pretty harsh critic of superhero movies (I can probably count all of them I don't hate on one hand, with a slightly longer list if you include *all* comic book adaptations) and I thought it was a great film. The acting was a bit spotty in parts, but the story and direction were pretty flawless. It's one of the few comic book adaptations that not only got me into a theater, but also made it into my DVD collection.

BTW, one of the best superhero movies of late is one no one has probably even heard of: Special. Great ending on that one.

Great superhero movies: Superman I, Mystery Men, The Watchmen, Special. Everything else is mostly unwatchable dogshit.

Re:It was OK

[Mister Whirly]

Yeah, Christopher Nolan's Batman series of movies is sure losing a lot of money. Oh, and so far Watchmen has made over $185 million on a $130 million budget, so I guess if you consider making $55 million over budget "not succeeding" then yep, that movie sure isn't succeeding.

Re:It was OK

[Bing Tsher E]

This one is more apt.

Re:It was OK

[lgw]

I thought V kept enough of the original story to be fine as a movie in isolation from it's source. I was dissapointed that they lacked the courage to make the movie what it could have been, but, really, what can you expect?

Re:It was OK

[MightyMartian]

At every turn where V could have been a great movie, the screenwriters blinked and made safe decisions. I'll give Watchmen that as well, the alterations that were made were made to make sure it worked reasonably well on the big screen. The changes in V were made simply because the screenwriters and director lacked the vision and the fortitude to tell a good story. Instead, it became little more than a Natalie Portman vehicle, and yet another example of a fundamentally British story mutilated for lowest common denominator American audiences.

Re:It was OK

[naubol]

As a gay man, it was refreshing to finally see a double standard in our favor. I can't speak for women, but I imagine some of them must have felt the same way!

Re:It was OK

[RandCraw]

I agree on both counts. Not knowing its history, I saw Watchmen cold and was amazed and fascinated by its evocative characterizations and its insightful twists on the age-old DC comic superhero zeitgeist.

If the measure of a movie is how much it affects you, then Watchmen succeeded with me as no film has for 20 years.

Re:It was OK

[sznupi]

"You're too put-here-qualities-we-lack for us" seems like a more apt case of our craziness. Comedian OTOH was ambiguous enough to be universally adored by the circle of my friends...

Re:It was OK

[bluefoxlucid]

Like The Tenth Kingdom?

Re:It was OK

[c0d3g33k]

Both of your comments (bigstrat2003 and er, Anonymous Coward) would be much more interesting if you explained *why* you thought it was one of the best or worst movies you've ever seen.

Re:It was OK

[Scrameustache]

Comedian OTOH was ambiguous enough to be universally adored by the circle of my friends...

I think of the Comedian as what would the Joker be like if he, for a laugh, had convinced Batman that he was a hero instead of a villain. "No, look, I beat up bad guys, see, I'm one of you heroes..."

Re:It was OK

[XxtraLarGe]

This is in opposition of the far inferior Heavy Metal 2000, which was one long plot.

But they did make a pretty good sequel to the movie as a gameâ"Heavy Metal FAKK 2. It scored quiet well, and was available for Linux, Mac & Windows.

Re:It was OK

[sznupi]

What is pretty much the case in so called "real world"?... (with standards for "bad guys" even similarly - or more - lax)

Yup, apt for our craziness.

Re:It was OK

[SnickleFritz]

Special is a good movie. I also thought it had the best title for thwarting file sharing search engines.

Re:It was OK

[scubamage]

Why? AFAIK there's never anything shown in the comic with the female anatomy outside of some booby-calendar's in the car garage. It's been awhile since I've read through them though.

Re:It was OK

[theghost]

...we've already seen that an attack on New York City doesn't unite the whole world (See: 9/11)...

Aside from some extremist outliers, 9/11 DID unite the world. The colossal arrogance that was demonstrated and outright that were told in the aftermath of that attack just divided things up again, perhaps even worse than before.

Re:It was OK

[Lumpy]

Watch Sin City. It is as good.

Re:It was OK

[scubamage]

I don't know, they did it in inception. I mean, we're in a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream! We can't get kicked out here, we're at the 234234th layer of dreams! We'll go to dream limbo! (Still bitter about that movie.)

Re:It was OK

[Lumpy]

Heavy metal required serious artists with a ton of time and a unlimited supply of heroin and Cocane coupled with mega bands also given an unlimited supply of PCP and cocaine to create.

Honestly, Heavy metal can NOT be remade. it was a singlar moment in time and there is nothing that can be done to re-create it.

Re:It was OK

[scubamage]

That's the whole point behind the Comedian though. For instance, in the US (not to bash it, or start debating politics, just using my own nation as an example), our government subjugates other nations, supports guerrilla fighters who rape, murder, kill and steal (and not always in that order). We deprive other people of their right to have democratically elected governments. We have committed genocide against the natives of our land. But we paint ourselves as the goodguys, and heroes using blood for the paint. Every time one of our soldiers kills "the enemy" they're still killing another human being, who likewise will be considered a hero by their side. It's all a pathetic farce. And the comedian was a parody of it. He knew that we're just apes attacking other apes around the obelisk. Such a cool character.

Re:It was OK

[morari]

The game was enjoyable enough, but not exactly memorable. It made good use of the Quake3 engine at the time, but the third-person view hindered a lot of the gameplay.

Re:It was OK

[metamatic]

The proper response to a Dr M attack is to grovel in fear, because even if he leaves, another Dr M might be created some day. The squid ending has the logical conclusion of forcing countries together to fight the outside enemy

So you're saying the changed ending wasn't exactly squid pro quo?

Re:It was OK

[lgw]

Yeah, it's that last bit that annoys me the most. V wasn't fantasy, it was a hard look at exaclty what England was and is becoming - a more realistic 1984 - and it's just a shame that didn't come through. But all Hollywood movies seem to pander to a very narrow political agenda these days, and the politics of England just don't fit that mold.

Re:It was OK

[similar_name]

Usual Suspects, great movie the first time you watch it. Not a movie you can watch over and over though.

American Beauty, I saw it once but don't remember much about it

Man from Earth, I really enjoyed it. I should watch it again.

Harrison Bergeron is probably one of my personal favorites though.

Re:It was OK

[knails]

Am I the only person that likes long movies? I'd love for it to be 4 hours or longer, if they needed that much time to properly tell the story.

Re:It was OK

[runep]

You should check out Defendor.

Re:It was OK

[roc97007]

I may be getting the director's cut DVD and theatrical version confused, but I remember seeing the kid there. What wasn't there was the dialog between the kid and the vendor (which was rather sparse in the comic) or the text of what the kid was reading (The Black Freighter comic) which couldn't possibly have fit in a feature film, having enough content for an entire other feature film. (I'm aware of the black freighter animated movie on the DVD, but haven't watched it as that part of the story never really grabbed me.) I remember the kid, the vendor and the psychologist all in-frame just before, you know, what happened to New York.

Parenthetically, in situations where there is a substantial difference between the theatrical release and the director's cut, I always consider the latter to be the "real" movie. I realize this isn't fair, because the great majority will have seen the cut-down version in theater, and sometimes it makes for misunderstandings when debating the merits of a film, but I can't help it -- so often these days, films are cut back so much for running time that one could legitimately consider the theatrical release to be nothing more than an extra long trailer.

Re:It was OK

[alva_edison]

Like The Tenth Kingdom?

Which, while very good, was a televised miniseries. So there was no issue of watching it in one sitting, and it wasn't out as a 7 hour (417 minute) theatrical release (at least in anywhere I've heard of). I wouldn't mind doing something like that, but there are people that would. Although, I normally need two sittings for the 10th Kingdom.

Re:It was OK

[walterbyrd]

The comedian was supposed to be a crime fighter. As I remember, in one scene he was fighting crime along with all the other heroes. All the other "heroes" came to his funeral. I thought Dr. M was supposed to be the leader, and the ultimate hero - a physicist who was transformed when working for the good of humanity, or something.

As Ebert pointed out, in his review, the movie was loaded with logical errors, like some of the watchmen were using powers that they weren't supposed to have.

Re:It was OK

[roc97007]

I've read the comic, and I think they did what they could on the adaptation, and did a lot better job than most.

On top of that, despite the changes, (the original ending, which would have been a howler if done in this day and age, the lack of smoking, which ruined one of the best lines of the comic) and things they just couldn't do in film, (the Under the Hood excerpts, the bilateral symmetry of issue #6, the Black Freighter) I thought the film stood on it's own and I really enjoyed it.

Plotwise, the only place the film fell down, in my opinion, was the Comedian's visit to Moloch, which, given the changed ending, was rendered somewhat pointless.

Re:It was OK

[cyber-vandal]

The original ending would've been much harder to film and even harder to explain to anyone who hadn't read the book.

Re:It was OK

[tsm_sf]

I prefer the book's craziness, but I can see why they shied away from it.

I don't know what Alan Moore's deal is, but apparently his giant squid was the entire point of the book judging by the hissy fit he threw. I mean, the movie is basically a scene-for-scene adaptation of the book in all other regards.

I wonder if movie studios take his attitude into account when planning budgets...

- Moore, Alan, towering rage - $2 mil savings

Re:It was OK

[tsm_sf]

A giant alien squid is cheesy and we've already seen that an attack on New York City doesn't unite the whole world (See: 9/11).

9/11 actually did unite the world very briefly, it was the "you're either with us or agin' us" and "FUCK MUSLIMS!" steam coming off the neo-cons that killed it. Google "today we are all Americans" for a lot of commentary on the effect, or check out this article for a decent overview.

Re:It was OK

[PCM2]

I never read the original comic book, so I don't really get all the fanboy angst over altered endings and such (or why it really even matters). But I'm a pretty harsh critic of superhero movies

Well, just one point then -- in the comic book of Watchmen, the protagonists are not superheroes. Only Doctor Manhattan has any powers of any kind. So when all the characters are punching through walls an eight-inch retaining beams with their bare hands, you can be pretty certain you're not watching a Watchmen movie.

Re:It was OK

[WatertonMan]

Remember that $130m budget doesn't include marketing costs. On the other hand I suspect the $185m doesn't include DVD sales, streaming, rentals and so forth. Figuring out profit on films can actually be trickier than it first appears. However I suspect the reason no one will risk their money financing what these directors want is because even if a fairly good film like Watchmen only makes a little bit of profit relative to cost, what does that say about more average films? Given there's no guarantee a film will be good why risk the money? If you cut a little and get a PG-13 rating then you're guaranteed tons more money. So why invest in the R rated film? It's fine for film geeks to talk about R-rated films, but why would I as an investor want to do this?

Re:It was OK

[MoriT]

I thought both of those were excellent decisions.

I wasn't particularly happy with how the rape plot line was handled. In the book it seems more important, more an integral part of the main plot, probably because you are busy being bombarded with even more trivial, unrelated things, like comic books and squid.

Re:It was OK

[Mister Whirly]

I don't know why they just can't make 2 versions - a PG-13 and an R for simultaneous release. You know even if it is tamed down for the big screen that an unrated or director's cut version is bound to come out on DVD. I don't necessarily need to see the unrated version on the big screen as long as I know it will be out later in some form.

Re:It was OK

[Quirkz]

I generally cringe from taking the advice of someone with heavy-handed opinions who would call a genre I enjoy "unwatchable dogshit" but your inclusion of Mystery Men up there with The Watchmen means we agree on a couple of points. I may check out Special, though with a little trepidation.

Re:It was OK

[Quirkz]

I saw the movie first, then read the comic, and spent dozens of pages wondering why the comic book stuff existed at all, except as filler for the original release (I assume it was released as a series and they needed to hit X frames/pages per edition) and for some graphical variety for the artist. I couldn't have been happier they decided to take that out of the movie.

Re:It was OK

[modmans2ndcoming]

Diversion to helms deep? Did I read a different version of the book than you?

Re:It was OK

[IgnitusBoyone]

Ok, the original ending is much less a mind screw and much more a oh, give me a break. Bombs instead of a silly monster was a much better ending for the movie. It just wouldn't of worked. Sometimes we have to get over our its not the original material and realize that each medium has its own do's and don'ts

Re:It was OK

[IgnitusBoyone]

Can you call it madness, because it worked. I think it more focus on the writers perceived stupidity of man kind. Personally, I really enjoyed the comic till I turned the page and was like GIVE ME A BREAK. That was like a giant drop in disbelief and it would of been worse on the silver screen. I know tons of people who are fond of the original ending and thing it was the best twist ever, but really with the way it comes out. The ending could of been a guy screaming giant monkeys or the world just suddenly ending and it would of been no more or less silly then a bunch of artist making a giant squid and teleporting it on the US.

The book has a great deal of foreshadowing on what was going on, but I think its all wasted on the sheer ludicrous nature of the plot.

Re:It was OK

[IgnitusBoyone]

It has been 40 years. If it was so easy to duplicate it would have been done already. For M to come back to our plane of exsistance took will power and determination to learn to reconstruct himself. You might kill 1000 men before you duplicate the results and if the individual isn't of the same mentality and easy to manipulate he will likely go rouge and mad with power. I doubt that many people would be willing to risk it.

Re:It was OK

[XxtraLarGe]

I think the dual wielding/independent targeting & platform jumper parts would have been difficult with an FPS.

Re:It was OK

[SuricouRaven]

"I doubt that many people would be willing to risk it."

Considering that success grants you not just immortality, but power so vast you may take on the title of God? The problem wouldn't be finding volunteers, it'd be screening to keep the meglomaniacs out.

Re:It was OK

[CAIMLAS]

I suppose it may have been OK if you were into that kind of comic book.

Personally, there are few movies I dislike (short of the boiler plate romance stuff). If it's remotely unique, I'll at least enjoy the experience.

Watchmen? I didn't enjoy it. I sat there for over 2 hours waiting for it to get enjoyable. Hell, porn is more enjoyable entertainment: the most enjoyable part of the film was the in-air 'love scene', and there wasn't much of that.

Where to begin?

* The characters were overdone, yet had precious little actual development. Why do I care? What makes them interesting? Most of them had dull personalities.
* Short on actual plot development. "It's like The Incredibles, but took 3 times as long to make said point known"
* There were too many characters. Sure, there were 2 hours to develop them, but their distinction, importance, etc. was not significant enough to draw an emotional link to them.
* It was slow. I'm not sure how, exactly, but it was one of the slowest moving films I've ever seen.
* Jackie Earle Haley was the film's best actor. He's not bad, and I enjoy most of his roles, but seriously: the acting in the film was bad overall.
* I wouldn't say it was outrageously violent or even overly violent. What I would say is that, lacking anything else to draw a person's attention, it was pretty senselessly violent. Violence, as the focus, makes for shit films.

Watchmen is a lot like the LotR films, I think: you need some sort of connection to the story already, unless something else is there to make it worthwhile.

What distinguishes LotR from Watchmen, and made it a success?

* Memorable characters (as in, for a first-time watcher who can get invested in them)
* Clearly defined character roles. You feel "on the in" because you know what's going on. The wizard is helping the hobbit, the hobbit is on a quest, and he has supporters... done.
* Awesome 30-minute action scenes.
* Good actors with even better characters.
* Good dialog that keeps the viewer engaged.

Even if they were the same movie, you could compare Watchmen and LotR to Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2. The first was plastic, dull, and somewhat awkward feeling. The second - same damn movie - was much better done, with more attention to detail, better acting, and so on.

That's why Watchmen sucked, unless you already knew the story.

Re:It was OK

[Ben Newman]

Except that the point of the attack on New York was to unify the US and the Soviet Union against a common, unknown enemy. Instead there was a was an attack on a US city by an out of control US operative. I can almost see Kruschev beating a podium in the UN with his shoe over the issue, not engaging in peace talks.

Re:It was OK

[metacell]

Well, the book doesn't contain any details on what happened in Helm's Deep. So the characters make a diversion to Helm's Deep in both the book and the film, but the story only makes a diversion to Helm's Deep in the film, not the book.

Re:It was OK

[metacell]

In Inception, the dreams-within-dreams were part of the storyline. In Watchmen, the comic-within-a-comic wasn't part of the storyline, it just added foreshadowing and depth to the fictional world.

If you need to take something out, taking out Tales of The Black Freighter makes most sense.

Re:It was OK

[metacell]

Have you seen any statement from Moore indicating the story changes were the problem?

Re:It was OK

[metacell]

Why would he care what an Anonymous Coward thinks?

Re:It was OK

[Alimony Pakhdan]

They already tried with HM 2k, and it was crap on a crap-stick.

You are generous with your kindness in that summary.

...a mostly hand-drawn style which is the only way HM could be worth anything.

These days a remake of HM, even hand drawn, makes as much sense as a remake of Fritz The Cat. Both were products of their time and little more.

Re:It was OK

[Alimony Pakhdan]

It will be another collection of separate short stories,

You mean from 80s HM back when they had interesting artists & writers or 90s/00s HM which barely qualifies as landfill?

Re:It was OK

[Alimony Pakhdan]

Did you maybe see the movie when it first came out? I was 13 at the time and somehow managed to get in to see it. Probably bought the soundtrack album the next day. I still keep most of the songs from there on my iPod. I actually would not mind hearing most of those remastered because they seem to lack "punch" as is. Even you turn up "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" really loud, it just does not feel like it should.

Re:It was OK

[tsm_sf]

No, in fact I did a little digging after your post and it seems like he was pretty happy with the screenplay but that DC was up to some weird merchandising shit. My bad.

Re:It was OK

[Barrinmw]

The real question is what the hell could they have done to stop him? He was essentially a God.

Re:It was OK

[Supurcell]

It's been a while since I've read the books, but I still remember the battle of the hornburg and orcs climbing over dikes and stuff like there. I just looked it up, and the chapter is called "Helm's Deep".

Re:It was OK

[Bigjeff5]

I'm surprised you were more upset about a diversion to Helm's Deep, which was actually in the book, rather than the complete removal of Tom Bombadil and the Barrow Downs.

The reason they had to alter the visit to Helm's Deep was pretty obvious; going through Bombadil and The Barrow Downs would have added another half hour to an hour to a film that was already 3+ hours long, and all it really served to do was give the hobbits some weapons and a little advice.

With that in mind, I found the alteration completely acceptable (though, honestly, Bombadil was one of my favorite characters in the books, would have loved to have seen him in the movie).

I didn't read the Watchmen, but I found the ending to the movie to be trite and unrealistic. It pretty much ruined the movie for me. I'm not sure I would have liked the alien invasion ending, but honestly it sounds better than what was filmed.

Re:It was OK

[Bigjeff5]

Unfortunately, the ending in the movie didn't work either. Pretty much ruined it, in my opinion. And I didn't read the original, so this isn't some "it's not the original" disappointment here. The ending of the movie sucked all on its own.

Re:It was OK

[jalefkowit]

The time limits on movie lengths aren't about what's theoretically watchable in one sitting (though I would argue that for most people a 3.5 hour movie is too long for that). It's about how many screenings the theater can fit on a given screen per day.

Each screening can accommodate a certain number of people, limited by the total number of seats pointing at that screen. A 4 hour movie lets you sell one ticket per seat per 4 hour block; a 2 hour movie lets you sell two. So longer movies cut directly into revenue, which is a strong incentive to keep them as short as possible.

Re:It was OK

[Nyder]

That depends on whether you evaluate it as an adaptation of the comic or on its own merits, of course. Having not read the comic (and having no desire to, for that matter), I evaluated the movie simply as a movie, and in that regard I thought it was excellent. One of the best movies I've ever seen.

You have to rate movies from books/comics by their own merit, not based on the original source.

Almost no movie stays true to it's source.

Re:It was OK

[Adam Jorgensen]

Personally I found that movie to be terrible. Long, dull and packed with far too much loud music simply for the sake of loud music. I don't have a problem with loud music, I listen to powernoise and aggrotech after all. But wacthmen was just an unpleasant experience. Then and again, considering it was a product of the same moron who directed 300, I'm not surprised it came out crap.

Re:It was OK

[L4t3r4lu5]

He's naked because he doesn't care about human sensibilities. He's completely detached from humanity. No other character is in that situation.

Go read the graphic novel.

Re:It was OK

[mcvos]

I wasn't very happy about the altered ending or the removal of the guy reading the comic book.

Despite that, it was still the most intelligent superhero movie ever. The problem is that intelligent movies rarely sell well. (Inception is a nice exception, but I'm sure most people who watched it didn't understand most of it.)

Re:It was OK

[Alex Belits]

lol wut

My reaction was "pox on both your houses" minutes after I turned on the TV.

Re:It was OK

[electrofelix]

It's been a while since I've read the books, but I still remember the battle of the hornburg and orcs climbing over dikes and stuff like there. I just looked it up, and the chapter is called "Helm's Deep".

I think the OP was referring to the section where they "travel" to Helm's Deep, are attacked on the way, Aragon get's dragged over a cliff and then rescued by the horse he freed earlier. Don't recall any of that appearing in the books.

Re:It was OK

[electrofelix]

Knowing both endings, I was a lot less upset about that change than I was about the pointless diversions in the Lord of the Rings to Helm's Deep and Osgiliath, for instance.

I think those changes are a lot less significant than others such as the change to the Ent's behaviour. That's a rather significant point made by the books, particularly of note given Tolkien's experiences. I'd be more upset about changes in character's than scene changes when it comes to book ->movie translations.

Re:It was OK

[elrous0]

Okay maybe I was being a bit harsh there, but most superhero movies are pretty paint-by-the-numbers. At least 75% of them are like watching the exact same movie, with a slightly different protagonist CGI-ed in. I'd much rather see more focus on originality, and less on "Hey, look at our cool CGI effects!"

Re:It was OK

[hitmark]

The attack did not unite because it was an attack by humans on other humans. It did however unite USA "for a time".

