Watchmen Watched 489
In a blatant attempt to make my movie-going a valid business expense, I'm putting together some notes on Watchmen, and providing a place for you all to discuss it. The first thing I want to say is that I had high hopes: If you ask any serious comic book nerd what the most important book is, they will probably give you one of two answers, and "Watchmen" is the right one. So really Snyder, the director of 300, could only do wrong. Fortunately for me, he was very true to the book: just like 300, many sequences are shot-for-shot from the comics. Some stuff didn't make it, and the new ending has a different meaning to me (one that really isn't as satisfying, but is certainly cleaner). But what I can't say is if it was a good movie or not. I sorta wish I could get an impartial opinion of someone who isn't a nutty fan of the book to tell me how it stands as a movie. I imagine a bit slow, wordy and maybe a bit confusing in parts. I'll leave full reviews to others, but I enjoyed the picture and suspect you will too.
I think you jumped the gun a little. (Score:5, Insightful)
You want replies from people who aren't huge fans, but you posted this before most people get off work today. Only a true fan would skip work/school to watch a movie.
I've not read the book (I just finished chapter 1), and I'm seeing it tonight at 9:30; if you still want the viewpoint of a non-obsessed fan, check back tomorrow for my reply to this post.
Watchmen non-fan (Score:4, Insightful)
Faithful representation of source material (Score:3, Insightful)
Ultimately, Watchmen was a faithful representation of the source material. You can read the book and base your opinion of whether or not you will enjoy the movie on your opinion of the book.
I found that the actors portraying Nite Owl II, Rorschach, and Dr. Manhattan were excellent in their roles. There were so many little atmospheric touches, I missed them all (looking through the credits, you'll see acknowledgments and thanks for use of clips from various shows and movies, I didn't see half of those in the movie itself).
Re:Not very "Family Friendly" either (Score:5, Insightful)
Too much graphic sex and foul language.
It's rated R for a reason, and several plot summaries I've read use words like "dystopian" and "gritty" so it boggles the mind how so many people are upset the movie isn't "family friendly", like they somehow expect an R rated movie to have fluffy bunnies farting rainbows or something.
WATCHMAN READER vs NEWBIE review (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not very "Family Friendly" either (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right. I see an "R" rating and immediately think "family friendly".
Re:Watchmen non-fan (Score:4, Insightful)
Watchmen is like Star Wars. You must experience it at age 18 or younger to appreciate it. Youre just too old. To adults, the characters are unrealistic, the plot is uninteresting, the love story silly, the ending illogical, and the tough guy machismo boring. To kids and teens its nectar of the gods. Its firmly in the realm of nostalgic stuff.
Growing up sucks, eh?
Re:Not very "Family Friendly" either (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe they're upset because Watchmen, despite its fairly uncompromising storytelling, was not what you would call and R rated comic. With the exception of Manhattan's big blue genitals, sexual references were fairly tame. Violence, while present, was rarely all that graphic, relying more on setting, dialogue and subtlety for it impact rather than outright gore. As to foul language, Watchmen contained it, but I cannot recall the novel being excessively laced with profanities in the manner of, say, Killzone 2 for example.
Regardless, this movie will disappoint fans. It must. As a medium, film is inherently incapable of producing a work with as much breath, depth and contrast as Watchmen, or any other graphic novel, or indeed any other type of novel at all. Movie buffs may disagree with me, but I think it stands to reason that no film of any reasonable length has the time and opportunity to engage with the viewer in the same way that a novel consistently engages with its reader.
A reader can hover over every frame in Watchmen for five minutes if they desire. A reader can dwell over a paragraph for a similar amount of time. A film director simply cannot avail of this kind of engagement in his movie, except in a handful of scenes. It is both a strength and a weakness of film as a medium, but it puts serious limitations on the medium.
People seem to have an irrational desire that their favorite novel/comic/game/whatever be paraded in front of the masses in the form of a movie. I cannot understand this point of view. If something is good, then it doesn't need validation in the form of a Hollywood epic complete with marketing campaigns and happy meal toy lines. If anything, good works should not be subjected to this kind of crass spectacle.
When I see "pundits" debating the "themes and imagery" of the Watchmen movie on TV talk shows, a little piece of my love for the novel will silently die.
Re:Not very "Family Friendly" either (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not very "Family Friendly" either (Score:4, Insightful)
As for the movie, yeah it was violent, but I don't think it was unrealistically so, which is kind of the point. Probably the two worst scenes in the entire movie are at the end with the exploded body (not going to say who's cause I don't want to spoil it for anyone), and when that one guy gets his arms cut off, but aside from that it wasn't particularly bad. Personally I feel movies like SAW are much worse in terms of gore and violence. As for the sex and nudity, they did an amazing job of making it realistic which is something that can be said of very few movies out there which is perhaps what so many people are upset over. Everyone seems to want to make sex and nudity out to be some huge deal in one way or another when the reality is much less so, and I think this movie captured that very well.
Re:The ending is ruined though (Score:4, Insightful)
That said, both endings are nullified by the _very_ end and the crank file.
Re:I think you jumped the gun a little. (Score:5, Insightful)
Streched video is the new blinking 00:00. You see it everywhere. Complete horrible retards running TVs in public places, with 4:3 stretched to 16:9. And when you ask them, they did not even notice. Man, those people are either really retarded, or completely blind.
But it proves the point, that when people can do it wrong, they *will*.
Re:I think you jumped the gun a little. (Score:0, Insightful)
But if you're watching 4:3 content in that ratio on your widescreen tv, you're not getting all the screen you paid for duh!