That is really the thing with "the squid", it was made to look outside of humanity, outside of earth.

Consider this, a herd of cattle may squabble over mating and food sources. but when a pack of predators show up, they all form up to defend their young. Now replace that herd with the people of any nation, and the predators with same of another nation. Now that it another step further and make the herd into humanity, and the predators into martians or whatever.

This is a historically repeating pattern, and why it politically works so damn well.

Re:It was OK

[Dabido]

I have the graphic novel and the movie. I think both are excellent. I don't expect movie adaptations to be identical to the novels, but I do expect them to have enough of the feeling and gist of the original work to be considered the same work, just different mediums of delivery. I don't think the movie deviated that much from the graphic novels story line. Rorschach still gets obliterated in the end ... which I find upsetting in both mediums, but maybe I'm a bit like him in my expectation of people needing to know the truth. :-)

I also liked the adaptation of 'V' for Vendetta as a work on it's own, but really hate how they changed and rearranged the plot line and changed the Government to be like some sort of 'Big Brother/Nazi regime'. I just find the 'Big Brother/Nazi Regime' type thing a bit 'seen it all already' / 'here we go again' etc. (If you get my drift). Though, the anarchist thing in the graphic novel is a bit naive.

Both adaptations stand well as works of art on their own merits. Alan Moore (writer of the graphic novels) is freaking legend.

Re:It was OK

[redemtionboy]

And Dr Manhattan, this freak of nature now living on Mars, doesn't accomplish that?

Re:It was OK

[hitmark]

I was not commenting that part, only the contrasting of real life 9/11 vs fictional "squid bomb", and how the former "failed" to unite.

The basic problem is that 9/11 was an attack on a sub-set of humanity rather then humanity as a whole. As such, it just united that subset rather then the whole.

Re:It was OK

[FreekyGeek]

Removing Bombadil and the Barrow Downs was unfortunate but did make sense - it didn't change the story and it would have added a lot of time.

Leaving out the Scouring of the Shire, however, COMPLETELY changed the entire meaning and message of the book, so removing it was absolutely unforgivable. I will never forgive Jackson for that.

Re:It was OK

[morari]

Oh, I agree that the independent targeting and the melee in particular would have been difficult to pull off as a FPS.

Honestly though, I don't think they succeeded in making the platforming elements work very well even in the third-person.

Re:It was OK

[Raenex]

I just don't get the bashing of the movie V. I never read the comic, but I did read up on it on Wikipedia, and the same ideas are still there. First, the story takes place in England. Second, it involves the rise of a 1984-style fascist government. Third, V sets out to take down the government.

A lot of the plot is the same from the comic. They made some safe changes (like Natalie isn't a prostitute), but I really fail to see how the movie "pandered to a very narrow political agenda".

Re:It was OK

[metacell]

That must be it... I confused what the places were called.

Re:It was OK

[modmans2ndcoming]

and some how that is a bad thing? Movies and books are different mediums you know.

Re:It was OK

[sznupi]

Hey, I know what you mean... (it sometimes leads to slight disagreement in outlook, about what's decent; sometimes to things outright bizarre; also not to bash it of course / not that I complain - from my point of view it ends up not bad at all... heck, it can be even seen as basically a "useful fool" of sorts, helping greatly on my path to "post-history")

I still adored him, not the least because he was, despite "over the top", so authentic... what we are, what also I am.

Curiously that was also generally the case for few buddies who have very b&w outlook on the world, who need their heroes and villains b&w otherwise they get confused...

(and now I have another metaphor for TV thanks to you - just another medium for greater reach of monkey screams)

Good?

[berj]

Watchmen was an overlong, overwrought, overly wordy, over hyped, over produced mess.

It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, good.

Re:Good?

[bigstrat2003]

Subjective art is subjective. For my part, it is one of the best movies I have ever seen.

Re:Good?

[Anonymous Coward]

Watchmen was an overlong, overwrought, overly wordy, over hyped, over produced mess.

It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, good.

Well, you either watched a different movie or just don't like graphic novels brought to the big screen. A lot of Americans seem to be put off by this genre, maybe the high brow thinks these are too low brow for them to consider.

Re:Good?

[somersault]

Yeah I don't really feel I need to watch it again. Maybe in 5 years or so. The first few comments here from people saying it was "good" seem to be the ones that were already fans of the graphic novel. Now, I like things to stay pretty true to the originals too, but what is good in a book isn't necessarily good in a movie.

Re:Good?

[Gaygirlie]

I personally really enjoyed it, atleast it wasn't your bog-standard action movie which only attracts people because of large explosions.

Re:Good?

[Shadow Wrought]

I am very much in the camp of the parent. I did not think it was well done in the least. I am curious to know, when you say, "Best you've ever seen," what are some of the other best movies you've seen?

Re:Good?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? I thought it was one of the most faithful adaptations of anything I've ever seen, especially when it got the breathing room it so desperately needed in the extended cuts.

That's a large part of the problem. 'Watchmen' was an impressive comic... in 1990 when the alternative was yet more bland super-good superheroes saving the world from bland villains; as fiction it's a tedious mess where unsympathetic characters do stuff that no-one much cares about, and 'extending' it just makes it more tedious.

You probably could have made a successful movie out of 'Watchmen', but either you'd end up parodying it with 'Mystery Men' or a 'serious' movie that bore as little resemblance to the comic as 'V for Vendetta' did.

Re:Good?

[NEDHead]

Really? What was the other movie you saw?

Re:Good?

[ShavedOrangutan]

"It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, good." - (Score:0, Troll)

"For my part, it is one of the best movies I have ever seen." - (Score:5, Insightful)

Neither of these comments is a troll or insightful.

Who watches the watchmen? Clearly nobody mods the moderators.

Re:Good?

[spun]

My girlfriend managed 20 minutes of Watchman before finding something better to do and I wish I'd done the same; I had a hard time finding any motivation to keep watching it past half-way.

Good, it's not just me.

No, it was not just you, his girlfriend did a bunch of us in the lobby.

Re:Good?

[sexconker]

Watchmen was an overlong, overwrought, overly wordy, over hyped, over produced mess.

It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, good.

This is 100% correct. Mode me troll and flamebait, I don't give a fuck.

Watchmen was a bad movie and it failed because it was a bad movie.
Is Slashdot going to post an article next week about Scott Pilgrim and how it was actually a good movie?

Being different, weird, and so against the grain to the point of being contrarian, doesn't make something unique, deep, or good. It just makes anti-social people feel better for liking it, as well as more inclined to like it in the first place because it's different, weird, and contrarian - just like them.

The only things the general public saw when they saw Watchmen were an unnecessary blue dick, a bad plot, forced edginess in the form of "we're heroes, but we're so dark and moody we often act like villains and play out our own little soap opera in our secret club", and shitty costumes that screamed "Batman Ripoff".
And you know what? This was one of the rare occasions when the general public got something right.

If you liked it, fine. Enjoy your movie.
But to say that it would have done better if it was PG-13 is a joke.

Re:Good?

[Vectormatic]

exactly the same experience here, my girlfriend wandered off after half an hour, and i strugled through the whole movie just to see when it would get good

i'm sure it is miles better if you actually know the comic and such, but to the unintroduced layman, it is just a waste of time

Re:Good?

[theantipop]

But they know who Osama bin Laden is. They know we've been on a tear invading countries in the last decade. A teenager with any knowledge of world events should be able to draw many pertinent themes out of the ideas presented in Watchmen.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Re:Good?

[TheRaven64]

It is long, but for very good reason

I might be confused by the new Slashdot look mangling the threading - are we still talking about the penis?

Re:Good?

[TheRaven64]

I've never read the comic - sorry, graphic novel - but I enjoyed Watchmen. It wasn't the best film of all time, but the characters seemed a lot more human (well, except the ones that weren't meant to) than in most superhero films and the presentation was well done.

Re:Good?

[ckaminski]

The only reason I kept watching it was a very expensive IMAX ticket and I'm a student of the very bad B movie genre of the 80's (Truth or Dare http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092118/ - not the Madonna movie). I can tolerate anything, but the Watchmen is never going back on my watch-again list.

Re:Good?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come now, the latter comment might not be insightful but the former can certainly be considered a troll. Whether you enjoy a movie or not is entirely subjective, therefore to blanket claim a movie is not good (rather than saying you didn't enjoy it) is certainly going to attract negative responses from those who enjoyed the movie. What is a troll if not a comment with a good chance of garnering negative responses?

Re:Good?

[Homburg]

It paid homage to the pages but it really did not translate well

Indeed - and, in a way, that ends up making the "homage" more of a caricature. There are a number of shots in the film that look exactly like panels in the comic, but that just shows that Zack Snyder doesn't understand films or comics. Panels in a comic work aren't just static images to be enjoyed in isolation, but work in part because of the pacing that is set up by the relationship between different panels. Likewise, images in films work through the relationship between the movement of the image and the action they convey. Snyder's obsession with the visuals of the comic prevented him from seeing how those images worked in the context of the comic, and prevented him from making a film that worked as a film.

Re:Good?

[Miseph]

I thought Scott Pilgrim was great, and one of very few movies that actually improved on the source material.

To each their own, I suppose.

Re:Good?

[berj]

No.. I've liked some adaptations: V for Vendetta, Scott Pilgrim among the best of them and 300 for the sheer ridiculous spectacle. I don't consider the material low brow in the least. I just thought it was a boring, pointless movie. Too many flashbacks showing what could have been manage much more simply and artfully. The problem I have with Watchmen is the same problem I had with Sin City -- the adaptation was *too* faithful. I felt like the filmmakers were just reading the books to me... I wasn't engaged at all. Not nearly the same was I was engaged when I read the actual books -- both of which I found thought provoking and exciting to read.

They missed an opportunity to *adapt* the material for the screen. Instead they *recited it* on screen.

Re:Good?

[berj]

So why is the blanket claim that a movie is *good* not a troll? Why does it not go both ways?

Is it really necessary to preface *everything* one writes with "In my opinion"?

Re:Good?

[berj]

I agree with this completely. Scott Pilgrim had the advantage, for me, of being *fun* and silly and just plain easy to watch. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of watching it.. as opposed to Watchmen in which I was shifting in my seat and looking at my watch.

Scott Pilgrim -- good
Watchemen -- not good

In my opinion.

Re:Good?

[SudoGhost]

That's because it was an actual movie with a plot. Idiots don't like plot, they like predictable. A good plot means you have to think, and people don't want to think, because then they aren't enjoying themselves. They want to laugh at a few jokes and blunders by the main character, and have themselves led down the same familiar plot over and over again, albeit in a slightly different setting or circumstance each time. Those are the movies that tend to do well. That does not make them good.

Re:Good?

[nedlohs]

"for my part" makes it not a blanket statement, so that one does have an "in my opinion" prefix.

Re:Good?

[jo_ham]

For precisely that reason - the negative point claimed it was bad as a fact. The positive one claimed it was good in the author's opinion.

Re:Good?

[morari]

Watchmen was a boring and pointless movie, but you liked 300? I don't know how that happens...

Re:Good?

[Pollardito]

It is definitely subjective, and how that subjectivity translates to ticket sales is the point of this article. If they had titled this article "Hollywood isn't going to pay more money to make a movie than they can possibly make back selling tickets", we'd all just say "that makes sense." Fantasy is a niche, and R-Rated movies are a niche (and not one that overlaps well). It just happens that a niche-of-a-niche is not enough of a market to justify the $100M+ budgets that fantasy movies are carrying these days

Re:Good?

[bigstrat2003]

Absolutely. I was simply disputing the "not, by any stretch of the imagination, good" statement. As art is subjective, that is a statement which cannot be decided except on a personal level (which was not what was being implied). I'm not saying Hollywood should continue making movies people won't pay for (as much as I liked Watchmen and would like more movies like it).

Re:Good?

[berj]

From CmdrTaco's original summary:

"The most frustrating part of this is that Watchmen was actually *good*"

how is that any different from what I said?

Re:Good?

[berj]

I wasn't responding to anyone who said "for my part". That came *after* what I posted.

Re:Good?

[berj]

300 was an exciting but pointless movie. I enjoyed the experience of watching it in the theatre and then promptly forgot everything about it when I got home.

Watchmen was boring and pointless.. I wanted to leave the theatre while watching it.

Re:Good?

[aztektum]

Not, the parent, but my 2 cents: other than the slo-mo fight stuff, I think it is a rather good translation of the comic book which is one of the best comics ever written.

I wish they'd cut the fights and included more of the story.

Re:Good?

[jo_ham]

Who says I didn't think the summary editorial was a little bit of a troll too? My point was addressing the positive response featured in the thread that was clearly an opinion, compared to the "fact" posited by the troll post that it was bad.

I can take Taco's words as his subjective opinion in a conversation (we do it all the time, since it gets tiresome to add "in my opinion" to everything), but he should be a little more explicit in a written editorial.

Re:Good?

[morari]

See, I didn't even find 300 to be exciting. I felt that it was pretty boring. Everything was entirely predictable and even the action sequences were dull due to their over stylized presentation. Besides, the disregard for a historical event kept nagging at the back of my mind. To be fair though, it wasn't half as boring as Sin City.

Re:Good?

[RogerWilco]

Yeah. I'm not a big fan of the movie, but it was refreshingly different enough from your average hero movie to be entertaining to watch. The end saved the movie. "I triggered it 35 minutes ago". That is what saved the whole movie for me.

Re:Good?

[Killjoy_NL]

That guy must be loaded if he can afford a lobby :D

Re:Good?

[Killjoy_NL]

I do not agree, comic books usually go on forever until cancelled.
Graphic Novels have a story that ends and in the case of the Watchmen, it is a way better story than most of the comics out there, even if it isn't your genre/cup of tea.

Re:Good?

[osu-neko]

graphic novels

They are comic books.

Comic. Books.

Do you even know what the word "comic" means? lol

Re:Good?

[CrackedButter]

Scott Pilgrim was fun for 20 minutes and then got boring.

Re:Good?

[Shadow Wrought]

I think it is a rather good translation of the comic book which is one of the best comics ever written.

I read it and saw the movie but wasn't overwhelmingly impressed with either. I'm not a huge fan of super hero stories anyway, so a counterpoint to them was, for the most part, lost on me. But I can certainly see from a taste perspective how so many would enjoy. The movie though I was unimpressed with myself taste-wise, and I just didn't think it was effective story-telling. Even the sex scene seem uninspired ond overdrawn. Seriously! I didn't even think that was possible :-)

So that's why I'm curious what his taste in movies is.

Re:Good?

[pnuema]

Sorry, it wasn't a good plot. It did not make me think. Pi made me think.

What people fail to realize that for a comic book, Watchmen was brilliant, and pushed the boundaries of the medium. However, take that away, and we have another story about how the private lives of public personae are darker than we imagine. *Yawn*. The story has been done to death. Putting the main characters in capes did not change a fairly boring plot.

Re:Good?

[Anonymous Psychopath]

That's because it was an actual movie with a plot. Idiots don't like plot, they like predictable. A good plot means you have to think, and people don't want to think, because then they aren't enjoying themselves. They want to laugh at a few jokes and blunders by the main character, and have themselves led down the same familiar plot over and over again, albeit in a slightly different setting or circumstance each time. Those are the movies that tend to do well. That does not make them good.

Uh, this wasn't exactly a thinking man's movie, you know? I'm not saying it wasn't entertaining. It was, because of the reasons you listed.

Re:Good?

[PCM2]

For precisely that reason - the negative point claimed it was bad as a fact. The positive one claimed it was good in the author's opinion.

So it's your feeling that everyone should always excuse themselves and beg your pardon before voicing an opinion, especially if it's an opinion you don't agree with.

Re:Good?

[jo_ham]

Who says I agree or disagree?

You have no way of deducing my opinion of the quality of Watchmen based on my statements. I'm just talking about the way the two opposing viewpoints were presented.

Re:Good?

[jbezorg]

Never read the comic. Still liked the movie. It all depends on what you expect to get out of the movie before going into it. I expected a dark comic and that's what I got.

It helps to properly adjust your standards before watching the film. All I expected was big robots fighting in Transformers 2 and that's what that I got. Now if I had expected a coherent plot, entering the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in D.C. and walking out a hanger door into an Arizona bone yard would bother me. Nor did I let the fact that the script writer's for Avatar forgot to do a search and replace for "unobtainium" before they released the final draft bother me. I expected a 300 million dollar remake of "Dances with Ferngully" and that's what I got. In all, I got something out of each movie to entertain me.

In short, it helps if you set your standards really really low.

Re:Good?

[ildon]

But to say that it would have done better if it was PG-13 is a joke.

It would have made more money. Period. And in the end, that's all that matters when you're trying to get investors, which is what this article is about. Whether you liked the movie or not is irrelevant.

Re:Good?

[adolf]

I think you're on the right track: Since "we do it all the time," then such conversational writing which includes opinions is something which should be plainly obvious and recognizable for everyone ("we").

For example: If I write "jo_ham, you're an asshole," then I am plainly just stating an opinion. I may be presenting this opinion using phraseology which is better-suited for presenting facts, by way omitting a preface such as "in my opinion." However, such omissions are quite common when writing informally.

In fact, it is my opinion (ha! there's both!) that it is more common to omit some language for the sake of concision in such forums as this, and that the presence of such pedantic and repetitive qualifiers can often be interpreted as an indication that the writer is being superfluously verbose.

English is flexible, and this really isn't bending it very far.

Think of it like playing 8-ball at a bar: You really only need to call the shots that aren't obvious to your opponent, and you only even bother with that level of pedantry to avoid getting in a fight over the outcome of that shot.

That all said: The Watchmen is shit.

Re:Good?

[The Phantom Mensch]

The problem is that Watchmen was a comic book story for adults, more or less. But adults expect a comic book movie to be a comic book movie and Watchmen was an anti-hero story with a high level of complexity.

If it had been promoted as a serious movie it might've sold a bit better, but in the end it was promoted as a comic book. My 8 year old got a Watchmen poster in some sort of promotional giveaway. Has he ever seen it? Not yet. I was a bit intrigued about it myself based on the cast and the promise of some good old fashioned nudity but I waited until it hit Redbox.

I thought it was...OK.

Re:Good?

[marsu_k]

Oh seriously, I do like a movie with a plot. I do admit having not read the Watchmen, although I've had my share of comics (or "graphic novels", if you wish). I do realize the plot had/has potential, and I'll probably read the book at some point. What totally killed the movie was the music, so utterly predictable and underlining. And I'm not just talking about the sex scene (although that has to be the single most corny one in the history of cinema), the examples are a plenty. I mean, really. "Sound of silence"? Being both a movie and music buff, I think the soundscape can enhance the experience to new heights, or bring it to new lows. For good examples on how to use music properly (and yes, I do realize this is very much subjective), see for example Aguirre or Stalker. Or do away with the music altogether, and let the story tell itself, as in No country for old men. Using a) very, very well known b) very much worn out music in your picture shows either lack of creativity or trying to pander to the audience.

Re:Good?

[somersault]

I concur, better to be pleasantly surprised than slightly disappointed because of your expectations.

Re:Good?

[jo_ham]

All very sensible, but in the medium of text on a discussion board, a lot of a nuances of communication and language in general are lost, so a little extra effort to convey your meaning doesn't hurt. You don't have to go overboard on the pedantry to do it, and it removes some of the ambiguity.

All you have to do is insert "I think" into your statement above to clear up any confusion. I don't think eight extra characters, including the extra space, is being overly pedantic and repetitive, do you?

Re:Good?

[Thing 1]

In my opinion, Yes.

Re:Good?

[Thing 1]

Agreed on the Scott Pilgrim -- but it took a couple watchings. First time was like "the fuck I just saw" (helped (?) that I was drunk); second time was "hey the dialog is pretty cool", third time will be in a few minutes.

Re:Good?

[tyrione]

Subjective art is subjective. For my part, it is one of the best movies I have ever seen.

It was boring as hell. If I want to enjoy a cult movie I watch BladeRunner.

Re:Good?

[DG]

Yet my wife thought it was amazing and one of the best films she'd ever seen.

Perhaps you have poor choice in girlfriends.

DG

Re:Good?

[nedlohs]

You manged to reply to the reply of a post that came after yours? Or is 12:25PM is now after 1:04PM?

Are you seriously trying to claim that your statement: "So why is the blanket claim that a movie is *good* not a troll?", was referring to some other claim and not the one being discussed in the post you replied to?

Re:Good?

[Nyder]

...

Watchmen was a bad movie and it failed because it was a bad movie.
Is Slashdot going to post an article next week about Scott Pilgrim and how it was actually a good movie?

...

You do realize that this article is NOT about how good or bad The Watchmen is, but how movies, like The Watchman, have killed R-rated fantasy movies (you know, like the title of the article says?).

So why are you pushing an agenda that has nothing to do with the article?

Re:Good?

[berj]

Yes.

The "blanket claim" to which I was referring was CmdrTaco's in his summary.

Re:Good?

[Adam Jorgensen]

Unlike Watchmen, Scott Pilgrim was actually a good movie.

Re:Good?

[L4t3r4lu5]

It's called meta-moderating, and I do it as often as possible.

Re:Good?

[nedlohs]

OK, strange context to do so but fine.

And obviously anything the "editor" adds is by definition trolling - it's added to generate comments which ups the page views which brings in the advertising dollars.

And I likely agree with you about the other half of the discussion, your post wasn't a troll and it wasn't a baseless blanket claim - the first part of it gave the reasoning after all.

Re:Good?

[tehcyder]

Really? What was the other movie you saw?

Mortal Kombat probably.

Re:Good?

[tehcyder]

Oh come now, the latter comment might not be insightful but the former can certainly be considered a troll. Whether you enjoy a movie or not is entirely subjective, therefore to blanket claim a movie is not good (rather than saying you didn't enjoy it) is certainly going to attract negative responses from those who enjoyed the movie. What is a troll if not a comment with a good chance of garnering negative responses?

Bollocks, if a film is not very good, it is not a troll to say so. It would only be a troll if the film was obviously good and the poster said it wasn't just to provoke a reaction. Watchmen (the movie) is not the masterpiece people here seem to be making out, and it especially fails when compared to the genuine work of genius that is Watchmen the graphic novel, however unfair a comparison that may be

And the question of whether a work is good or not is not all just subjective. If enough reasonable people produce evidence of why it is not good, that is a measured critical response.

Re:Good?

[Raenex]

Mode me troll and flamebait, I don't give a fuck.

Yes you do, otherwise you wouldn't have mentioned it. Making statements like this is a good way to get modded +5.

Re:Good?

[kubernet3s]

No, that's not true. The errors in Watchmen were egregious and insulting to an audience that pays ten bucks to see the damn flick in the first place. The actor who played Nixon was inexplicably wearing a grocery bag filled with flesh colored play-doh. About one out of every three scenes was computer animated for no reason. The sex scenes were long and uncomfortably graphic. The script was like if you took the original comic book and threw it in a blender. The errors in direction were more than obvious, but actively tangible and gustable, like a wet sponge being sloppy forced into ones mouth on the end of a stick. It was an atrocious movie, not because of any subjective errors of aesthetic philosophy, but because it was a cheap, poorly thought out attempt to cash in on fanboyism. The whole quality of the filmmaking was amateurish, and not something I should have to expect from people who are demanding I pay them big people money to sit in the dark and watch.

Games Instead

[dintech]

the creation of dazzling artificial movie worlds is limited to family-friendly output

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.

Re:Games Instead

[MozeeToby]

But there's no reason that they couldn't make them and turn a decent profit. The real problem is that the studios think a 'big name' movie needs to have a $150 million (or more) budget. If you spend that kind of money of course you're going to have problems turning a profit on a movie that half your potential audience can't, or doesn't want to see simply because of the rating. But, if you can cut just a few corners, user lesser known actors (but then you might actually have to put some effort into casting! The horror!), and independent special effects companies you can make a movie for 1/5th the typical Hollywood action movie budget and it becomes much more profitable.

District 9 is the quintessential modern example. Unknown actors, small special effects company trying to prove itself, a cheap filming location, etc. Revenues of $210 million (barely enough to come out ahead for a typical action sci-fi movie), but because of the much smaller budget ($30 million) it was a roaring financial success. Because when you come down to it, the actors were surprisingly effective, special effects just shouldn't cost tens of millions of dollars anymore, and it is the story first and the action second that people want to see and the film delivers both very well; over hyped special effects and famous actors a distant 3rd and 4th in the action sci-fi genre.

Re:Games Instead

[Stregano]

I could not agree more. If they stopped pulling in the actors that think they require 20 million per movie, and bring somebody in and pay them 250k for a movie (I would be thrilled as hell personally if I worked for one year and made that), then the budgets would drop way down. Seriously big movie industry, stop throwing money around and, gasp, for once, act like a business. I hate the way big business conducts itself, but if the movie industry did this, their profits would shoot through the roof. Sure, Will Smith, Nick Cage, Vin Diesel, Bruce Willis, and those guys would be out on the streets since apparently they can't handle anything less than 20 million, we get the same movie, but with a new face. It would be nice, as we would associate with the character more than the actor. I would rather not know who in the hell the actor is, because I will associate the actor to that movie and not their role in Die Hard and then when this movie is not as good, compare it to Die Hard.

Re:Games Instead

[camperdave]

You'd think that with examples like that, and "The Blair Witch Project", studios would have clued in to the fact that big budgets are not necessary for big profits. On the other hand, every studio gets thousands of movie scripts a year and they're all looking for the next Classic. Of course, with Hollywood Accounting(tm), no film makes money and the profits are built into the "production costs", so making an inexpensive movie and raking in ticket sale money doesn't necessarily fit the business plan.

Re:Games Instead

[jandrese]

The downside of this is that you have to slog through several hours of repetitive cover based shooting in order to get the story.

I had a roommate in college who played Final Fantasy games for the storyline, always skipping battles where he could and never grinding. He was about the only person I ever knew who needed several tries to deal with the final boss, and sometimes didn't finish the games at all because he would get to a miniboss or a boss that just wasn't possible without more grinding.

Re:Games Instead

[FSWKU]

small special effects company trying to prove itself

While Zoic Studios may be small, I'd say they've proven themselves several times over BEFORE District 9. Here's just a quick list of what they've worked on, starting from 2003 and going forward.

1. Firefly
2. Battlestar Galactica
3. Spider-Man 2
4. The Day After Tomorrow
5. Van Helsing
6. Zathura
7. Jericho
8. Serenity
9. Eureka
10. Chuck
11. Quarantine
12. Fringe
13. Terminator: TSCC
14. V
15. True Blood
16. Zombieland

Re:Games Instead

[morari]

I could not agree more.

For me, unknown actors actually enhance a film. I have no previous attachment to them and can actually see them solely as the character they're playing. I can't do that with big name stars, because I always see them as "so-and-so" from that other film.

That's not to say that I want b-movie acting, but honestly, most theater folk out there can do just as well as any a-list actor could. The only thing that makes Will Smith any better than some random guy down at the local drama club is the way the studio markets his name.

Re:Games Instead

[westlake]

But, if you can cut just a few corners, user lesser known actors (but then you might actually have to put some effort into casting! The horror!), and independent special effects companies you can make a movie for 1/5th the typical Hollywood action movie budget and it becomes much more profitable.

Some effort indeed.

The Coen brothers auditioned thousands of girls before they found Hailee Steinfeld - and without her you do not have a movie.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, the difference between the right actor and the wrong actor is the difference beteen the lightning and the lightning bug.

The problem with special effects is that they do not remain special for very long - and the talent pool is much shallower here than the geek likes to pretend.

That is why you build a real Batmobile instead of a CGI prop.

Now and again, the low budget, no-name, production will click. More often it's Fox and "Space Chimps" vs Pixar and "Wall-E."

Re:Games Instead

[Maxo-Texas]

Wish I had mod points.

And actors frequently finish more than one movie a year.

There is a glut of entertainment. We are still adjusting to the new reality of a market of billions of consumers. You could make profits with pennies but they are still charging dollars.

For some reason there seems to be two prices...
"Really overpriced at the maximum yield management price level" and "Free".

But I see in DVD's it's more of a continuum now... $5 disk with 3 movies up to $30 for a disk.

But Netflix changes that to "lots and lots and lots of stuff for $11 or $15 a month"

Re:Games Instead

[IICV]

Seriously big movie industry, stop throwing money around and, gasp, for once, act like a business.

They are acting like a business. You can pay some unknown dude $250k and guarantee no sales, or you can pay (say) Bruce Willis $20 million and guarantee that you'll get at least a $21 million return on investment - but to be honest, you're probably not paying Bruce Willis $20 million, nowadays it's probably closer to $1 million and on average he guarantees an income of at least $1.1 million.

I mean seriously, you can see this clearly if you pay attention to advertising. For example: it wasn't Avatar, it was James Cameron's Avatar. Why? Because several million people remember that James Cameron did Titanic (the movie poster even reminds you of it!), and that they liked Titanic, and that therefore they would go see James Cameron's Avatar. But it wasn't James Cameron's Titanic, now was it? Nobody gave a shit who James Cameron was back then. They just cared that Leonardo diCaprio and Kate Winslett were in it; funny how that works, huh?

So to the big movie industry, paying an actor $1 million for a movie makes perfect sense; they are investing more money to get more of a guaranteed return on investment. They are totally willing to take that deal, because your shareholders don't want to hear "we've got this no-name actor for cheap, but we don't know how much he'll bring in", they want to hear "we've got Bruce Willis, and he guarantees at least $1.5 million in revenue". Shareholders don't want to hear about your risks, they want to hear about your (statistically) guaranteed income.

Re:Games Instead

[Quirkz]

Agreed. I tend to get really annoyed when animated movies use the same old big names you'd see in regular movies. Especially when they go ahead and make the character look kind of like the actor. Why not just make it live action in the first place, then? But really, c'mon, don't they have any non-photogenic voice talents who could do as good or better jobs voicing the animated movies?

Re:Games Instead

[Waccoon]

I remember hearing about "Primer" and wanted to get the DVD. I was shocked to see that the cheapest price I could find was close to $24.

Gee, as far as pricing is concerned, that shoestring budget means nothing compared to the massive hype. Most of the blockbusters form the same time period are now in the bargain bin.

Re:Games Instead

[Stregano]

Tell that to the studio who brought in Tom Cruise to do Lions for Lambs (and Tom Cruise is in the 20mil per movie club). I don't have the exact numbers, but the movie made less than the paycheck they gave Tom Cruise. Bringing in big name actors does not always mean a successful film.

Re:Games Instead

[SuperMonkeyCube]

Some people at those big studios know that big budgets are not necessary for big profits. James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, and Martin Scorsese (heard of any of those guys?) have all worked for Roger Corman before they were big time. Corman is a master at extracting value from a movie's budget and shooting films on a tight schedule. But, like you said, thanks to the way the accounting is done at most studios, it's not practical for most studios to operate any other way than the bloated way that they do.

Re:Games Instead

[SuperMonkeyCube]

The down side with the guy that's well-respected and only makes 250K a movie is that it is probably the only picture he's working on, so not only will that 250K be his salary for that year that the film takes in production, but it's got to cover him for the year he spends afterward going around to help promote the film, and possibly even the year after that where he's got to run around promoting the DVD. Once you get done with agents, accountants, and taxes, there's not so much to go around any more. Please refer to Chapter 36 of "If Chins Could Kill:Confessions of a B-Movie Actor" by Bruce Campbell. The chapter is called "Anatomy of a Paycheck".

Re:Games Instead

[Ocker3]

I disagree slightly on one point. District 9 was shot to look somewhat like a company documentary, so they may not have had to put as much effort into the special effects, it was supposed to look dirty and real. Watchmen needed to be stylised, with comic-book size (city block/entire city) effects. Having said that, it isn't necessary for All comic-book adaptions to be on that grand scale, but Watchmen probably did.

Re:Games Instead

[cgenman]

Great films are made all of the time with no-name actors and low budgets. Moon *barely* eeked back its 5 million dollar budget, and that was one of 2009's best films.

The reason why studios stick big names in shiny films with soundtracks plastered across MTV is because IT WORKS. They're not dumb.

Re:Games Instead

[HornWumpus]

'The Blair Witch Project' had a huge promotion budget.

And that only worked for about a week, until word got out just how HORRIBLE the movie was. After that nobody went to see it.

Re:Games Instead

[jalefkowit]

OK, I'll bite.

Let's look at the financials for District 9 : $211 million earned worldwide and $30 million of production expenses, for a total profit of $181 million or so.

Now let's look at one of those "big name" movies full of stars, for comparison. How about Iron Man 2? It was full of big-name, big-paycheck actors. It cost a lot more to make than District 9 did -- production budget was $200 million. But it made a total of $622 million worldwide. That's $422 million in profit, more than twice District 9's take.

The reason studios want big-name actors isn't because they're stupid. It's because those actors earn their money. They bring people into the theater who would otherwise never bother to see the flick. There's gobs of people who call themselves fans of "Harrison Ford movies", for instance, even though there's really no such thing as a "Harrison Ford movie" -- he's done all sorts of stuff, from action to drama to comedy to romance, and he's been in movies of wildly varying quality. But they know him and like him, so having his name on the marquee brings them in, earning back his paycheck and then some. (Actors with this kind of drawing power are said to be able to "open a movie" -- that is, to be able to draw in enough people on the power of their name alone to guarantee a good take during the critical first couple of weekends of release, no matter what the critical response to the movie is.)

District 9 was a great movie, don't get me wrong. But if I had to choose between two investments, one that would cost me $30 mil and return $180 mil, and another that would cost $200 mil and would return $600+? If I had the $200 million to spend, choosing the latter one would be a no-brainer.

Re:Games Instead

[Nyder]

the creation of dazzling artificial movie worlds is limited to family-friendly output

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.

let me think on this. does Dead Space 2 have the same crappy over the shoulder view that Dead Space had? You know, the one that made me so nauseous in the first 5 mins of play it, and I had to stop?.

The game that decided having 3rd person view was more scary then being in 1st person?
The game who's graphics look, well, like the early 2000's graphics, on the commericals you see on TV?

No, thanks, I'll pass.

Re:Games Instead

[penguinchris]

Unknown actors enhancing a film is certainly true for the reason you suggest (assuming they're decent actors). However, what about all the truly great actors? I don't confuse the roles of my favorite actors, because they're *so good* that you see them as the character, not the actor (in most cases - it depends on having a good script and a good director too).

You can take anyone considered a great actor as an example... even someone who usually played very similar characters, like Humphrey Bogart or even Alec Guinness. Or an interesting example might be Peter Sellers - he could play literally any character - or several characters at once, as in Dr. Strangelove and a couple other films. However, if you pay close attention, many of his various characters share a *lot* of traits. Yet each time, you're watching a totally different, totally convincing character - it's not Peter Sellers you're watching. A couple of other good examples are Peter O'Toole and Michael Caine. Both have *very* distinctive screen presence and voices. But each totally inhabits a role, and you don't feel that you're seeing anything but the characters they're playing.

The problem with modern actors such as those being discussed in this thread is that they're really not good actors. But they bring in the audience, which is why they make all that money. With these movies, it's not about the art form.

There *are* of course good young actors working today, and some of them even make a lot of money. Johnny Depp is an example. Excellent actor... he often is put in profit-driven movies with bad scripts and bad directing, though.

Re:Games Instead

[dintech]

If you had played it for more than 5 minutes you would have noticed that having the character on screen adds to the sense of claustrophobia as well as how imminently close and deadly the enemies are. It's supposed to raise your stress and tension levels. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it but thankfully enough people did that they were allow to make a sequel.

Re:Games Instead

[Maxo-Texas]

I have mixed feelings about this.

I don't like recognizing the voices...

But the acting quality is *noticably* better than traditional animation.

Some of the recent Justice League and Batman movies are clearly a step above the past when it comes to writing and acting.

It's clear these professionals really do have some kind of rare talent.

If I don't look at the cast before the movie starts, I don't recognize them as often and just enjoy the higher quality acting.

Re:Games Instead

[Maxo-Texas]

Compare Peter O'Toole in Creator and Peter O'Toole in "My favorite year".

Same character and yet different character.

And yea.. I completely agree with you. Some actors are typecast... other actors transcend type and disappear into the role.

Re:Games Instead

[Yaruar]

"one that would cost me $30 mil and return $180 mil, and another that would cost $200 mil and would return $600+? If I had the $200 million to spend, choosing the latter one would be a no-brainer."

Of course the sensible thing to do would be to invest that $200 in 6 films at $30 each and make $1080 with the bonus of $19 million to buy a yacht out of your initial investment.

Re:Games Instead

[jalefkowit]

You're assuming that there's an unlimited number of film projects to invest in, so that you can choose to invest in six District 9s rather than one Iron Man 2. But that's not really true at the major-studio level; the supply of people who can bring a studio-quality movie in on time and (mostly) on budget is extremely limited. So even the largest studios only get to place a small number of bets each year. (Paramount, for instance, released only 13 pictures in 2010.) So it makes sense economically to try to make each of those bets count as much as possible.

Heavy Metal? Plot?

[mkiwi]

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.

Re:Heavy Metal? Plot?

[Even on Slashdot FOE]

Try reading the magazine - a lot of it is the same kind of thing, so the plot sounds reasonable to me, if a lot pornier than the last one.

Re:Heavy Metal? Plot?

[gstoddart]

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.

Riiight. Because, Hollywood plots are always based on well thought-out ideas with cohesive plots and never stray into the realm of thinly put together stories.

And, really, if you think about it ... a series of vignettes that take place around a mysterious glowing green thing is, well, Pulp Fiction.

Seriously, take away the sex (or at least showing it), and I would argue that a tremendous amount of Hollywood movies have a plot not much more sophisticated than a porno ... well, at least the ones that make a pretense at plot. Hell, The Devil in Miss Jones had a far better plot than most movies in the last decade.

Re:Heavy Metal? Plot?

[SpeZek]

Is the plot of Heavy Metal really any more sophisticated than that of Avatar? Guy saves a girl('s people) on a different planet for sexual favours.

The point is that Pandora was awesome to look at. Same with the environments of Heavy Metal (I'd argue, more so, since they're completely fantastical rather than just alien).

Re:Heavy Metal? Plot?

[Sique]

Hm... and how is that plot different from any "maid in distress"-story where in the end the guy marries the maid? There are hundreds of Hollywood movies of that kind - only difference being that the "sexual favours" are called "marriage".

Re:Heavy Metal? Plot?

[swb]

I liked Heavy Metal and Avatar was fun to watch, but Avatar's biggest problem was morality-driven plot simpler than "do good" books you'd give to a six year old. From a story perspective, Heavy Metal seemed more involved (and fairly non-linear given the segments involved different characters and animation styles).

IMHO, "good" movies for adults have plots that share the real world's complexities, moral ambiguities and trade-offs. Nothing in the real world is as straightforward and simple as the dumb plot in Avatar.

Re:Heavy Metal? Plot?

[ColdWetDog]

To everybody whining about modern plots / Hollywood and the general decline of cinema: I have one and only one suggestion for you -

Zardoz.

Now shut up and thank whatever deity you pray to that we managed to survive the '70s.

Re:Heavy Metal? Plot?

[ColdWetDog]

only difference being that the "sexual favours" are called "marriage".

Now that's crazy talk.

Re:Heavy Metal? Plot?

[JackieBrown]

I haven't seen an action movie ending in marriage in a log time. Are you still basing movies based on the 80's/90's?

I have seen most of them lead into sex (usually not graphic sex and I am also not suggesting that I find it bothersome I just think you are judging movies on a standard that no longer exists - at least, not in the majority of movies.)

Re:Heavy Metal? Plot?

[Sique]

I don't judge any movie, I just point out that the plot "maid in distress gets saved by guy and thus agrees to get intimate (whatever you call it in the movie)" is the base plotline for a considerably large part of all movies (and books, graphic novels, epic dramae...).

The only difference being the way the outcome is depicted, as marriage, as sex, as "lived happily ever after".

Re:Heavy Metal? Plot?

[robthebloke]

On the contrary. Hollywood plots are so cohesive they've all congealed into the exact same story....

1. Film opens in meadow. Generic 'beefcake man' will be walking through the flowers with generic love interest. This part of the film was never in the script, but they didn't have the budget to pay for the FX shots of the mass battle sequence they'd originally planned, so generic love interest it is.... Expect the film to be padded out with numerous flashbacks featuring soft focus shots of flowers and flowing hair.

2. Cut to the current day. The relationship has broken down, and cue the entrance of generic beefcake mans, generic teenage boy child. Petulant teenage boy child will scream "I hate you!" and run off for some unexplained reason.

3. The phone will ring. For the next 30minutes we'll be treated to gratuitous shots of people talking on iPhones, culminating in some ridiculous plot device that triumphs the iPhone as the saviour of humanity.

4. We'll then have to sit through another 30 minutes of people driving a Humvee through some generic suburban streets. Generic teenage boy child will get some much needed moral guidance from generic beefcake man (required to avoid the dreaded 'R' rating). Cue second ridiculous plot device whereby the generic teenage boy childs life is saved by the total awesomeness of a humvee.

5. Mr Evil will kidnap generic teenage boy child. Generic beefcake man will get angry and go for a burger king.

6. The last 33 seconds will feature guns and the only special effects of the entire film. Cue another ridiculous plot device that sees generic beefcake man hacking into some generic mainframe computer via the totally awesome iPad - once again saving humanity, and the life of generic teenage boy child.

7. The final punch thrown in the film will be from either generic teenage boy child, or generic love interest woman. Don't ask me why, it just will...

8. Mr and Mrs generic live happily ever after with generic boy child.

9. The credits will role, and the audience will leave the cinema feeling a little dirtier than when they arrived.

Re:Heavy Metal? Plot?

[gstoddart]

On the contrary. Hollywood plots are so cohesive they've all congealed into the exact same story....

Well, more like seven stories, actually:

Overcoming the Monster

Hero learns of a great evil threatening the land, and sets out to destroy it.

Rags to Riches

Surrounded by dark forces who suppress and ridicule him, the Hero slowly blossoms into a mature figure who ultimately gets riches, a kingdom, and the perfect mate.

The Quest

Hero learns of a great Mac Guffin that he desperately wants to find, and sets out to find it, often with companions.

Voyage and Return

Hero heads off into a magic land with crazy rules, ultimately triumphs over the madness and returns home far more mature than when he set out.

Comedy

Hero and Heroine are destined to get together, but a dark force is preventing them from doing so; the story conspires to make the dark force repent, and suddenly the Hero and Heroine are free to get together. This is part of a cascade of effects that shows everyone for who they really are, and allows two or more other relationships to correctly form.

Tragedy

The flip side of the Overcoming the Monster plot. Our protagonist character is the Villain, but we get to watch him slowly spiral down into darkness before he's finally defeated, freeing the land from his evil influence.

Rebirth

As with the Tragedy plot, but our protagonist manages to realize his error before it's too late, and does a Heel Face Turn to avoid inevitable defeat.

Not sure if Watchmen actually fits any of those, but that was kinda the point.

Re:Heavy Metal? Plot?

[Fnord666]

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.

Thanks for the spoiler alert. I was going to go see that soon but now you've ruined it.

Re:Heavy Metal? Plot?

[nelsonal]

What do you mean, they just remade that (and did worse) a couple years ago.

Re:Heavy Metal? Plot?

[PCM2]

So you're saying that if we want to save Hollywood, modern directors need to drop all their current projects and watch Zardoz a half dozen times? Bold statement -- I doubt most people will agree, but I'm with you that Zardoz is an awesome movie.

Re:Heavy Metal? Plot?

[Alimony Pakhdan]

And the plot of the Watchmen is that a good guy is a bad guy but maybe a good guy after all. Your point being what? Both Heavy Metal and The Watchmen came from 80s comics, neither required the viewer to have read the original source material and both looked good when first shown in the theater.

Re:Heavy Metal? Plot?

[Thing 1]

Explain Catholics and their 20-something children. Oh, right, the priests. No wait, pre-pubescent boys can't get pregnant!

One of the best movies I have seen...

[Super Dave Osbourne]

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.

Re:One of the best movies I have seen...

[RingDev]

Personally, I would have rather seen the money sunk into more movies from the Dead Gentlemen for continuations of "the Gamers: Dorkness Rising" and "Journey Quest".

Lets see, GDR budget was ~$1,000, with a whole lot of volunteers.
Season 2 of JQ has a $100,000 target budget.
The Watchmen budget was ~$150,000,000.

I think the geek subculture would gain far more entertainment from 50 more G:DR/JQ type productions than the 3 hours of drivel the Watchmen offered us.

-Rick

Re:One of the best movies I have seen...

[Damek]

I agree. And as much as mass media enables widely shared experiences, it also fosters an unhealthy monoculture and loss of autonomous creativity.

More and more of people doing and making their own things, please.

I no longer care about Hollywood, or TV networks for that matter.

Re:One of the best movies I have seen...

[mcvos]

I wouldn't call Watchmen "drivel". It was an awesome movie in every possible way. But I do agree that the quality of independent/low budget productions these days is amazing. My only problem with JQ was that it was too short.

Good?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Not the same thing

[93 Escort Wagon]

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.

Re:Not the same thing

[anethema]

I don't read comics or graphic novels and have no desire to, but I found Watchmen fantastic. It is a bit of a slow movie in the sense that there is not action every five minutes, but it was a very watchable, very cool movie.

I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it as long as you don't need "Die Hard" or "The Expendables" level shoot em up action to enjoy a movie.

Re:Not the same thing

[bloodhawk]

I don't read the comics or graphic novels either, I saw the movie and found it to be trash, it was predictable and dull,

Re:Not the same thing

[chaynlynk]

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.

Sadly, the other part of this issue is that it costs so much to produce these films that they have to get funding from major studios who care about demographics.

Re:Not the same thing

[Andtalath]

The watchmen movie is, in contrast to the printed form of it, actually not at all comic-like.

Re:Not the same thing

[MogNuts]

Go with your instincts on this one. I'll let u on a secret that I had to learn the hard way. Word of mouth is probably the worst way to find out about a product. Because our minds are trained to think it's actually automatically good. I can't tell you how many things I looked into and bought because of Slashdot (game opinions are the worst--almost every game ppl said they liked on /, were AWFUL). Don't listen to the OP.

Watchmen is probably the worst movie I have ever seen. And it was only rented! And I didn't even pay for the rental! I actually was pissed that I spent the 2 some hours on the movie. It was so bad. That's why, not because of some R rating. I mean, where do I start with how bad this thing was:

1) It had awful pacing. There would be 30 min of dullness followed by 5 min of something interesting. Then another 45 min of dullness.
2) The story made no sense. Even if /. beloved comic was good, this movie was not. It was told poorly
3) Insanely lame characters with lame things that they did throughout the movie
4) Too much talking. Yes talking and back story and dialog are good. Not good is when it goes 30 mins with ramblings on and no discernible direction
5) That lame constant voiceover by that Rorschach guy.

There are so many more reasons, but now I'm just getting pissed on how bad that movie is and how everyone here loves it. Just don't do it man, don't even watch it on channel 11 when you're bored on a sunday afternoon. That's when you know it's bad: when it's not even worth that!

Re:Not the same thing

[cbope]

It is a bit of a slow movie in the sense that there is not action every five minutes, but it was a very watchable, very cool movie.

I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it as long as you don't need "Die Hard" or "The Expendables" level shoot em up action to enjoy a movie.

This is precisely WHY it was a good movie. It wasn't designed for ADD types, it had very good pacing, something that is totally missing from most modern action movies. I don't understand the need for ACTION, ACTION, ACTION every 5 seconds.

Re:Not the same thing

[kungfugleek]

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 never read the comic but loved the movie. Went into it cold, not knowing anything other than people said the comic was one of the best ever written, and that it was some kind of alternate history thing. I fell in love with it. From the very beginning to the last frame.

But then I watched part of it again and, well, the acting wasn't that good after all. In fact, it kind of ruins it. It was a bold move to cast a bunch of no-names. It paid off for a couple of the characters, but not all of them. It's made me afraid to watch the whole thing again because it's so awesome in my memory.

I do want to read the comic now, too.

Re:Not the same thing

[JackieBrown]

Every show I watched that was canceled was either because the studio is run by idiots or because American audiences are too stupid to get the show.

At least, this is the recurring fan IMDB theme I see whenever a show is canceled.

Re:Not the same thing

[theantipop]

If Watchmen is predictable and dull, what movies are you watching that are refreshingly insightful?

Re:Not the same thing

[rolfwind]

I'm not a fan of the graphic novel. I do enjoy manga and doujins.

I saw Watchmen in the theater based on the sheer hype. It was entertaining but I haven't though about it since. I liked Kick Ass better, although there were less themes and it was more about putting your brain on hold and seeing action.

There isn't anything wrong with Watchmen per se, but if the potential audience is smaller, it would be better to just make the movie with a smaller budget. The average person isn't all that deep or thinks about themes and all that stuff too much, and I guess I have to include myself in that segment as well as English class was my most despised subject.

Re:Not the same thing

[fnj]

Seconded. Seeing the movie Watchmen as excellent is in no way related to having a comic book reader intellect. It is well acted, explores interesting themes, and is not dumbed down or childishly saccharine.

Re:Not the same thing

[internic]

My girlfriend and I both read and liked the comic, and we were both pretty happy with the movie. We went with a couple of friends who had not read the comic but actually were the ones who suggested seeing the movie. They really did not like it. From talking to them, the problem seemed to basically be one of unfulfilled expectations. They knew it was a movie about superheroes and were expecting a typical superhero movie, which is to say an action-packed movie with pretty light themes. What they got was something that was dark and more dialog and ennui than action, so they were not happy.

Maybe if they'd been expecting something different going in they would have liked it better or perhaps not. Maybe there were other people who it would have suited better, but they decided not to see it assuming it was just another dumb superhero movie. I don't know, but I wouldn't discount the effect of mistaken expectations.

Re:Not the same thing

[Miseph]

I think the most unforgivable change was removing Dr. Manhattan's private conversation with Ozymandias at the very end.

(SEMI-)SPOILER ALERT

OZY: "Hello, Jon. I was hoping we'd have the chance to talk. Jon... I know people think me callous, but I've made myself feel every death. By day I imagine endless faces. by night... well, I dream about swimming towards a hideous... No. never mind. It isn't significant...
What's significant is that I know. I know I've struggled across the backs of murdered innocents to save humanity... But someone had to take the weight of that awful, necessary crime. I'd hoped you'd understand, unlike Rorschach..."

MAN: "You needn't consider Rorschach. I strongly doubt He'll reach civilization... but yes, I understand, without condoning or condemning. Human affairs cannot be my concern. I'm leaving this galaxy for one less complicated."

OZY: "But you'd regained interest in human life..."

MAN: Yes, I have. I think perhaps I'll create some. Goodbye, Adrian."

OZY: "Jon, wait, before you leave... I did the right thing, didn't I? it all worked out in the end."

MAN: "'In the end?' Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."

OZY: "Jon? Wait! What do you mean by..."

[Manhattan vanishes, leaving Ozymandias to his doubts]

END (SEMI-)SPOILER

Seriously, it took me about two minutes to write that chunk of the script, including digging out the comic. It would be a 45 second scene. Of all the things they COULD have cut, but decided not to, they chose the most meaningful exchange in the entire thing? That's just asinine.

Re:Not the same thing

[lgw]

Yeah, they did miss a pretty important theme, but most watchers who hadn't read the book likely wouldn't have seen the significance of the exchange anyway, so I'm not sure how big of a loss it was.

Re:Not the same thing

[lgw]

That box by the door? Yeah. Your geek card goes in in on your way out.

Re:Not the same thing

[scot4875]

Translation:

1) "I have no attention span; I need flashes of light and loud noises to enjoy a movie"
2) "I can't follow a story more complex than 'good guy vs. bad guy' or 'guy wants to fuck/date/marry girl'"
3) "Nuance is lost on me. Even when I have characters that are textured enough to sleep with someone who attempted to rape them, I still can't see anything interesting in them."
4) see 1
5) "In a 2 hour movie, I focused on maybe 5 minutes of narration"

Please, give us more details on why you don't like this movie.

Also, what do you recommend? The "Ow My Balls" channel?

--Jeremy

Re:Not the same thing

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny. I had exactly the same opinion of Fight Club -- before I saw it. In any case, I would recommend to non-comic guys that they prioritize Watchmen over Hulk, Spiderman, Transformers (Please!), etc.

Re:Not the same thing

[sorak]

There's no need to look for a broader conspiracy

I'm not sure you read the same summary or article I did. Expensive R-rated SCI-FI fantasy movies don't make much money, so movie studios aren't interested in doing them. Why is that a conspiracy theory?

Re:Not the same thing

[Totenglocke]

You've never seen it, yet you think you have room to say it's not good? Now that my friends, is a great mixture of arrogance and incompetence. Have you considered running for President? You'd fit right in.

Re:Not the same thing

[Anonymous Coward]

5) That lame constant voiceover by that Rorschach guy.

Even though tastes are subjective, and even at the risk of sounding like a 4chan refugee, I'll say this: Rorschach's dialogue is 100% epic awesome and if you don't like it there's something wrong with you.

Re:Not the same thing

[Splab]

I have the same opinion as GP, that movie sucked.

It made absolutely no sense, but then again, I don't know the universe it's supposed to depict.

I recommend Terry Pratchett.

Re:Not the same thing

[Anonymous Coward]

I liked the movie, but I would say the funeral scene, where everyone has a different flashback at the Comedian's funeral, works really well in a book. It doesn't matter that a whole chapter takes a few minutes of realtime. In the film, I don't think it works so well. Beautiful adaptation of the book, but I don't think the mechanic translates.

Also the Archie sex scenes are the most uncomfortable I've seen in a film since either Matrix 2 or Underworld 2. If you're filming characters changing position, then it's unnecessary.

Saying that, Rorschach's last scene almost makes me cry big man tears, every time.

Re:Not the same thing

[PCM2]

I'm sorry it threatens you that MogNuts didn't like Watchmen, but unfortunately for you, he is right. The Watchmen movie was fucking terrible in almost every appreciable way. You want good movies? Go watch The Godfather. Go watch Gandhi. Go watch Amadeus. Those are good movies. You want something more recent? Watch No Country for Old Men, The Wrestler, or True Grit. These are movies made with skill by intelligent people with taste and a firm command of the art of filmmaking. Watchmen was a steaming pile of shit.

Re:Not the same thing

[nEoN nOoDlE]

As you said,

Word of mouth is probably the worst way to find out about a product.

I liked the Watchmen, so I probably won't be listening to your advice on games or movies.

Maybe you just have very different tastes from everybody else in this community. I usually like movies that are recommended to me by my friends, and often movies that other people on Slashdot like.

Re:Not the same thing

[Ben Newman]

Don't forget the flamethrower ejaculate! Seriously, possibly the worst sex scene in the history of film.

Re:Not the same thing

[Facegarden]

Seconded. Seeing the movie Watchmen as excellent is in no way related to having a comic book reader intellect. It is well acted, explores interesting themes, and is not dumbed down or childishly saccharine.

Thirded. Never read a comic book in my life. Loved Watchmen. So did my girlfriend, and she's picky.

Re:Not the same thing

[metacell]

Comic book readers have above average education. Reading at all, whether it be novels, comic books, magazine articles or computer manuals, is an indication of above average intellect.

The average comic book has a far more complex story and requires more effort from the reader than the average film. Even popular, mass-produced entertainment like the X-Men have very complex storylines stretching over multiple issues and referencing events years or decades back in publication history, and a huge number of characters to keep track of. The quality of the storyline, characterisation and descriptions may be inconsistent in many comics, but they're definitely not dumbed-down.

Re:Not the same thing

[cgenman]

The Watchmen wasn't a superhero Kick Ass movie. It was a movie about the realities of getting old and forgotten, while having trouble letting go of the foolish idealism of youth. Some people really didn't get that, and just thought it was going to be mindless entertaining drivel. In part, the advertising for the movie was terrible in that it showcased the action sequences, when really the most telling sequence was the two old owls getting together and drinking to the old days.

Re:Not the same thing

[Thing 1]

[...] although people do seem predisposed to finding conspiracies even when none exists.

And faces, and gods, etc.

Re:Not the same thing

[Lunzo]

Amadeus? Seriously?

Re:Not the same thing

[Bigjeff5]

Really, it works like this: Box-office sales - production cost = profit.

If profit is negative, it will be very difficult to make another just like it. So if you have a movie like Watchmen, which brought in around $100 million at the box-office yet cost almost $150 million to make and is now relying on DVD sales just to break even, a studio is not going to want to risk that kind of cash on something that will probably fail. They can make a handful of $30 million dollar films and reliably profit from them, so why risk it?

This is why Uwe Boll, despite making the worst movies on the planet, still gets studio backing for his films. They each cost $20-30 million and bring in a reliable $10-20 million in profit, every single time.

The Watchmen (and other such bombs, like Waterworld) did not even live up to Uwe Boll's level of success. What the hell kind of studio would be dumb enough to repeat that mistake?

Re:Not the same thing

[Bigjeff5]

5) That lame constant voiceover by that Rorschach guy.

Rorschach was about the only character I liked in that movie. The Comedian was alright, too.

Re:Not the same thing

[Bigjeff5]

So it's geek cred to think a shitty movie is awesome just because it was based on a comic?

Nice.

I bet you enjoy Uwe Boll's movies too. (The difference between an Uwe Boll movie and The Watchmen is an Uwe Boll movie makes money)

Re:Not the same thing

[penguinchris]

I think you're right. An interesting problem. I normally don't see superhero movies, unless I see it for free for whatever reason (on an airplane or something), or if I know it's going to be something special (as in the case of Watchmen). I did enjoy Iron Man, which I saw because I'm a fan of Robert Downey Jr.

Now, I don't like comic books (or graphic novels). I find myself just reading the words and ignoring the pictures, which both defeats the purpose and means I miss a lot. I don't like comic book movies because they're stupid action movies. People talk about the deep themes in e.g. Spiderman and I think, "what the fuck?" Clearly, these people have never seen the truly great films, or any foreign films (which often approach "deep themes" in very interesting ways). I knew from the trailer that Watchmen was going to be different. I thought it was fantastic, even though I kind of lost track of the plot at the end. The people who thought it was a superhero movie were confused and disappointed, and the people who like interesting films didn't see it because they thought it was a superhero movie.

I knew from the trailer that it would alienate and confuse a lot of people like that. It was like asking a typical US moviegoer to see a foreign film (one that isn't Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, dubbed), or asking a non-typical one to ignore their typical Hollywood filter. It certainly wasn't marketed (initially) as being much different from a typical superhero movie, except obviously much darker, unless you were paying attention and can discern things like that from the filming techniques used.

Re:Not the same thing

[MogNuts]

I have to say, your post really made me laugh. I gotta give you this one, I enjoyed it. :)

But I do have to response to a few points:

1) Had nothing to do with attention span. Movies have to have good pacing. Ever play Dead Space? Amazing game. But it's the perfect example. You would play for hours upon hours sometimes without any sort of story or story progression. So I didn't enjoy it as much as I could. I enjoy movies with no action that have good pacing. Perfect example is Contact. No action, but held your interest with wonder and suspense the entire time.

2) I can, see above. But watchmen just rambled on like an unintelligle drunk for 30-45 minutes on frequently.

3) There's a different between nuance and rambling on with no direction.

5) Only because it was so cheesy. It really sounded like those other shows that parody the awful movies that do it. But Watchmen was serious!

Honestly, I know there is the phrase "you couldn't pay me to watch it again." But in all seriousness, that line isn't strong enough. Only if someone was going to get laid as a direct result of suffering through this movie with someone they really wanted, only *then* should they see this movie.

And they will hate every minute of it and think to themself "is this worth getting laid?" :)

Re:Not the same thing

[lgw]

Uwe Boll movies make money?

- Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, made $10 million, worldwide box office on a $60 million budget.

- BloodRayne, made $2.42 million, $25 million budget.

- Alone in the Dark, made a bit over $5 million, $20 million budget.

It's geek cred to enjoy a movie based on a comic that wasn't an action-packed superhero flick for young teens. Card; box; door.

If not even Watchmen could do well...

[Draek]

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.

Re:If not even Watchmen could do well...

[AvitarX]

Effects are getting cheaper rapidly though.

Perhaps it's the type of thing that can be a slump time release.

If there's a fan base, it will have the advantage of getting some people in during non movie season, and could be a good investment.

Watchmen grossed $185 million in the box office, hardly a flop in the scheme of things, just way too much expense.

Considering Sin City only cost $40 million, I think there is space for R rated fantasy (it grossed $150 million, but Watchmen cost $120 million to make).

I haven't seen Watchmen, but I can't imagine it couldn't of been made for less in the context of special effects movies being done for under $100 million now (Sin City; Spider-man, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; and Lord of the rings (under 300 total for three films)).

Pan's Labyrinth is an example of a greatly successful R rated fantasy ($20 million budget), that had no built in fan base, and probably wouldn't have done as well with a PG-13 rating.

People need to be smart about budgeting, but there is a a market that can be tapped here. It would be stupid for it to be ignored, especially as I imagine they bring a lot of extra revenue in non typical movie goers. They just need to get the budgets sane for any R rated movie.

Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[decipher_saint]

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.

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[uncanny]

I blame the fact that the 'system' is running out of ideas. Remake after remake is mostly what they are talking about. maybe some places aren't rejecting the movies because of the rating, they reject them because it's crap or they shouldn't mess with the original. Yes Taxi Driver could be made today, but please please please DON'T! remakes are getting as bad as sequels.

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[BaronHethorSamedi]

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.

Which regulatory bodies are you referring to, specifically? The FCC? They don't regulate movies. The MPAA? They're a private outfit. They don't censor anything; they just attach a letter to most major studio releases so people can decide if they want to watch it or not. (Whether the letters themselves make sense is a separate question.) That movies like Watchmen are having a hard time getting financed these days has nothing to do with regulation--it has to do with Watchmen being an expensive film that did rather poorly at the box office.

As an aside, freedom of expression in the United States is at a higher point now than ever. There are more ways of expressing oneself, to a wider audience, and with less restriction, than at any other time in human history. Griping about some sort of repressive system, in 21st century America, doesn't make much sense.

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[maxume]

The issue isn't lack of ideas, the issue is that studios take low risk ideas and compromise them in any way that they think will increase the box office.

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[decipher_saint]

Agreed.

It's sad, film is a great art form but it's easily perverted by the profit motive of the industry behind its making.

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[anti-pop-frustration]

How The MPAA Rating System Killed Movies

Fixed.

In short, the MPAA rating system has four objectives:

- Lock out the competition. The MPAA makes sure independent/foreign movies are kept out of the commercial loop by rating them very harshly (or by refusing to rate them). This essentially limits their potential commercial success (R) or kills it off altogether (NC-17, Not rated).
By opposition, big studio (MPAA members) productions are usually rated very leniently (PG-13 for action/violent movies).
Contrary to independent film makers who (naively) try to make the best film they can, studios "know what it takes" to get their movies rated PG or PG-13.

- Make sure the government doesn't come out with its own rating system, which would essentially level the playing field.

- Prevent lawsuits from morality/christian nutjob groups.

- Forever ruin American mainstream cinema.

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[Eevee]

I blame the fact that the 'system' is running out of ideas. Remake after remake is mostly what they are talking about.

What if Hollywood never did remakes? Then we wouldn't have had Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade; there had already been a movie made of the Maltese Falcon ten years before. How about Ben-Hur? The Charlton Heston one was the third movie made. Sometimes the remakes are worthwhile.

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[kehren77]

I often wonder if films like "Taxi Driver" could ever be made today.

Oh it would get made but it would star Jimmy Fallon and Queen Latifah

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0316732/

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[decipher_saint]

The MPAA is the centre of the problem, I think this comment sums it up pretty nicely actually:
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2000480&cid=35233964

To get a film made within the industry you need to get it past approval, it's "expected" MPAA rating can significantly impact whether or not it will get made, marketed or distributed. So, the MPAA rating goes beyond telling you what a film's content might be like and actually affects whether or not a film gets made. Get a large enough group of like minded people in that organization and you have a situation where minority views (right or wrong) dominate without the checks and balances of an official governed body.

The MPAA, as a private organization, make removal of objectionable content attractive through profit motive. If that's not censorship then I guess I don't know what is.

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[tbannist]

Self-censorship is the best form of censorship. It's even better than having censorship imposed externally because no one can see it. The "letters" are an effective form of censorship because it limits the audience of the movie. Get anything over an "R" and a Hollywood movie can not make it's money back. It won't be shown in most (if not all) of the major theater chains. So you have the carrot of producing inoffensive family fare gets you the largest possible audience, and the stick of doing anything too unusual can stick you with a movie that won't be shown to anyone.

To further impose self-censorship, the Rating Board doesn't tell you what they objected to, they just give you the rating they will apply (with no justification) and let you perform whatever self-censorship you think will please the board until they decide the movie is inoffensive enough to get the rating you requested.

So what we have is a secretive, unelected body of people (who all live in the same general area of California?) who decide what rating a movie will get, and by proxy who will be allowed to see a movie.

If you want to learn more about the ratings board you might like to watch "This Movie is Not Yet Rated".

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[Mix Master Nixon]

The MPAA doesn't refuse to rate films. However, sometimes companies who aren't MPAA signatories will refuse to [i]submit[/i] films to be rated which would never get anything less restrictive than an NC-17 rating due to their content. No rating at all is, illogically and unfairly, less of a commercial liability than an NC-17, and unlike getting an NC-17, it doesn't cost money to not get rated.

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[Miseph]

I think you're substantially downplaying the role of the MPAA. Many state and local governments actually base laws explicitly around their ratings system. Virtually no distributors will carry unrated films. Many professional groups and licensing bodies are heavy-handed in requiring members and applicants (ie. prospective theaters) to carry only rated films, and will pose substantial barriers, sometimes extralegal, to anyone refusing to "get with the program" as it were.

Oh, and good luck promoting such films. Virtually every TV channel will be blocked to you, as will virtually virtually every radio station, newspaper, magazine or other mass-media outlet. Not that it will matter, since you'll never get it onto store-shelves anyway, at least not in any corporate-owned retailer.

This isn't a conspiracy, it's the effect of the MPAA spending decades insinuating itself into the world: they've got their hooks into everyone, and they represent a very substantial bloc of political interest and power. It's a cartel and a monopoly, but they've been abusing the position for so long it's impossible to even go after them.

That said, I am very hopeful that the emergence of the Internet will eventually render them obsolete and that they will disappear as a result... but I am more than a little concerned that their entrenched position might be leveraged to simply insinuate themselves into that vector of distribution as they have all others.

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[nedlohs]

You didn't mention censorship in the initial you only mentioned "regulatory bodies", and the MPAA certainly isn't one of those since it isn't part of the government.

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[BaronHethorSamedi]

So if I'm understanding correctly, your argument runs to this effect (and if I'm misinterpreting, please let me know): the MPAA has a tremendous amount of control over whether a film will be commercially viable (i.e., R and NC-17 ratings significantly reduce the potential profitability of a film in the eyes of a distributor). This I readily concede. I'm less certain that this amounts to censorship--merely providing a marketing incentive to remove or alter content isn't the same as actively suppressing it. All content distributors engage in this to some degree--an author seeking to publish a book, unless she's self-publishing, will need to submit her work to editorial decisions. She can scream all she wants about censorship--the publisher isn't required to publish her book under any circumstance.

And so it goes with film. Distributor says, OK, we'll make your film, but these cuts need to be made to get it to an R/PG-13 rating. You can say no. You may not get the funding you want. That's fine. Free speech rights go to individuals (or groups of individuals); films don't have an independent right to be made. Free speech REALLY doesn't mean that you have a right to have someone else bankroll what you want to say.

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[ceoyoyo]

The regulatory bodies didn't say that Watchmen couldn't be made, or shown. They just said that it deserved an R rating. People decided not to see it based on either that rating (they didn't want their kids to see it) and what the movie was about.

If "the regulatory bodies" had given it a G rating you'd just have a lot of parents upset, which is worse.

Don't blame ratings agencies because nobody went to see a movie.

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[uncanny]

I agree fully, however these days they don't remake a movie because they think they can do it better, rather they have some new pop Singer that needs to promote their new album, which is essentially just a remake of every other pop album out there.

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[nelsonal]

Considering that there's an entire industry across town from the MPAA who expressly flaunts MPAA ratings and was quite financially viable untill millions of amatures began flooding free product on the internet, I don't think the MPAA's rating system is keeping people from making films.

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[sorak]

I often wonder if films like "Taxi Driver" could ever be made today.

Why not? We see plenty of movies about assassins, serial killers, or antiheroes. What would prevent Taxi Driver from being remade?

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[lgw]

Sure, a remake can be OK, but Hollywood made something like 90% remakes and re-imaginings in 2010. A bit of push-back against the whole idea of remakes is appropriate right now.

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[phantomlord]

I'm fine with remakes of movies that were previously done badly... improve upon where the previous movie failed to try to make a better movie. Lately, Hollywood insists on remaking the existing good or profitable movies in an effort to cash in on their previous credentials. The 1972 Gene Hackman Poseidon Adventure was a compelling movie while the 2006 Poseidon was pretty mediocre at best. I loved the 1971 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with Gene Wilder, but I didn't care for the 2005 Tim Burton Charlie and the Chocolate Factory even if it was a closer adaptation to the book (most people that I know that like the latter better are Burton fans judging it based more on enjoying Burton's style than the quality of the work). The 1966 animated How the Grinch Stole Christmas was butchered by Jim Carrey in 2000.

By all means, re-imagine the badly executed movies if there is a good story to be told, but quit trying to cash in on the classics since it's going to be damn hard to do them any better than they were previously done. The business side of Hollywood wants safety and "guaranteed" success, which gets in the way of producing new movies that may stray from where movies have succeeded in the past... just like the commercial/conglomerate part of the video game industry lost its creativity in the name of churning out sequels, clones and add-ons.

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[decipher_saint]

Yep, I'd say you interpreted me correctly.

I disagree with your book author metaphor because the print industry is a lot more diverse. With relatively little effort you can become a publisher (or heck like you say, self published), this is not so with the film industry mainly because you have to rely on the MPAA if you want to get beyond a small distribution.

So yes, I still have to say that the film industry is censored though I think using the term "regulatory body" was a big mistake on my part as it connoted "Government" for a lot of people. It can't be ignored that the MPAA Rating System is a systematic form of industry self-censorship, and it was intended as such from its inception through Jack Valenti: http://www.skepticfiles.org/en001/mpaarate.htm

I fully agree that the US Government isn't in control of what can and can't be said or depicted in a film, rather, that honour goes to a monopolistic industry association that controls the majority of production and distribution.

I reckon if independent studios or publishers were more competitive with the MPAA we wouldn't be having this conversation, however with media production becoming easier and cheaper all the time we may see this shift of artistic control lean more toward the artists than the producers.

Anyway, sorry for the ramblings...

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[Facegarden]

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.

Which regulatory bodies are you referring to, specifically? The FCC? They don't regulate movies. The MPAA? They're a private outfit. They don't censor anything; they just attach a letter to most major studio releases so people can decide if they want to watch it or not. (Whether the letters themselves make sense is a separate question.) That movies like Watchmen are having a hard time getting financed these days has nothing to do with regulation--it has to do with Watchmen being an expensive film that did rather poorly at the box office.

As an aside, freedom of expression in the United States is at a higher point now than ever. There are more ways of expressing oneself, to a wider audience, and with less restriction, than at any other time in human history. Griping about some sort of repressive system, in 21st century America, doesn't make much sense.

Well... its a little more complicated than that, on the ratings system. The rating impacts money - for example no one wants to have an NC-17 movie because it won't even get distribution - and the ratings board has this arbitrary system with no transparency. Its not censorship outright, but it amounts to a very similar thing. If you're genuinely curious, you really should watch This Film is Not Yet Rated. Its really interesting.

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[Ihmhi]

If we never had remakes, reboots, etc., then the legacy of the Batman films would have ended with polyurethane nipples.

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[Thing 1]

Remake after remake is mostly what they are talking about.

Yep, we're stuck in the Matrix. At least I know kung foo!~

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[jalefkowit]

Sometimes the remakes are worthwhile.

Indeed! I don't normally flack my own writing here, but I made the same point back around the release of the Star Trek reboot. Remaking something can be a powerful way to re-interpret it, to put a new spin on it for a new age.

Re:Don't blame FILMS blame the SYSTEM

[badkarmadayaccount]

Aaaa... right, that ain't relavant, the second a start-up becomes netflix indie unrated(TM), the second their servers are up in smoke.

I waited for the DVD release

[Yaddoshi]

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.

Re:I waited for the DVD release

[Thing 1]

You watch movies in the theaters these days? I don't waste my money. Blockbuster/Netflix ftw, or wtf sometimes.

Holy crap

[torstenvl]

This is by far the most incoherent OP I have ever read. Can someone translate this guy into English?

Re:Holy crap

[Virtucon]

No, you'll need to use Night Owl's goggles to understand it.

Don't have any? Oh well.

Re:Holy crap

[Stregano]

Maybe a giant blue glowing peenster will help out?

Re:Holy crap

[Virtucon]

Radar Operator: Colonel, you better have a look at this radar.
Colonel: What is it, son?
Radar Operator: I don't know, sir, but it looks like a giant...
Jet Pilot: Dick. Dick, take a look out of starboard.
Co-Pilot: Oh my God, it looks like a huge...
Bird-Watching Woman: Pecker.
Bird-Watching Man: [raising binoculars] Ooh, Where?
Bird-Watching Woman: Over there. What sort of bird is that? Wait, it's not a woodpecker, it looks like someone's...
Army Sergeant: Privates. We have reports of an unidentified flying object. It has a long, smooth shaft, complete with...
Baseball Umpire: Two balls.
[looking up from game]
Baseball Umpire: What is that. It looks just like an enormous...
Chinese Teacher: Wang. pay attention.
Wang: I was distracted by that giant flying...
Musician: Willie.
Willie Nelson: Yeah?
Musician: What's that?
Willie: [squints] Well, that looks like a huge...
Colonel: Johnson.

- The spy who shagged me.

Most faithful adaptation != Good

[RingDev]

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

Re:Most faithful adaptation != Good

[AvitarX]

I don't think Pink Flamingos needs a remake.

*good* vs. *not good*

[phaserbanks]

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.

Re:*good* vs. *not good*

[space_jake]

Don't worry Michael Bay will be coming out with a new movie soon.

Re:*good* vs. *not good*

[cats-paw]

don't start on game of thrones. you'll never see the end because of grrm's lack of attention to the series.
    you've been warned...

Re:*good* vs. *not good*

[Alimony Pakhdan]

Folks might consider taking notes from HBO. TrueBlood = wildly popular adult fantasy.

I can just see the pitch meeting now: HBO Exec 1: OK we need vampires, girls like vampires
HBO Exec 2: Get one of those script writers over here from Harlequin
HBO Exec 1: And it needs some homosexual parts too, girls like homosexuals
HBO Exec 2: Hrm... romantic homosexual vampires? We'll drive away the husbands, make sure we get one of those FX guys from Saw to keep it from getting too boring.

Re:*good* vs. *not good*

[Thing 1]

Big difference between "pay-TV viewers" and "random OTA viewers". HBO shows tend to be much more successful than the "ratings" would suggest, if we're going by your "all things being equal" metrics.

Re:*good* vs. *not good*

[Bigjeff5]

It's long enough that it will take six seasons before it becomes a problem, though. Might even squeeze 8 seasons out of it, the books are pretty dense.

Still waiting for A Dance With Dragons.

The long copyright period . . .

[MarkvW]

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. . . .

Re:The long copyright period . . .

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

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. . . .

Your unstated mindset is part of the problem facing the entertainment industry today. You claim that the tools and willingness to create are there, but then implicitly claim that only content based on preexisting material is worth creating.

This is the mentality that has lead the entertainment industry to repackage to the same content over and over since before World War 2.

Making a movie, comic, video game, or tv show about characters that have been around longer than most nation states does not in my mind constitute the best use of creative talent. Perhaps some worthwhile effort will be expended in giving Batman some new motivation to defeat the Joker... again, but overall that talent would be better spent making some new characters, story and setting. And intellectual property laws won't get in the way of that either.

You know, sometimes I think the reason a lot of people like Japanese animes and mangas is because they're media where new content is created all the time. And while cliched formulas are present; bold, imaginative, and interesting new works are made virtually every year. Shows like Death Note and Gurren Lagann show what is possible in mainstream creative media when entirely new content is created. We won't get works like these if we insist on rehashing existing IP.

Re:The long copyright period . . .

[MusedFable]

You posted what I wanted to post. I'd also add that the studios making sequel after sequel is part of the copyright problem. Since making a brand new idea that isn't derivative of anything is so difficult the studios are left with the option of making derivatives of what they do own. Rights for every property are a tangled mess so even getting something like Alien VS Predator made is a giant hassle. Our culture is tied up and everyone (including corporations) is struggling to innovate with all the bureaucracy.

Re:The long copyright period . . .

[MarkvW]

"My unstated mindset?"

You should go into extrasensory psychology!

My subject matter was framed by the topic, not by my unstated mindset.

Re:The long copyright period . . .

[Americano]

but overall that talent would be better spent making some new characters, story and setting. And intellectual property laws won't get in the way of that either.

Problem with that is that the studios creating the stuff are looking for "good bets" - and a good bet is something that lots of people know and love already. Why make something new, when several generations of men have grown up following the adventures of Batman and Superman?

The remake mentality is primarily tied to minimizing business risks. If somebody was asking me to bet 200 million dollars on a single film, I'd want as many risks minimized as possible, too... this means knowing that the film has a built in appeal, maybe signing up a couple of high-profile stars to help float it... and before you know it, your character-driven piece with snappy dialogue is a $75 million behemoth with 3 blockbuster stars, 20 locations, and a production crew of hundreds.

Re:The long copyright period . . .

[ceoyoyo]

Oh heavens, if you want to make an animated movie you have to either a) come up with your own characters or b) license the use of existing ones from whoever owns them.

Re:The long copyright period . . .

[Alimony Pakhdan]

Shows like Death Note and Gurren Lagann show what is possible in mainstream creative media when entirely new content is created.

Hate to break the news to you, but although that crap is shown on TV here in Japan, most people dont really consider it mainstream, at least not in the sense that adults watch it voluntarily.

Re:The long copyright period . . .

[Thing 1]

You claim that the tools and willingness to create are there, but then implicitly claim that only content based on preexisting material is worth creating.

Yeah, too bad the Brothers Grimm weren't good enough to be worth riffing off!

I was really looking forward to "Lost Girls".

[Jeremy Erwin]

But I don't think it can be made into a PG-13 film.

Alas.

Re:I was really looking forward to "Lost Girls".

[jandrese]

You know the worst part? The studio would find a way to cut it down to PG-13.

Correction

[F34nor]

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.

Re:Correction

[rolfwind]

What geeks/nerds like and what the mass audience likes are two different things.

Witness the comments on the iPad before release. Going by the tech blogs and the sheer amount of apocalyptic predictions, it should have been the biggest disaster for Apple since the G4 Cube.

Snakes on the Plane was an internet baby. Etc.

Re:Correction

[H0p313ss]

What geeks/nerds like and what the mass audience likes are two different things.

What SOME geeks/nerds like and what the mass audience likes are two different things.

For example this geek studied film production in college and I actually like French films, so-called chick-flicks AND good action films.

From what I heard Watchmen did not fall into any of these categories.

Re:Correction

[nelsonal]

Everything I saw on Snakes on a Plane prerelease was ironic, very tongue in cheek, but I wasn't surprised that the studios missed the joke.

Re:Correction

[Ocker3]

I think you owe it to yourself to at least give it a try. It's a cracker of a film, with varied pacing, intriguing what-if scenarios, beguilingly flawed characters, and some really strange and cool tech.

Re:Correction

[Bigjeff5]

I agree as long as you weren't planning on doing anything anyway, and you don't have to pay for it in any way.

Otherwise don't waste your time.

Re:It was good.

[OzPeter]

It would have been great without the giant blue glowing penis though.

Why? Curious to know what your objection to it was.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[fre1]

That's what stuck out (lol) the most, out of that entire movie? A blue penis? Is there an emoticon that conveys an eyeroll?

Anyone who thinks tits don't sell tickets is dumb.

[F34nor]

Tits in space? I'm there. See my previous posts related to the video "All is Full of Love" by Chris Cunningham and Bjork.

Something here is not like the other

[fermion]

First, the two movies mentioned are not like Watchmen. They are remakes, and remakes have their own issues. They are bought and sold on the popularity of the original and how other remakes in their class performed. In the case of Barberella and Heavy Metal, these are movies of their times, with little relevance to the contemporary world.

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.

No Australian R18 for games

[tepples]

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?

Why would you remake Heavy Metal?

[Shivetya]

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.

Re:Why would you remake Heavy Metal?

[Andtalath]

Watchmen isn't a book for kids.
The story in it can not be told in a way that appeals to kids.

It's way too dark and serious for them the understand it.

I mean, the book is about the threat of apocalyptic nuclear war, questions about godhood and psychological issues.

Re:Why would you remake Heavy Metal?

[Stregano]

But if they went PG-13, there would have been no big blue glowing weenis? Come on, that was in like half of the movie.

Re:Why would you remake Heavy Metal?

[mdielmann]

You know what? I'm not a fan of seeing schlongs in just about any movie I watch, and I wasn't particularly interested in seeing it in Watchmen, either. But, I understood perfectly why they did it, and I agree with that decision. You have a person who is so far removed from humanity that not only is the need for clothing not present, but the recognition that he might want to put clothes on as a courtesy is incomprehensible, as well. How can you effectively present that case when you make the person behave like everyone else does?

Re:Why would you remake Heavy Metal?

[jandrese]

The nudity was an important factor of Doc Manhattan. One can see him drifting away from humanity at various parts of the film, and one of the most striking ways he does this is by discarding his old human habits like wearing clothes.

I do think some people's nudity hangup did hurt the Watchmen at the box office, but to claim that it was a cop out is disingenuous.

Re:Why would you remake Heavy Metal?

[h4rm0ny]

I would hope that Watchmen got its 'R' rating for all the violence in it, not because it had a naked man in it. Then again, I'm European and possibly things are different in the USA.

Re:Why would you remake Heavy Metal?

[Thumper_SVX]

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.

Um... did you see the same movie I did? Did you read the source material? Watchmen is about the threat of annihilation as well as plenty of philosophy on humanity (or lack thereof) and other deep discussions. It also features AS PART OF THE STORY human beings as the almost barbaric, violent psychopaths that about 1 in 24 in our Western civilization actually are. It shows people being torn apart at the molecular level at one end of the scale of brutality, and then shows violent death and dismemberment at a very intimate and personal level. And this is all part of the story because it highlights exactly what is wrong with society and humanity as a whole, thus precipitating the actions of Ozymandias.

Even if we were to edit out the "glowing blue peenster" that some people in this forum seem to object to (that I probably wouldn't have even noticed had it not been bought to my attention by forums like this) and nudity, there's no way this movie would EVER be a PG-13. The very subject matter is unsuitable for less than an R rating.

Re:Why would you remake Heavy Metal?

[R3d M3rcury]

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.

Actually, the Red Dawn remake is finished. The problem is that MGM is going through bankruptcy, which leaves Red Dawn hanging and waiting for a distributor. Sony may be picking it up, from what I understand.

Re:Why would you remake Heavy Metal?

[lgw]

I dunno, 300 worked well despite the removal of at least 300 schlong shots from the book. Jon's nudity was one way of presenting his detachment, but not the only way. I think both the book and the movie were deliberately seeking the "it must be art, it has penises" vibe, which is a bit pathetic really.

Still, I don't think it actually hurt ticket sales any. Wang or no wang, it just wasn't a kids superhero action movie.

Re:Why would you remake Heavy Metal?

[southlander]

I disagree. The Comedian's character was pretty convincing in the brutality the R rating allowed. To me that was central in the story.

Re:Why would you remake Heavy Metal?

[Totenglocke]

So thought provoking commentary on how humans behave should be locked away so that the moronic masses stay zombified? Well, it's good to know which side you're on....

Re:Why would you remake Heavy Metal?

[Pyrus.mg]

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.

Why the hell can't Anonymous attack the real villains? The Hollywood bastards who've been raping a generation's childhood for the last decade or so.

Re:Why would you remake Heavy Metal?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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.

If hollywood were brave, they'd remake Red Dawn in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Who needs nudity to tell most of these stories?

Who needs gore and violence on screen to tell these stories? Hell, who even needs good looking actors? People like nudity. They are just a little schizo about it.

Re:Why would you remake Heavy Metal?

[mdielmann]

I know some people who were really turned off by the male nudity. Honestly, it's something you don't see a lot of in mainstream American society, and they probably could have done things to minimize the exposure (contrived shots with conveniently placed furniture, for instance). But I agree, this wasn't meant for kids.

Re:Why would you remake Heavy Metal?

[guyminuslife]

Watchmen had:

- nudity
- frequent use of strong language
- graphic violence
- sexual/dark themes (the whole rape thing)

Any one of which would individually earn it an R rating in the United States. But yeah, the big blue penis was part of it.

Re:Why would you remake Heavy Metal?

[Stregano]

Tell them to suck it up and be adults. I am just joking around trying to find different ways to say peenster united. If they are put off by a huge, floppy, swinging in the wind, glowing, super shlong of doom, then they should stop watching Jersey Shore and realize that it is only a weenis. I bet those same people would think the movie would have been amazing had the Dr been a woman. "Wow, they are really pushing grounds in this. Showing full frontal female nudity" Grow up and look at dong and stop thinking about sex. If you giggle when I said sex or dong, maybe next time the movie theater you went to should have checked your id better kid. 18 and older for a reason (or is it 17, I don't remember)

Re:Why would you remake Heavy Metal?

[Alimony Pakhdan]

There was zero reason to Watchmen to have released as R rated.

Actually there was one blue reason for the R rating...

Re:Why would you remake Heavy Metal?

[h4rm0ny]

Yes, men in America aren't usually into naked men.

Yeah, and men in Europe aren't usually disturbed by naked men either. You see nakedness every time you get changed at the gym for example.

Re:Why would you remake Heavy Metal?

[Thumper_SVX]

Did I say I thought it was a bad movie? I for one loved it :)

Re:Why would you remake Heavy Metal?

[PastaLover]

It's telling that you don't have a problem with the violence, but the nudity somehow upsets you. Like it's a cheap trick to get you to watch something. I've got my issues with the movie, but it's one of the few that actually approached nudity in an adult manner, instead of going "oh look here, partly obscured titties!".

Re:It was good.

[merlock18]

Those were the best parts!

What about "Pretty Baby"?

[mangu]

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.

Re:It was good.

[Stregano]

I was under the impression that the comics had him wearing a speedo instead of his peenster blowing in the wind.

Moviegoers want a plain good v. evil happy ending

[StandardCell]

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.

Good..?

[bhunachchicken]

"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...

Re:Good..?

[Ksevio]

The movie ends with both those situations.

The attacks WERE perpetrated by the man who was at one time in his life an American citizen, but he made it look like it was by an alien aggressor.

The humans still band together to to defend against the "threat", which was the plan to avoid a nuclear war.

Re:Good..?

[theantipop]

I actually thought the ending was better in the movie. It was more cohesive and intelligent, following more from the events in the story, and less deus ex machina or where-the-hell-did-that-come-from. And really, there isn't much left in Dr. Manhattan by the end that could be considered "man"

Re:Good..?

[Yunzil]

Sorry, the ending of the movie was better than the comic. When I got to the alien squid part in the comic, I said, "Wait, what?" and leafed back through it to see if I had missed something. I hadn't.

Having said that, I didn't think either the movie or the comic was all that great.

Re:Good..?

[RogerWilco]

I never read the book and I don't agree with you. I think the movie did portray an alien threat that the world had to band together to face.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[Wumpus]

No, what stuck out the most (to me, at least) was that the penis demonstrated better acting than anyone in that movie.

They were warned

[schlesinm]

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.

Re:They were warned

[nomadic]

Alan Moore is sometimes wrong, you know. And he's not really an authority on film-making,

Watchmen vs Snakes on a Plane

[merlock18]

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*

Re:Watchmen vs Snakes on a Plane

[tbannist]

Well, Snakes on a Plane grossed $34M while Watchmen grossed $100M, so a very rough estimate is that about 3 times as many people saw Watchmen.

Re:Watchmen vs Snakes on a Plane

[merlock18]

You just made my year. Where are these figures from?

Re:Watchmen vs Snakes on a Plane

[tbannist]

I looked them up on IMDB.

Re:Watchmen vs Snakes on a Plane

[merlock18]

Watchmen lost 23M while SoaP made 1M. I need to leave the planet before it kills me.

Re:Watchmen vs Snakes on a Plane

[Billlagr]

There was one. It was blue. Bazinga!

Re:Anyone who thinks tits don't sell tickets is du

[gstoddart]

Tits in space? I'm there.

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.

Nothing to see here

[Locke2005]

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.

Re:Nothing to see here

[Piata]

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World did not do "quite well".

At the box office, it grossed $47,651,508 worldwide. The move cost $60,000,000 to make. Reference. I know it's had strong disc sales, but I don't think Scott Pilgrim is considered much of a success. Usually it's referred to as a flop.

Re:Nothing to see here

[tbannist]

According to IMDB both Scott Pilgrim and Watchmen lost about the same amount of money based on box office returns, around $30M each. Watchmen at $100M, however grossed more than 3 times as much as Scott Pilgrim at $31M. I have to say, I enjoyed Scott Pilgrim more, though.

Re:Nothing to see here

[Americano]

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was a failure. And I'll tell you why: the movie was a fucking mess about an early-20's slacker trying to win a date with another early-20's slacker, by defeating her evil ex-boyfriends, Tekken style. It had all of the challenging emotional complexity and interesting storyline of a bowl of overcooked oatmeal. Hooray, an unlikable character, struggling to get together with another unlikable character. Who gives a shit?

Here's the super-secret plan for bringing that movie to market:
1) Hire Michael Cera.
2) Tell a bunch of basement dwelling losers who think this is "fucking real adult life, man" that you've cast Michael Cera.
3) Make a shitty movie with Michael Cera in it.
4) Profit!

It may be entertaining as a humorous comic - excuse me, "Serious Graphic Novel for Adults With Serious Comedic Value." But the entire story, and the movie, are juvenile. There is nothing interesting, challenging, or even all that humorous once you get past Cera's trademark bewildered hangdog expression and awkwardly deadpan delivery. That is why it was a failure, and why it deserved to be.

Re:Nothing to see here

[Locke2005]

The story is a satire about the Nintendo generation; people that have grown up with video games and see everything as a videogame. I was born well before this generation, but even I could appreciate it. My only regret was not bringing my 10-year old daughter to see it with me. Despite the rating, it was targeted more at her than at me.

As far as my mistake in thinking Pilgrim made a better return on investment than Watchmen -- I stand corrected. Pilgrim looked very low-budget; it's hard to believe it could have cost $60 million to make.

Re:Nothing to see here

[edawstwin]

I thought Scott Pilgrim was the best movie of last year (in an admittedly very weak year). It wasn't a "mess", and if you thought so, you weren't paying attention. It's fine to hate Michael Cera, but why pay to see a movie with him in it? He was like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix - neither are very good actors, but these roles fit them perfectly. The script was funny and never let up. The cameos were uniformly excellent. The movie was just fun, which is all I ask of a movie like this.

I think the failure was mainly due to budget - it was way too high for a movie like this. Even after seeing it and loving it, I knew it was destined for sub-$50 million territory. It's just hard to get millions of people to see a movie like that. I guess they thought people would see it just because Michael Cera was in it. They should have cast Justin Bieber if they really wanted it to make money.

Re:Nothing to see here

[Americano]

According to Wikipedia, the budget was 85-90 million, and 60 million "after tax rebates". I agree - it certainly didn't look like it should have taken 60, much less 90 million to make.

Maybe the stars needed lots of blow.

Re:Nothing to see here

[Americano]

It was a mess. A bunch of unlikable slackers tossing one-liners at one another that are neither funny, nor insightful - the movie was a comic book in video form. Now, perhaps that counts as high praise to someone who enjoyed the comics - I'd much rather see an interesting story, and the movie lacked that in its entirety. I haven't read the comics, though I'm aware of them - if the movies are a faithful representation of the comics, I suspect I wouldn't much care for them, either.

Notable exceptions: Anna Kendrick as the wise-old younger sister, Stacy, and Ellen Wong in the role of Knives Chau - they both had some good moments. The rest just struck me as self-absorbed wanking, trying too hard to be funny, with a few Tekken-style fight scenes mixed in.

And you're right, the typecast of the role was perfect for Michael Cera - it just wasn't a very good role.

Re:Nothing to see here

[edawstwin]

I had never heard of the comic book before the movie came out, and I still haven't read it. I'm not sure what that has to do with your claim, though, since most people can differentiate source material from a retelling.

If you thought the movie wasn't funny or entertaining, that's one thing, but it wasn't a mess. Everything was well-done, the script didn't have any major plot holes, and the editing, music, and acting were fine. I agree that Anna Kendrick was underused, but most movies have one flaw or another.

Re:Nothing to see here

[Americano]

I'm not sure what that has to do with your claim

I was allowing for the possibility that the movie could closely retell the comic, which might, to a fan of the comic, make the movie "good".

If you thought the movie wasn't funny or entertaining, that's one thing.

It was supposed to be a funny and entertaining movie. It failed to amuse or entertain me. I'd say that's pretty much the definition of a "mess". I never claimed that my opinion of the movie was some sort of universal truth, I merely submitted that it was no surprise to me that it was a failure, precisely because it was a mess - it wasn't funny, it didn't entertain, about the only thing I can say in its defense is that it *might* have hewn closely to the comic version, which I could see as a defense of the movie to people who were also fans of the comic.

the script didn't have any major plot holes, and the editing, music, and acting were fine.

"no major plot holes"? The whole thing was a loosely collected series of vignettes, loosely related to one another because "some slacker" really wants to bang "some rollerblade chick." We're not given any reason or motivation for this, other than that she has cool slacker pigtails or something. There *was* no plot. As far as editing: I no more enjoy a movie for the quality of its editing than I enjoy a cake because the baker used a particular brand of baking soda. My issue with Scott Pilgrim vs. The World was not that it had "one flaw or another," it's that its sum total was one giant glaring flaw. It was intended to amuse and to entertain, and it failed to do so. If you enjoyed it, great, watch it on loop. I thought it was a superficial, uninteresting mess, and I will continue describing it as "a mess."

Re:Nothing to see here

[edawstwin]

Just because something doesn't entertain you doesn't make it a "mess". I hated American Beauty, but it wasn't a mess, merely boring. You may think it's semantics, but you don't even understand the definition of the word that you're using. There was a plot, and it followed the standard Beginning-Middle-End structure. There was motivation - he liked a girl, the basis for half the movies out there. If you choose to look at something through heavily tinted glasses, it doesn't mean that you are right. I'm not trying to convince you that you should like the movie, but you're throwing out arguments that make no sense.

Baking soda can make or break a cake, just as editing can make or break a movie. You may not be savvy enough to notice it, but it is more important than most aspects of film-making. If the editing sucks, the movie sucks, and you most likely have a "mess".

Re:Nothing to see here

[Americano]

I see. So we've now determined that there is some sort of objective standard for what qualifies something as "a mess"? What, pray tell, is the objective definition by which we may know whether or not something is a mess?

There was no "plot", there was a loose premise and a lot of stupid one-liners and a couple fight scenes to support it. The motivation is given to us as an axiom - not to be questioned or explained, he just sees her, and wants her. She's an empty shell on rollerblades, and he's an empty shell with a gay roommate. The characters are paper-thin, the motivations are unquestionable and unexplained, and the plot appears to be a "wouldn't it be funny if everything was a video game" premise which is neither funny, nor well-developed.

Baking soda can make or break a cake, just as editing can make or break a movie.

Really, and when's the last time you ate a cake and said, "Boy, that would've been a lousy cake if they hadn't used Arm & Hammer Baking Soda, and had instead opted for Bob's Red Mill Baking Soda"? A minor ingredient is not what makes the cake remarkable, it's the skill of the baker and his assistants that makes the cake remarkable. Same with editing - if the best compliment you can think of for a movie is "wow, great editing," then the movie is probably terrible. Editing enhances a good film, it does not redeem a lousy one.

Re:Nothing to see here

[Demonantis]

Gross is the profit after cost. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_profit That might be your problem. In the end referencing those numbers does not indicate if the movie flopped or not. Net income would be more indicative.

Art vs. Commerce

[JakeJaywalker]

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.

Re:Art vs. Commerce

[Bemopolis]

And *this* is why FIREFLY was on for eight weeks and FULL HOUSE was on for eight seasons.

Breeders.

Re:Art vs. Commerce

[Omestes]

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.

No, it isn't a no brainer. There were exactly three "banned" movies* when I was growing up, one of which was served with the caveat "don't watch it, but its on the video rack". My mom took me to see Silent of the Lambs when I was a kid (well I was 12 or 13), and then lent me the book. A Stephen King novel is the second actual adult book I've ever read (the first was a Clifford Simak novel, The Visitors). My favorite YA book was Z for Zachariah, which my mom loved more than me, and still is the bleakest post-apocalyptic novel I've ever read. I spent pretty much my whole childhood (up until teenage angst hit) staying up and watching horror movies with my Dad every weekend (Monster Vision on TNT was awesome, it is a shame nothing like it exists now).

My mom got into a very large fight with my Junior High school about whether, or whether not, I should be allowed to read adult books in class, the biggest point of contention was The Stand.

There were very few restrictions on me. My parents were open, and enjoyed (or convincingly acted like it) talking about my reaction to these movies, and what was going on in them. They basically treated me like a little adult. When I have children of my own I will treat them the same way. I have several friends who grew up the same way.

Oddly, the one thing on television that I wasn't really encouraged to watch was Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers. Nova, Cosmos, and Mr. Wizard was fine, but the things that were purely juvenile weren't really encouraged. Nor was any Disney movie beyond Fantasia. I'm fine with this, and will probably have the same outlook, I don't like talking down to children. Children aren't precious butterflies who need to be protected from the real world at all costs.

*David Lynch's Blue Velvet (still one of my favorite movies ever), Wes Craven's Last House and the Left, and Audrey Rose. I managed to catch all three by puberty.

Re:Art vs. Commerce

[JakeJaywalker]

I agree with you that at the age of 12 or 13, a kid can start to enjoy more adult faire. I was referring to younger children when I was talking about a "no brainer," specifically kids under 10 years old. I also agree with you that juvenile thinking is no way to treat a kid. I also grew up on Nova, Cosmos, and Nature on PBS, as well as Mr. Wizard, Bill Nye, and a bunch of other science-themed youth shows. My kids enjoy the same kind of programming.

I also think it's important to know your kids and what they can handle. My 6-year old got really scared watching Toy Story 3. My 8-year old doesn't like movies with a lot of yelling because he likes it when people get along. I try to make sure that when we go out as a family, we do things that everybody enjoys. I'm not going to force violence or sex on my kids in the hopes that it makes them more intellectual or cosmopolitan. I'm not trying to make judgments about whether adult movies are right or wrong. My point is that everybody has choices to make. Right now, America has more people choosing to watch family-friendly media. I would love to see more gritty, thought-provoking fantasies and dramas. However, if the market won't bear that kind of media, I'm not going to get mad at all the people with kids who don't support me. Saying that movie studios should ignore basic economics in favor of art makes no business sense. If fans and producers want more adult movies to be made, then its on them to be smart enough to pay for it.

Do adults go to the movies anymore?

[DanCentury]

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.

Re:It was good.

[gman003]

Nope. If anything, the movie was tamer about it.

Your confusion probably comes from the fact that Dr. Manhattan's costume changes drastically over the story. It goes from a full set of clothes, to the speedo, to "blowing in the wind", paralleling the character's increasing detachment from humanity.

Re:It was good.

[antifoidulus]

Depends, would motorboating them hurt?

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[MachDelta]

Emoticon no, emote, yes.
I believe a /facepalm would be appropriate in this situation. Perhaps even a /headdesk ? Your choice!

Re:It was good.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I don't think it would have been as popular though.

pretty good, but it showed a real problem

[YesIAmAScript]

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.

Re:It was good.

[Gaygirlie]

You must be awfully insecure to be offended by having seen a penis in a movie. Like... omg? It was not in any way or form the main point of the scene, nor did it play any part in the actual story, it was just a person being temporarily naked. It's pretty common in movies and I can bet you wouldn't have been offended had it been breasts or vagina, it's only because it happened to be the male body part.

As a side-note: in Finnish movies it's common to have scenes where the actors are naked in some situations, like for example if they happen to be in sauna or come out of one, and no one gets a fit about that. It simply is so normal and a part of many people's daily lives. And then again, nudity isn't depicted as an erotic situation or anything like that. It's sometimes funny how foreigners have so mixed reactions to such scenes: some react like OP for having seen a male penis, some are just excited about how casual Finns are about it, some get enormously embarrassed and try to look anywhere else but the screen..

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[spun]

Meh, I've seen better blue wieners. I believe the real reason Watchmen tanked is that it came out a little bit too late. When times are good, people can enjoy gritty anti-heroes. When times are tight, they hate ambiguity in their heroes and want something a lot more black and white than Watchmen.

Or maybe...

[Chelloveck]

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.

Re:Or maybe...

[Jarkov]

I disagree with your comment that if you try to do anything that isn't that exact same stories it wouldn't be Heavy Metal anymore. Heavy Metal magazine has been publishing since 1977 and maybe I'm just being hopeful, but something tells me there might be a few decent stories in there that could be adapted to the big screen to make fans of the original happy as well as any newcomers. Heavy Metal definitely shows its age in terms of animation and soundtrack, but I think if anyone were to do a remake, high calibre directors like Fincher and Cameron would be more than I could hope for. (I think the Dan O'Bannon zombie vignette is still goddam horrifying though.)

Re:Or maybe...

[theantipop]

And lets face it, it's hard to find anyone who would defend Heavy Metal 2000 as a worth watching.

But it spawned a pretty solid soundtrack.

Re:Or maybe...

[Omestes]

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.

Barbarella is also very much a product of its time, so you shouldn't judge it more harshly than Heavy Metal.

Barbarella, and all the other crappy, over-done, Dino DeLaurentis fantasies are among my favorite movies now. Heavy Metal, though, didn't age well for me.

Re:Or maybe...

[Alimony Pakhdan]

As long as they stuck to mining issues of HM before 1990 there should be plenty of good source material. Ranzerox, Abraxis (sp?) some to mind immediately. I wouldnt object to them continuing with some of the other Captain Stern material either.

Double standard animated vs live-action

[Zinho]

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.

Re:Double standard animated vs live-action

[ceoyoyo]

Sure there is. It's just mostly in a small but heavily populated island nation and the girls have to have big eyes and heads and wear short skirts.

Re:Double standard animated vs live-action

[lgw]

Seriously? You think of Heavy Metal as erotica? Porn? There was less nudity than many live-action R-rated films, and while sexuality was a theme, I don't remember any on-screen sex, even cable sex.

It's been a while, but I remember it for a lot of violence and drugs use, and just generally being over-the-top. A few titty shots don't make a porn movie.

Re:Double standard animated vs live-action

[lgw]

Was there fantasy porn anywhere in Heavy Metal? Even "animated erotica" seems like a bit of a stretch. It's been a while, but IIRC you saw a few pairs of titties, and that was it. Lots of violence, some drug use, and crazy action, and a few seconds of boobie shots make a film "porn" in your mind? Man, maybe we're as screwed up as the Europeans say we are.

Re:Double standard animated vs live-action

[R3d M3rcury]

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 dunno, Fritz the Cat did pretty well...

Re:Double standard animated vs live-action

[Zinho]

Was there fantasy porn anywhere in Heavy Metal? Even "animated erotica" seems like a bit of a stretch. It's been a while, but IIRC you saw a few pairs of titties, and that was it. Lots of violence, some drug use, and crazy action, and a few seconds of boobie shots make a film "porn" in your mind? Man, maybe we're as screwed up as the Europeans say we are.

Well, let's check your memory... Here's IMDB's content advisory for the movie:

Every adult woman featured in film is topless at one point.

Four animated scenes of sex with clear nudity, including exposed female pubic regions. The 1st segment of the film shows a red head woman and taxi driver at his home have sex. It shows full breasts, nipples, a very exposed vagina. They have graphic sex and orgasm.

Male genitalia featured as well throughout the film.

Perhaps my Pornometer's a bit sensitive, but I think that qualifies. I'm not an expert, but I think that list would have trouble passing the MPAA standard for R rating. For what it's worth, on my personal scale "erotic" starts before the clothes come off, and switches to "porn" when sexual acts are shown on-screen (ie. the purpose of the scene is "let's watch them have sex"), YMMV.

Further, IMDB lists Heavy Metal in the following genres: Animation | Action | Adventure | Comedy | Crime | Fantasy | Horror | Sci-Fi

So there's your fantasy, too.

PS - in the four minutes between your posts did you forget that you had already responded to me?

Re:It was good.

[Synn]

Well, from my perspective. Having watched the film on a 80ft or so tall IMAX screen, I left the movie feeling totally inadequate.

Most problem with Watchmen was because it was R

[BohKnower]

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.

Re:They had already been turned against him.

[putch]

Spider-man's nonsense really doesn't factor into this. Why would the Soviet Union have had any compassion whatsoever for Americans getting cancer from American weapons?

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[RailGunner]

The most frustrating part of this is that Watchmen was actually *good*.

And The Dark Knight, rated PG-13, was easily 10 times better than Watchmen. Why so hung up on ratings? Why so... serious?

Bioshock fell victim to this

[The Moof]

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.

A problem of perception

[homb]

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.

Re:A problem of perception

[MightyMartian]

The love scene was kind of bizarre, to be sure, and didn't come off as well as it did in the graphic novel, but at the same time I was watching a bespectacled paunchy middle-aged guy getting down a hot woman's pants, which has to be a thumb's up for all us bespectacled paunchy middle-aged guys. If we have to get into an owl costume to get a piece of Carla Gugino, so be it.

Re:A problem of perception

[HeckRuler]

Wow, sounds like your projector room needs chairs.

Re:It was good.

[Scutter]

I was under the impression that the comics had him wearing a speedo instead of his peenster blowing in the wind.

In the comic, the whole point was that he no longer had any understanding of some of the basics of being a human. In the process of evolving, he'd completely lost his humanity. The need or desire for clothing (his sense of modesty) was the most obvious, but not the only one. If he had been in a speedo, it would have destroyed the entire premise. On the few occasions when he DID wear any clothing at all, the book took great pains to discuss why.

verbinski about why bioshock won't happen:

[circletimessquare]

"I couldn't really get past anybody that would spend the money that it would take to do it and keep an R rating," he explained, "Alternately, I wasn't really interested in pursuing a PG-13 version. Because the R rating is inherent. Little Sisters and injections and the whole thing. I just wanted to really, really make it a movie where, four days later, you're still shivering and going, "Jesus Christ!"... It's a movie that has to be really, really scary, but you also have to create a whole underwater world, so the pricetag is high. We just didn't have any takers on an R-rated movie with that pricetag."

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

Re:It was good.

[Remus Shepherd]

The comic book used his nudity to show Dr. Manhattan's slow disconnect with humanity. In the earliest flashbacks he's wearing boxers. Sometime later in Vietnam he wears speedo-like briefs. In the modern day, unless forced to wear clothing for a funeral or TV show he goes completely nude. It took him decades to forget his humanity, and the comic book showed that well. The movie had those elements in there but there wasn't enough time to highlight them.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[Lucidus]

One of the most insightful comments in this entire discussion - but I have no mod points today!

WTF? Heavy Metal Remake?

[tekrat]

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.

Re:WTF? Heavy Metal Remake?

[H0p313ss]

Seriously... someone out there thought that Heavy Metal was *worthy* of a remake, or is Hollywood *that* desperate?

Probably the same idiots who thought it was a good idea to make a movie version of a MAGAZINE in the first place. (For my money, the only good adaptations of Mobius' artwork have been Blade Runner and The Fifth Element.)

Re:WTF? Heavy Metal Remake?

[Americano]

I'm going to blow your mind with three little words: ROGER RABBIT REBOOT.

How's that for outside-the-box thinking in cinematography? I'm sure to get the best picture nod in 2012.

Now you better not take my idea and make a billion billion billion dollars off it. I'll sue, seriously.

Re:Forget R - where is G?

[Scutter]

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.

What? There are at least 36 kids movies coming out this year alone. Nine of those are coming out between now and the end of April:

March 2011
RANGO (March 4)
MARS NEEDS MOMS (March 11, 2D/3D/IMAX 3D)
BEASTLY (March 4, PG-13)
DIARY OF A WIMPY KID 2: RODRICK RULES (March 25)

April 2011
HOP (April 1)
BORN TO BE WILD 3D (April 8)
RIO (April 15)
AFRICAN CATS (April 22)
PROM (April 29)

Blame the "OMG the children" thinking

[Drakkenmensch]

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.

Re:Blame the "OMG the children" thinking

[ceoyoyo]

No, they won't.

Porn is a moderately big industry but notice that no porn production has anything like the budget of a major Hollywood film. And it shows. The people who spend lots on going to movies are kids and their parents. If an under 18 can't get in, you've just cut most of your potential audience.

The people who want to watch porn mostly want to watch it at home, and a good many of them prefer to download it for free.

Re:Blame the "OMG the children" thinking

[R3d M3rcury]

Make a game that Wal-MArt will not carry, gamers will ignore it.

Depends.

Part of the issue has to do with distribution and marketing.

Make an AO video game and you will have to distribute it yourself. Walmart, GameStop, and the other big name places where lots of people go to buy games won't carry it. Most reviewers won't review it. So you not only have to tell people it exists and why they want to play it, you have to let them know that they won't be able to buy it the way they bought all of their other videogames. They'll probably have to jump through a few hoops. Since people are generally lazy about their entertainment, you won't make as much money.

That said, IMHO, I think that the game developers are missing out on some money by not creating AO versions of their popular 'T' or 'M' games and distributing them via their website. Hollywood loves to take the teen comedies that are a little racy PG/PG-13 and sell "not-rated" versions afterwards. Just to keep people happy, make sure that the age of the person with the credit card is over 18.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[grub]

That's a good point about Ratings.

I *never* look at the ratings before seeing a movie. Read a review, yes.

Watchman was good- had bad score.

[Maxo-Texas]

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.

Re:Watchman was good- had bad score.

[Lumpy]

Anyone "bothered" by the big blue penis needs to grow the hell up and stop being a little baby.

Christ, it's 2011, we should be past getting all upset about something that is 100% normal and only those with a serious social problem get up in a tizzy about.

Re:Watchman was good- had bad score.

[lgw]

Anyone who feels the need to announce to the world how not-bothered they are by a penis needs to grow the hell up. Only children spend their time trying to convince others of just how grown up they are.

Re:Watchman was good- had bad score.

[brantondaveperson]

Now I've not seen the film, and don't care to, but from the comments about the schlong being "blue and glowing" I don't think we can call it 100% normal can we?

Re:Watchman was good- had bad score.

[Maxo-Texas]

Dr Manhatten has an ordinary penis.

He is blue and glows.
At one point, he changes his size to be 40' tall so he can move around some heavy equipment. At that point, his penis is about 8" diameter and 2' long and swings around. He never gets aroused.

Same things happened in the comic book but the penis wasn't moving and it was blue, not glowing, and it was more of a bart simpson penis than a realistic penis.

If he wasn't still wearing a g-string during the vietnam war when he was hundreds of feet tall, then he would have had a slong larger than a man.

there is the funny scene of him splitting into two temporal instances and making love to his girlfriend- she gets confused and upset and leaves the room... to find him working in the other room at the same time.

So.. he's still a man.

Advertertisng Problem

[kelemvor4]

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.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[TheRaven64]

Meh, I've seen better blue wieners

One of the most insightful comments in this entire discussion - but I have no mod points today!

I take it this is a warning not to bother reading the rest of the comments?

Re:It was good.

[SuperQ]

Yes, you can thank the Puritans for that. Instead of the nude human body just being what it is. Nudity = sex = profane = sin.

Re:It was good.

[Chris Burke]

Though I also kinda got the impression that the 'speedo phase', which seemed very perfunctory at the art level, was part of not rocking the boat with the publisher too much in the early stages of the comic. Sure it also mirrors the character arc, but it seems like the speedo disappeared in later comics, even in flashbacks (though I'd have to check to make sure).

Here's a thought

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:It was good.

[Maxo-Texas]

He started with a costume and it got smaller over the years.

In the comic book, it was 1/8th of an inch long on the printed page and not moving and not glowing.

It's the difference between the picture of a naked girl on a beach and a video of a girl running towards you on the beach.

Because they added motion and glowing, they needed to tone it down a bit. Some side shots, some "hat in the way" shots, especially where it's swinging around.

OTH, we should get over it being a big issue. It didn't bother me but I could see why it was an issue for others. Some had almost a childish glee talking about how it bothered them too.

Re:Moviegoers want a plain good v. evil happy endi

[cbope]

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.

Re:It was good.

[Desler]

No is saying they wanted to see it. They were completely indifference. The fact that this guy is all hot and bothered over seeing a dong suggests there is some underlying reason (usually latent homosexual tendencies) otherwise one would just shrug it off.

Watchmen just wasn't that good

[AtomicDevice]

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.

Re:Watchmen just wasn't that good

[Americano]

My friend barfed in his pants halfway through the movie.

You know, I might pay $15 to see a movie where that happens.

rating vs integrity

[WillgasM]

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.

It's called a metaphor

[Swarley]

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.

Re:It's called a metaphor

[HornWumpus]

You realize what 'the full monty' means?

Dr. M never walked around with a boner.

the rating system is broken

[stiller]

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.

Re:the rating system is broken

[Fnkmaster]

Umm, I don't really care about breasts or a blue schlong, obviously it's silly to think that a bit of nudity will scar a child's mind. But there is a rape scene in Watchmen. So yeah, I don't think I'd really want a 10 year old to see that, certainly not without a parent present to put it in context.

Re:the rating system is broken

[mibe]

In the US, you have to be 16 to get into an R-rated movie. It's rated exactly the same. Moreover, it wasn't just a couple a boobs. There was also, rape, graphic violence with blood and gore, and (of course) a blue penis. Our rating system needs work (nipple = R, barring the Titanic exception, but show the Joker can jam pencils and explosive into people for a PG13), but Watchmen wasn't really borderline material.

Re:the rating system is broken

[edawstwin]

The R rating requires anyone under 17 to be accompanied by a parent, so any age can get in, but you have to be 17 to see it without an adult.

Nipple does not equal an R. From the MPAA: "More than brief nudity will require at least a PG-13 rating, but such nudity in a PG-13 rated motion picture generally will not be sexually oriented." So brief nudity is still allowed in PG movies, and longer nudity requires that it be given at a PG-13. Any nudity where sex is involved (or even implied) usually means an R rating.

Re:the rating system is broken

[Thud457]

Dammit! Looks like Joe Bob Briggs hasn't reviewed it yet!

Why was this post modded up?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Why was this post modded up?

[Bigjeff5]

Apparently you don't even need to see it to recognize how much it sucks.

I wish I'd known before I wasted my time and cash on it.

Re:Why was this post modded up?

[Raenex]

Apparently you don't even need to see it to recognize how much it sucks.

Apparently you think because you didn't like a movie that it must not be good.

I thought it looked pretty stupid before I saw it myself, not being a comic-guy either, but after seeing it I thought it was good (not great, but good).

It sucked for you, fine, but a lot of people liked the movie. It's obvious from reading the reviews here that those who didn't mostly just wanted more action. That's fine, too, but not everybody needs that.

fantasy != sexual fantasy

[macraig]

It's easy to create fantasy that doesn't require an R rating, if the screenwriter just keeps BOTH hands on the keyboard.

Re:It was good.

[Miseph]

What about people who feel that a giant blue penis might have artistic, poetic, emotional, psychological, literary and ethical value, but not so much sexual value, and want to see it for those reasons? I see at least one penis every single day that I open my eyes, frankly, the mere sight of a penis lost any meaningful shock value to me around age 15.

Maybe if it were a huge porno-boner ejaculating toxic jism all over the place I could see an objection to it that amounts to more than immature homophobia... but they opted not to include the Dr. Manhattan bukkake scene, so it seems rather a moot point.

Re:Ending made more sense....

[h4rm0ny]

However, there was no need for a full frontal Dr. Manhattan.

I simply do not get at all why people get hung up about this. The guy can't be bothered with clothes anymore and nobody dares to tell him otherwise anymore. What's the issue?

Re:It was good.

[_UnderTow_]

Where in my post did I say I was offended or had a fit about the giant blue penis? You should get off your high horse and calm the fuck down. I prefer my movies without male nudity because I'm not attracted to those parts. And yes, I fully support gratuitous female nudity in film (or any other visual media).

Also, no one gives a shit about Finnish movies or the amount of nudity in them.

Re:It was good.

[h4rm0ny]

I'm not against seeing things that are giant and / or blue, but I prefer my movies without penis shots. Call me crazy.

Genuine question: Why do you care? This comes up everytime the Watchmen movie is discussed and I just don't get it. I watched the whole film without any particular reaction to his dick. It's just a dick.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[jaymz666]

The only bad acting in that film came from the female lead....

Re:Ending made more sense....

[VirginMary]

No it didn't! Not unless you're some screwed up person who somehow thinks there is something inappropriate with the most natural thing there could be for a human being, namely a human body.

Game of Thrones.

[DarthVain]

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.

Re:Game of Thrones.

[edawstwin]

If Game of Thrones was done right and released theatrically, it would be NC-17.

Re:Game of Thrones.

[Minwee]

It would also be split into sixteen parts and released with a ten year gap between the fourteenth and fifteenth.

Technology to the rescue?

[steveha]

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

Re:Technology to the rescue?

[Animats]

My big hope for the future of movies is that technology is making movies less expensive to produce.

About a decade ago, when I was working on animation software, I had that discussion with a Hollywood director. That's what he wanted - the technology to make an A picture for $10 million or so. He'd just made a $100 million picture with both live action and CGI characters, and, because of the high costs, it had to be pre-planned to death and micromanaged by the front office. He hated that. If the costs came down, the director would be in charge again.

He was impressed by ReBoot - the first whole season CGI cartoon. Not that it was good, but that about 15 to 20 people were cranking out an episode a week. That level of productivity made more interesting projects affordable.

Ten years later, we're still not there. People have tried. "Sky Captain" was originally supposed to be a low-budget film with all CGI sets. If no actor touches something in "Sky Captain", it's CGI. The first few minutes were originally made on a Mac by one guy. (You can find that version on the DVD.) But it didn't look good enough. The budget ballooned to $70 million. The number of set carpenters is way down, but there are buildings full of animators carefully placing CGI props instead.

What we're getting today at the low end is green screen inserts for background details. That's cheap. (Note how many TV scenes seem to take place inside moving cars.) But there's no magic world-building bullet yet.

That will probably come, and from the game industry, which needs to do massive world-building. A city generator which could generate a whole city in fine detail, down to apartment and shop interiors for all buildings, without replicating the same items, is something the game industry needs, and understands they need.

Re:Technology to the rescue?

[brantondaveperson]

Two examples:

Monsters : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1470827/ Budget $800k - CGI effect allegedly done on the director's home computer.
Primer: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/ Budger $7k - no CGI to speak of, but one of the best SciFi films of recent years.

Camera are cheap, computers are cheap, locations are everywhere. All you need to make movies now is time, and talent. And talent of course, is the hardest part.

Re:It was good.

[MightyMartian]

But wasn't dick-to-the-wind Dr. Manhattan introduced early on. I'd have to go back to my copy, but it seems to me that the speedo version only comes in with Dr. M's backstory a little later after the introduction of the character.

Blame family values, or women's rights

[Beerdood]

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

Re:Anyone who thinks tits don't sell tickets is du

[Rich0]

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.

Re:It was good.

[Americano]

but they opted not to include the Dr. Manhattan bukkake scene, so it seems rather a moot point.

Yeah, except that the bukkake scene should have provided the emotional center for the whole film!

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[Wumpus]

I can't even remember who she was, and I saw the movie last week.

Re:It was good.

[Americano]

He's afraid that if he doesn't express outrage over seeing a photo of a penis, everybody will think he's one of them homma-sexshuls.

Re:It was good.

[Atriqus]

Yeah, like you I thought they could have picked a better color scheme as well. :D

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[Lucidus]

Err - I was referring to the latter part of the comment, where spun suggests differences in what an audience wants based on the economic (and political) climate.

But well-played, Raven.

Re:It was good.

[jo_ham]

Ah, so now we see the true colours.

Raise the flag of hypocrisy and throw in a little superiority over other countries for good measure!

Re:It was good.

[Gaygirlie]

Also, no one gives a shit about Finnish movies or the amount of nudity in them.

The imperfection is all yours.

Re:It was good.

[GameboyRMH]

I remember when I was watching it in the theater, towards the end of the movie there was a scene where Dr. Manhattan was walking down a hallway (or it may have been down some stairs) right towards the camera with his dong bouncing around. Everyone in the theater giggled at the same time.

It's all about the tits

[DerekLyons]

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.

Re:It's all about the tits

[Doctor_Jest]

Hooray for boobies!

Sorry. Had to do it.

Re:It's all about the tits

[DerekLyons]

Well, not that I have anything against tits! :)

Re:It was good.

[Desler]

Because he thinks that seeing another man's dick that he will catch... THE GAY!!! DUHN DUHN DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHN!

Too much budget

[travdaddy]

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.

Re:Ending made more sense....

[SuricouRaven]

Aside from the attention-grabbing for the audience, it goes a long way to show his disassociation from humanity. He doesn't wear clothing because he doesn't need to, and no longer cares for petty human taboos. It's not that he is deliberatly flouting social convention - he just doesn't care any more. Total indifference.

Snorefest

[oldmac31310]

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.

Re:Ending made more sense....

[Danse]

However, there was no need for a full frontal Dr. Manhattan.

How do you figure that? Seems like that would require a fundamental change in the character. I don't get why people are so averse to a penis in a movie, especially when it's perfectly in line with the story and character.

Re:It was good.

[Desler]

I prefer my movies without male nudity because I'm not attracted to those parts.

Bullshit. Your tiny little pecker probably got harder when you saw it so you are lashing out by getting all hot and bothered. Otherwise you'd be like a normal person just have an indifferent reaction to it because it's just a dick.

Re:It was good.

[Mix Master Nixon]

Keep digging that hole.

Re:Moviegoers want a plain good v. evil happy endi

[supercrisp]

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.

Re:It was good.

[Stevecrox]

I think it sums up everything wrong with Watchman, the whole film seemed to be trying to be edgy to an unnecessary degree.

What did seeing it do? The story for Dr M already showed him disconnected from reality several well aimed shots could easily show he was naked without having to see a bare ass or penis.

Its like Torchwood, Dexter or True Blood, the first time you see something edgy is cool but for example I've grown bored of the sex scenes in True Blood and skip through them. If I want to watch porn, I'll watch porn. Watchmen was edgy for edgy for edgy's sake.

The Dark Knight was far darker and adult when compared to Watchman.

No great loss.

[Beelzebud]

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?

Re:It was good.

[SuricouRaven]

Blame where blame is due. You can blame the Catholics for it - they were preaching that sexual pleasure was inherently sinful and evil long before the Puritans were around. The Puritans just turned it up to eleven, and they wern't the only Protestant grouping to do so.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[Mister Whirly]

Obviously you have never seen the adult version of Avatar.

Re:It was good.

[Damek]

You offer no alternative possible reasons. And I can't imagine any. Insecurity about themselves, insecurity about their children's ability to think for themselves, insecurity about other people's ability to think for themselves... it's all insecurity.

How else would one be offended by seeing genitals on a screen?

Re:It was good.

[cvtan]

It was all I could do to look at your post!

Re:It was good.

[Kozz]

It's sometimes funny how foreigners have so mixed reactions to such scenes: some react like OP for having seen a male penis, some are just excited about how casual Finns are about it, some get enormously embarrassed and try to look anywhere else but the screen..

(emphasis mine)

*ahem*... imagine the uproar had the film depicted a female penis. Usually you can only rent those...

Re:It was good.

[TheLink]

To me it's strange that someone supposedly so powerful and intelligent would not bother with clothes but still bother with maintaining human form.

That sort of thing would be less like a disconnect with humanity, but more of some sort of psychological problem/flaw.

A super powerful intelligent and objective creature that's become detached from humanity would be more likely to forget or not bother to put on any human form at all - just pick one that's convenient for the task. The naked human form is certainly not the most convenient form for most scientific experiments.

If you're going to bother with some vaguely human form for interacting with humans, you could either go "silver surfer" (if you like blue that much, go blue surfer then ;) ) or make your form look like it has clothes. Trivial for someone not bounded by normal time and space.

If Dr Manhattan had an adolescent mentality then going nude or appearing as a giant dick/asshole wouldn't be strange.

Not an issue at all. Really.

[Plekto]

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.

Re:It was good.

[Damek]

I'm not attracted to ears or knees, but I don't mind seeing them naked in films. I'm guessing you don't, either, so there must be something special about penises causing you offense. Which is sad, really, to suffer from such limitations.

Re:It was good.

[Gaygirlie]

*ahem*... imagine the uproar had the film depicted a female penis. Usually you can only rent those...

Hah :D Sounds like you have some experience in that field, though ;)

Re:It was good.

[Desler]

I understand that some people (you among them probably) want more penis.

lol @ the flailing. No one here is saying they want more penis. They are just laughing at the fact that you get so hot and bothered by it. _UnderTow_ doth protest too much, methinks.

Lotta hate in here

[cfalcon]

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.

GITS?

[bxwatso]

Speaking of development hell and R rated sci-fi, what is the deal with Ghost In The Shell?

Watchmen a box-office disappointment?

[mazesc]

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.

Barbarella? Heavy Metal? Why?

[kindbud]

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.

Re:It was good.

[lgw]

I agree with Under_Tow completely: I'm all for nudity in movies, but male nudity is just a waste of space where we could have had female nudity. There's nothing deep about this, any more than my preference for chocolate ice cream over strawberry.

If you see some deeper significance to people's basic tastes and desire to see things that please them, those are the issues you bright in with you.

Re:It was good.

[Desler]

The point isn't about his preferences. It's about his completely over-the-top, bothered reaction to seeing a dong. I'm not attracted to nude males either, but I didn't get all worked up over seeing the dong in the movie and neither did anyone else I know.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[commodore6502]

>>>When times are tight, they hate ambiguity in their heroes

And yet Spiderman 3 was the best-selling of the whole franchise, and Peter Parker was very ambiguous in that flick.

Re:It was good.

[lgw]

Where did he say he was offended? I'm always disappointed when I see male nudity in a film - the filmmakers were willing to show nudity, but alas what a disappointing waste: it wasn't female nudity.

I think you just have some need to trumpet "look at me! look at how urbane and sphisticated I am! I'm not offended by penis, making me different from red-staters and other losers!" Which is sad, really, to suffer from such limitations.

Re:adult Sci-Fi is too niche

[Americano]

Sure you can. Band together with a few thousand of your Slashdot compatriots, and each of you put a couple thousand into funding the movie that satisfied your vision. You don't need a studio to write a script, hire actors, and film.

Or, offer to spend a LOT more than $15 per person on tickets, and somebody will probably make the film you want.

If there's money to be made in producing "the movie you want," then somebody can be convinced to produce it. If it's not a popular enough concept to make a profit, then I guess you're stuck with your imagination and a book.

Target audience vs. Budget

[itsdapead]

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!

Re:Anyone who thinks tits don't sell tickets is du

[Americano]

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.

Add time and stir...

[alphatel]

Blade Runner was once considered an unwise endeavor.

Re:Add time and stir...

[Beelzebud]

The Watchmen is no Blade Runner...

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[spun]

>>>When times are tight, they hate ambiguity in their heroes

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.

Re:It was good.

[jo_ham]

There's no hypocrisy in wanting more boobs and less cock, nor is there really any hypocrisy in calling my sexuality into question because of your own insecurity, but there is in claiming the movie went from "great" to "good" merely because an element in some scenes that didn't change the movie at all in any way. Had Dr M been covered in those scenes to spare the blushes of casual homophobes and those not mature enough to handle seeing a cock on screen (but seemingly mature enough to handle any amount of female nudity with no issue whatsoever) then nothing else at all would have changed.

Thus, the only reason you downrated the movie was your hypocrisy that male genitalia somehow make a film worse and female ones make it better, even if completely immaterial from the plot (ignoring the symbolism surrounding his nakedness as a demonstration of his distancing from reality - likely written into the original story based on reactions such as yours).

Re:Moviegoers want a plain good v. evil happy endi

[owlstead]

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.

Re:Moviegoers want a plain good v. evil happy endi

[Americano]

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.

Kick-Ass

[uncledrax]

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.

Re:Kick-Ass

[edawstwin]

Kick-Ass $30M budget, grossed $96M worldwide.

Watchmen: $130M budget, grossed $195M worldwide.

Given that the studios generally receive about 50% of the total gross and the marketing budget for most films is about 100% of the budget, both of these movies lost money if you only count the theatrical gross. Both may go on to be slightly profitable in the long run (but not likely), but studios want these to make money initially so that DVD/TV sales and merchandise are just gravy.

Re:It was good.

[h4rm0ny]

I think it sums up everything wrong with Watchman, the whole film seemed to be trying to be edgy to an unnecessary degree. What did seeing it do? The story for Dr M already showed him disconnected from reality several well aimed shots could easily show he was naked without having to see a bare ass or penis.

See, to me I have to question why you're starting from the position of his nudity having to be done for the sake of "edginess" or why other ways of showing his increasing detachment could be used without "having to see a bare ass or penis". You've taken for granted that we should not see such things without there being a special reason for it, and in the case of Watchman where there is a reason for it, you've expressed that another way of satisfying that reason should have been found. Implicit in your argument is an assumption that his nudity is a bad thing that should only be included in special circumstances. Whereas from my point of view, it's a complete non-issue not requiring any justification. What I'm curious about is why you see it differently.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[Scyber]

Spiderman 3 came out in the summer of 2007, which was really only the start of the current economic down turn in the US. It wasn't really till mid to late 2008 that the stuff hit the fan in the US. Unemployment was at 4.8% in April of '08, by March of '09 it was at 9%.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[default luser]

Yes, in PG13 you can have as much violence as you want, so long as it's not TOO graphic. But god forbid you have any titties or drug references - those will get you slapped with an R immediately.

I really hate the ratings system in this country.

Re:Disappointment?

[avandesande]

That's if you use the baloney accounting they use to rip off actors and other creative people.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[osu-neko]

Meh, I've seen better blue wieners.

o.O

Re:It was good.

[gorzek]

People with any degree of sexual maturity shouldn't be bothered by nudity of any kind. Seeing a penis doesn't magically make you gay--not even if it's a big, blue, radioactive one.

Re:It was good.

[musterion]

This is good example of the difference in cultures. Europeans are very comfortable with nudity, but violence and guns are a no-no, or are considered shocking. The US is a bit in between, but lean to being more comfortable with guns and certain kinds of violence. it seems that East Asians like violence, but nudity is right out.

As far as the blue penis was concerned, it really served no useful purpose in the movie, so why not leave it out.

Good writing makes grown up films.

[Alpelopa]

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.

Re:It was good.

[The End Of Days]

No is saying they wanted to see it. They were completely indifference.

You don't actually know that for anyone but yourself. In your rush to defend a movie by insulting someone who wasn't into it, you're just skipping right by basic logic.

Re:It was good.

[osu-neko]

Given time, I expect that's exactly what would happen. This doesn't happen overnight, though. It'll take far, far longer to psychologically reach the point where you no longer bother taking the form you've always had since you were born. Simply discarding social conventions like clothing will be come first, long before that. One is far more closely integrated in ones sense of self than the other.

Good but not a hit regardless of rating

[perpenso]

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.

Re:Good but not a hit regardless of rating

[Shadow Wrought]

Blaming its lack of success on the R rating is just a cover story for the real problem.

A poorly done movie is never going to be a box office success (My own opinions of Titanic and Avatar notwithstanding :-). The R rating though means that you less likely to get the accidental traffic. The, "Well since our movie is sold out, what else is playing at this time" type of traffic. The reason for the R rating is also important. I don't recall there being much int he movie that earned them the R that was actually necessary for the story they were telling.

Re:Anyone who thinks tits don't sell tickets is du

[edremy]

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.

Re:adult Sci-Fi is too niche

[prgrmr]

There's already been 1 fan-produced documentary and 1 fan-produced movie based on Serenity and Firefly. And a major reason why those got to be made is because Joss Whedon wasn't all heavy-handed about copyrights. And as mentioned above, it's possible to make a relatively low-budget Sci-Fi movie like District 9 that is commercially successful.

Re:Anyone who thinks tits don't sell tickets is du

[tragedy]

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?

Re:It was good.

[osu-neko]

Where in my post did I say I was offended or had a fit about the giant blue penis? ... I prefer my movies without male nudity because I'm not attracted to those parts.

In any 30 second clip of most any film, if you're really looking, you will be able to identify more than a hundred separate things on screen. Unless you're a very bizarre fetishist, you will not be attracted to almost all of them. However, most of them you won't even notice, and even if you do, you won't express any interest in moving having less of them. You can lie to yourself all you want, but the fact of the matter is, the fact that you even brought this up indicates that it stuck out in your mind, and you were offended or at least bothered by it. Pardon us for pointing out the obvious lie if you weren't aware of the fact that you were lying to yourself, but it's clear to everyone that you were lying to us.

Re:It was good.

[Desler]

No, but comments such as:

I understand that some people (you among them probably) want more penis.

are. He's flailing around trying to make excuses for why the penis bothered him so much whereas a normal, secure male would have just shrugged it off.

Re:It was good.

[osu-neko]

s/moving/movies/

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[scubamage]

I'd have to disagree to an extent. Watchmen stuck about as close as they could to the comic, and the comics themselves are works of art. I understand changing the catastrophe in the end, because, c'mon, I don't think people can really understand a giant space squid of doom (it would be considered jumping the shark). But big booms make sense. I don't disagree that Dark Knight wasn't fantastic, because it was effing awesome and possibly one of the best superhero movies of all time. However I wouldn't say that it was 10x better. The story was just as good, and dark knight did change a lot of fundamental parts of the comic to suit the gritty nature of the movie (the creation of the joker, for example).

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[scubamage]

Not always. Fifth Element has titties not once, but twice. And a PG-13 rating. Very nice Milla Jovovich titties. Mmmmm.

Not really about Watchmen at all

[g051051]

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.

Re:adult Sci-Fi is too niche

[Americano]

Indeed, but the point was that sitting around bemoaning how "nobody's producing stuff WE want to watch" didn't create those fan-produced Serenity films, or District 9.

If you want to find and produce smart, well-written, low-budget films... you can do so. Nobody's stopping you, but if you want to make a business out of it, you have to pay attention to your bottom line - which means, keep your budgets small, or you'd better have a hell of a story that people are going to want to see despite the lack of big-name stars and big-budget effects.

Re:It was good.

[Kozz]

*ahem*... imagine the uproar had the film depicted a female penis. Usually you can only rent those...

Hah :D Sounds like you have some experience in that field, though ;)

Well, you know ... I heard about it from a friend.

Re:It was good.

[osu-neko]

Apparently "It would have been great without the giant blue glowing penis though," is over-the-top, bothered.... I wouldn't have known without you telling me. Thanks Internet!

It is. I don't particularly care for Fords, and that's perfectly fine. However, if I say "That would have been a great movie, except the main character drove a Ford," it's clear that I'm have an over-the-top reaction. If I simply don't care for Fords myself, I'll have a lackluster reaction to the main character's wheels, but it won't particularly bother me, it certainly won't ruin the movie for me, or even cause me to downgrade it to the point that I say "It would have been a great movie, if it hadn't been for that car." If it reaches the point that I am saying that, it's blazingly obvious that there's more going on than I simply "don't care" for Fords. If, further, I start objecting strongly to people pointing this oddity out, it only further clarifies just how big a lie it is that I'm merely not attracted to products from the Ford Motor Company.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[metamatic]

And Total Recall has 150% of a pair of titties...

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[snemarch]

Ambiguous as "I'm not entirely sure whether that guy is straight or not", I take it?

Re:It was good.

[Killjoy_NL]

heh, I just remembered it as a good movie, or at least as a movie I liked.
I totally forgot about the blue dick.

Dutch, therefore european here :)

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[spun]

What, you don't paint yours blue, then go out to bars and ask women if they want to meet Papa Smurf? It's super effective!

BLASPHEMER!

[Thud457]

" 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.

How about "The King's Speech"

[wfstanle]

"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?

Re:How about "The King's Speech"

[Anonymous Psychopath]

"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?

There's a scene in Be Cool where Travolta is talking about how you can only say the f-bomb once and retain a PG-13 rating, to which he says "Fuck that. I'm done." I always thought that was a clever bit of writing.

Watchmen vs. Citizen Kane

[DCheesi]

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.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[VolciMaster]

want something a lot more black and white than Watchmen.

so *THAT'S* why it didn't do well: it was shot in COLOR!

funny books and talking animals

[Thud457]

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.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[PCM2]

Watchmen stuck about as close as they could to the comic

...which must be why Alan Moore, the guy who wrote the comic, refused to allow his name to be associated with the movie, yes?

Re:Anyone who thinks tits don't sell tickets is du

[Totenglocke]

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 most frustrating part

[Minwee]

"Watchmen was actually *good*."

It sure was. Did you know that there was a movie based on it too?

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[C0R1D4N]

Alan Moore is also a psychotic hermit.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[hairyfeet]

Not at all, not even close. Parker was "infected" by the venom suit that affected his personality and when removed became goodie goodie, so it was a classic "hooker redemption" story. Now compare that to a Snake Plisskin who just doesn't give a fuck if the world ends tomorrow as long as he gets what HE wants, and you'll see the difference.

A perfect example is the end of Escape from LA where he shut down the entire planet sending the world back to the dark ages, just because it was run by assholes. Now THAT is an anti-hero! You would NEVER catch a PG13 goodie goodie doing something that vicious. Lead a rebellion against the evil overlords? Sure, but fuck the entire planet just to take the leaders down? nope, not happening.

And on the topic of blue wieners...

[TiggertheMad]

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!

Re:It was good.

[PCM2]

Nope. If anything, the movie was tamer about it.

Disagree. In the comics his penis was artfully rendered -- literally, as in he resembled a painting or a Greek statue where his nudity is almost an afterthought. In the movie, you had his eight-inch CG blue cock swinging back and forth as he moved. It was distracting.

Not the rating itself...

[Maladius]

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.

Problem with ending of comic

[TiggertheMad]

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.

Re:Problem with ending of comic

[metacell]

Ozymandias believed he could destroy Dr. Manhattan (using the device at his arctic fortress). He doesn't find out that is not the case until Dr. Manhattan simply reconsitutes himself (in both the movie and the comic book version).

Failure? Only in Hollywood....

[hazydave]

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.

critical 2 pennies

[wrencherd]

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.

WHY?

[bickerdyke]

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.

Re:Anyone who thinks tits don't sell tickets is du

[Rich0]

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.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[SteveFoerster]

Right and it was rated R. And that probably only because there's no "R and a half" rating.

Re:It was good.

[DNS-and-BIND]

"Because I think something, I can't understand why anyone would ever think differently."

Re:Ending made more sense....

[MysteriousPreacher]

Have you already reserved "e(nergy)-penis" for use as the literally translated name of a baffling anime title? If not, then I hereby claim it.

Re:It was good.

[SpryGuy]

I'm always disappointed when I see female nudity in a film - the fimmakers were willing to show nudity, but alas what a disappointing waste: it wasn't male nudity.

(rolling eyes at you, seriously, for your self-absorbed take on this entire issue, and you're weird obsession with wanting a life devoid of all male nudity, but being perfectly okay with everyone being subjected to female nudity... it's hypocritical, inconsistent, and overtly sexist, just so you know).

If I can go through life putting up with the rampant and constant female nudity everywhere (the vast majority of it utterly gratuitous, which it wasn't here as it was part of the character's journey away from his 'humanity'), I think you can put up with ONE freakin' movie that has ONE character that has ONE CGI-animated penis without putting up a fuss. Sheesh.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[speroni]

I don't disagree that Dark Knight wasn't fantastic

Ow.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[scubamage]

I aim to bring out grammar nazis :) Triple negative!

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[scubamage]

Some of us believe that more than a handful is a waste. Especially if you've ever been slapped in the face repeatedly with DD's. Its terrifying. Like being beaten to death by sacks of fatty tissue.

Re:It was good.

[lgw]

for your self-absorbed take on this entire issue

I'm just saying what I like. That cannot be other than self-absorbed. Feel free to like what you like, and grant me the same space to be disappointed by content that wasn't to my personal tastes. People complain about movies all the time - why does this complaint trigger such wailing and weeping?

Re:It was good.

[h4rm0ny]

Or more accurately: "Because I don't understand his point of view, I asked him to explain it."

Remake Barbarella?

[LukeWebber]

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.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[PCM2]

Right, so everybody on /. understands Alan Moore's creative works better than Alan Moore. Who gives a shit what his intent was, or what he would have wanted, as long as somebody makes a really cool movie using his characters and ideas in a way we think is entertaining.

Re:Ending made more sense....

[h4rm0ny]

Well if that were really the case, he wouldn't even need to make himself appear human, and certainly not need to flaunt his e(nergy)-penis.

The lack of clothes (and other things) show his increasing detachment from humanity, not that he has instantly become a Lovecraftian horror in one night.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[Doctor_Jest]

She looks like Cameron Diaz's stunt double (she was in the movie "Good Luck Chuck" I think. I couldn't be sure though...

Am I the only one?

[JustDisGuy]

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...

Re:Success of Fritz the Cat

[Zinho]

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.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[khallow]

Right, so everybody on /. understands Alan Moore's creative works better than Alan Moore.

Wouldn't be the first time. I don't see any evidence that Moore has a particularly deep understanding of making movies, for example.

Who gives a shit what his intent was, or what he would have wanted, as long as somebody makes a really cool movie using his characters and ideas in a way we think is entertaining.

Exactly. This is one of the reasons I'm not a big fan of long copyrights. They keep others from playing with someone's story in a way we think is entertaining.

Plus, it looks like I'll die of old age before I see any legal Disney porn. That's a real tragedy.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[ottothecow]

Author's intent only goes so far.

There is a whole school of people in literary criticism that don't care what the author intended--they care what the author produced. Georgia O'Keeffe consistently denied painting vaginal imagery but whether it happened accidentally, sub-consciously, or intentionally (and she just lied about it), there is tons of work that has been influenced by this interpretation.

Once you have published a work, you can still give pointers as to how you interpreted it...but people are going to interpret it their own way and many of them will read far more deeply into it than you ever expected. Nobody wants to end up like George Lucas running around going "No guys, I swear I meant it to be this way"

Re:It was good.

[Desler]

It was shown because it was matching the source material. And secondly, it was just a dick. Why do you people get so bothered by it? You aren't going to turn gay by seeing someone else's penis.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[metacell]

...which must be why Alan Moore, the guy who wrote the comic, refused to allow his name to be associated with the movie, yes?

Alan Moore didn't care about making a movie out of Watchmen to begin with. He thought it was pointless, since what made the comic good would be lost in the translation process.

The main reason he eventually removed his name from the project was his long-standing conflict with DC Comics, which is owned by Warner Brothers, the producers of the film. It dates back to the 1980's, when DC promised Alan Moore the rights to Watchmen would return to him when it went out of print, which has yet to happen, since DC never intended to let it go out of print. Moore didn't want to be involved in Watchmen's (the movie) marketing efforts, and when a Warner Brothers representative claimed Alan Moore was "excited" about the project, Moore ordered his name to be removed.

If You Missed It

[Greyfox]

It will be out soon on blue wang. Ray! Blue ray!

Good ones are possible, but hard.

[Animats]

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.

Make multiple cuts: NC-17, R, PG, G

[gig]

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.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[Lemmy Caution]

The other criticism of authorial intention is that the author is "a product of their times" (and circumstances, and position in society, etc.)- it isn't just their unconscious at work, but all their interpretations of the world - and the practice of writing/making movies/painting and what that means, that they generally just inherit, that are at work. Calling it "historical context" isn't even adequate... more like radical subjectivity. So the author is only aware of the minute ways, more or less, that they fit within a range of possibilities that they can perceive.

There are really 3 positions: 1. what matters is what the author intended, and you see something to find out what it was, and if the author is good, you get it; 2. it doesn't matter what the author says, it's all in the text (the old "New Criticism" approach) and 3. the author's "intentions" are themselves "written" by his context, and the text is an outcome of that condition.

diy

[sixsixtysix]

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.

Reasons to animate

[tepples]

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.

Re:Anyone who thinks tits don't sell tickets is du

[Alimony Pakhdan]

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

Re:Moviegoers want a plain good v. evil happy endi

[Alimony Pakhdan]

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.

Re:It was good.

[Xyrus]

Well I thought the plot big blue penis was a little shallow big blue penis in places, but the big blue penis movie big blue penis was overall big blue penis pretty good big blue penis.

The special effects big blue penis were pretty big blue penis decent, though big blue penis it could have big blue penis big blue penis. And then their big blue penis big blue penis, plus big blue penis big blue penis big blue penis. Big blue penis big blue penis big blue penis big blue penis, big blue penis big blue penis big blue penis big blue penis. Big blue penis big blue penis, big blue penis big blue penis big blue penis. And then it was like, "OMG WTF? Flaming air ship oragasm? BIG BLUE PENIS?"

Just shows you never know about big blue penis until you actually see big blue penis.

This sums up a lot of the reaction to the movie. I swear, it was like big blue penis became the new smurf language.

Plus, how often can you say big blue penis and actually be on topic.

All I remember is

[cowwoc2001]

... the blue penis. Seriously. The rest of the movie was a blur.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[Thing 1]

One of the most insightful comments in this entire discussion - but I have no mod points today!

And I have no bananas.

Not a GWAR fan I take it.

[HornWumpus]

I think you are a latent fag because you're afraid of GWAR shows.

St Paul was the first Puritan.

[HornWumpus]

Paul's letters are pure and simple rantings of a paranoid, self loathing 'sex addict'.

Whatever someone is hung up on, that's them.

Re:It was good.

[Thing 1]

Yay! Sex = death! That should work wonders for our long-term survival.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[jbolden]

Pretty much. I loved Watchman, I loved V for Vendeta, I loved From Hell. His stuff makes for great movies. Not so found of league which stayed close to his vision.

If Alan Moore has good ideas he has more material. But ultimately the idea is to get the best movie.

Re:Anyone who thinks tits don't sell tickets is du

[Thing 1]

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.

Re:It was good.

[DNS-and-BIND]

Assuming that you're not pretending to misunderstand, the concept of Squick fits the bill nicely. There, you've had your education. Other people see things differently and you need to tolerate their viewpoints, because they're just as valid as yours.

Re:It was good.

[SpryGuy]

Because this particular complaint is blatently sexist and heterosexist?

Imagine saying you were disappointed you saw black people in a movie... sheesh.

That you felt compelled to even mention it is kind of disappointing, especially given that all movies taken together have about a thousand to one ratio of female to male nudity, so your preferences are already well catered to. To begrudge the other half of the population equal time is... kind of self-abosrbed and annoying. I'm just saying.

In other words, get over it.

Re:Anyone who thinks tits don't sell tickets is du

[tragedy]

(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

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[Gr8Apes]

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.

I agree. While wanting to like it, it truly was a boring movie. The slow pace, lack of action, and lack of meaningful storyline made this a snoozer that was best left on when insomnia hits.

The only good thing about it was that it was better than "A Passage to India".

My main gripe...

[dbug78]

...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.

My take

[seandiggity]

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.

Re:My take

[seandiggity]

Also, don't mod me down as a troll for giving my opinion. The damn summary gives an opinion about the movie, /. can't expect us not to comment on it.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[gullevek]

I enjoyed Watchman more than I enjoyed The Dark Knight.

Re:It was good.

[h4rm0ny]

Assuming that you're not pretending to misunderstand, the concept of Squick fits the bill nicely. There, you've had your education. Other people see things differently and you need to tolerate their viewpoints, because they're just as valid as yours.

The "squick" link just says it's "a negative emotional response, more specifically a disturbed or disgusted one". We knew that was the response. My question is to why it was felt. And I never said someone else couldn't see things as differently - that's entirely your own invention. What I have asked is why someone should have a "disturbed or disgusted" reaction (if that is what it is), to a naked man. I have no such reaction so I'm curious as to where such a reaction should come from in some people.

Re:It was good.

[AlterRNow]

What does it mean if you didn't even notice his penis was shown during the movie and only found out it was reading this discussion?

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[MattSausage]

I daresay that is EXACTLY what being slapped in the face with titties is like. Much like being hit in the head with a baseball back is 'like' being beaten to death with a long cylindrical wooden or aluminum club.

Re:It was good.

[jahudabudy]

It's a cultural taboo. Young boys tend to have no problems showing their penises off, in fact seem to enjoy it. Then, they spend their whole life being told not to pull it out in public, hide your penis. They internalize the idea that a penis is something vaguely shameful that shouldn't be shown off. Thus, seeing another man's shame exposed makes them uncomfortable.

You can see this in the guys that have the opposite reaction, i.e. take an exaggerated machismo glee in showing off their penis. It is the thrill of flouting a taboo.

Re:It was good.

[lgw]

Because this particular complaint is blatently sexist and heterosexist?

Only if you have a burning obsession with those issues. If I say "that dinner was pretty good, but the steak was a little rare for my taste", what -ists am I guilty of there?

Imagine saying you were dissappointed in the Avatar (last airbender, not dances with smurfs) movie because they changed the race of the characters - does that make you racist, or just dissapointed the characters didn't look the way you had hoped?

Re:Ending made more sense....

[RichiH]

In the US, ripping the spine out of people and whipping baby seals to death with it is acceptable, showing a nipple is not.

News at 11.

Full ACK

[RichiH]

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.

Re:It was good.

[RichiH]

Meanwhile, in Finland.... ;)

Re:Anyone who thinks tits don't sell tickets is du

[Rich0]

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.

Re:Anyone who thinks tits don't sell tickets is du

[tragedy]

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?

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[mconeone]

Malin Akerman.

Re:Or are you happy to see me?

[Wumpus]

Thanks, but I actually meant that I don't remember what she looked like or what she did in that movie. Or nearly anything else about the movie.