Re:I think you jumped the gun a little. (Score:3, Insightful)
That bothers me less than the anti-piracy orange dots. I'm one of the people that can see that shit and it annoys me to no end.
I think Master and Commander was the first time I noticed it during a storm scene with bright flashes. When what was supposed to be a bright blinding flash ended up being a bright flash with a pattern of dots for a split second.
I see them in every tentpole movie now. It's like knowing a dirty secret about a neighbor. You never see your neighbor the same way you did before you knew the secret.
Re:Send me! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:First post (Score:5, Insightful)
Hilarious... ly backwards.
Especially since in Dr. Manhattan's case, no one is capable of understanding his point of view. The man just decides to appear on Mars and then wills into existence a huge glass fortress. The level of power necessary to bend time and space to your will like that is staggering.
While, all Rorschach does is complain how he is the only one capable of seeing things as they are and bitching about the state of the world.
Watchmen is interesting because each character represents a facet of human nature.
Re:I think you jumped the gun a little. (Score:2, Insightful)
My opinion on it is straightforward: OMGITWASABSOLUTELYFUCKINGINCREDIBLE!!!!!!1!!eleven!!!!
Seriously. I sat there for three hours, wide eyed, only wishing there was more. It was beautiful and brilliant. Even my husband said "They did right by it."
Re:Send me! (Score:2, Insightful)
The Daily Mail....hmmmm
You know I wouldnt give much credence to anything they publish considering their headlines today include
"How a chance meeting in a chippy saved this man's sight"
"Yes Milday! Posh Steps out dressed like Parker"
"Catherine Zeta Jones goes for dramatic all black look, but did she really need to wear leggings AND Stockings?"
Honestly.... you're going to take a review seriously from this site? A site that considers what victoria beckham is wearing as news?
Please.... go back to your womens magazines and continue eating cake.
Re:Not very "Family Friendly" either (Score:2, Insightful)
This movie wasn't family-friendly for a lot of families of all-adults. It was not marketed as it should have been (as the gruesome and ugly story it is). Every trailer I saw looked nice; not quite fluffy bunnies farting rainbows, but maybe real, slightly dirty bunnies pooping real rabbit poop. It should have been marketed as vampire bunnies let loose in a movie theater, biting people's heads off. Then parents would know not to bring their kids.
Ah but then there's the dilemma: how do you put R-Rated content into a commercial that's supposed to be screened for all audiences? They have to show the commercials on public TV to advertise the movie, thereby forcing them to tone it down. I don't think the fault is in the advertisers but in parents not fully investigating. Heck, even the ratings description 'urges' parents to do their homework. People are lazy and stupid, and it's hard to get around that.
Re:It's just been reviewed - not good (Score:2, Insightful)
*woosh*
that is the sound of the entire movie going over your head.
Re:It's just been reviewed - not good (Score:3, Insightful)
That's one of the major themes.
You had basically good normal people in costumes trying to save the world with rose colored glasses back in the 40's.
Before the 40's even ended, it started to go bad. Heroes in the real world face real world pressures.
by the time the 80's roll around, some of the "heroes" have been reduced to sociopaths by interaction with the real world.
Re:I think you jumped the gun a little. (Score:4, Insightful)
If history show us anything, it's that the Exploiter tribe that usually comes out on top. The Maker tribe is usually too fractured to get together to stand up to the Exploiter tribe, who by their nature form oligarchies and plutocracies. It would take an Atlas Shrugged style walkout by the Makers to stand up to the Exploiters. I find it the height of irony that Rand's polemic has a grass-roots labor action at its heart. All the Libertarians who claim to follow her would do well to remember that.
Re:I think you jumped the gun a little. (Score:2, Insightful)
If you want to argue that the middlemen are taking a larger share in our economy than they ought to, I don't think anyone's here's likely to disagree. But to say we should get rid of them entirely is idiotic. How exactly do you think you would be watching that movie in the comfort of your home without them? Somebody sold you your computer, and I doubt it was the manufacturer. Somebody invested the money to research the technology to make your computer possible, and I doubt it was the engineers. Somebody made sure that everybody paid their share along the way, and I can assure you that it was the lawyers. Try actually thinking about what it means to live in a complex technological society before you say stupid things about "putting lawyers up against the wall".
And yes, I'm a law student. I was originally an engineer. Both have value.
Re:Not very "Family Friendly" either (Score:2, Insightful)
Parents routinely take kids to movies where only one or two of the above things exist because it's not too much trouble to explain to a 12 y/o: "we don't say those words in public" or "that's a bad man, and he'll go to jail".
If those are the kinds of conversations you're having with your 12-year-old, your kid is developmentally retarded. If mental inadequacy or destructive parenting have reduced your child to such a state, don't take it to anything above G-rated films.
this might be the gayest thing I've ever said ;-) (Score:3, Insightful)
Not that I can't spare the few dimes to see this in the theater, but I'd rather download this one and see it in the comfort of my own home.
Preposterous! The only way to truly appreciate Dr. Manhattans' giant blue penis is to see it on a big screen.
Re:I think you jumped the gun a little. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:First post (Score:5, Insightful)
So you watch porn on the Internet, and accept that humanity only exists because of "huge massive sex scenes" for eternal ages,
but you got problems with sex in a movie?
Don't you see the problem in there?
Double standards at its best.
No, I don't see the problem there. I see that you're jumping to conclusions about the GP's reasons for wanting the sex scene cut down. You're acting like he complained about there being sex in the movie at all.
I don't care if tits get shown in an R-rated film, but I don't want to sit for several minutes watching people pretend to have sex, while listening to Leonard Cohen. That's what this one was, and it detracted from the point of the movie.
Re:Send me! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm an avid fan. I purchased the original comics. I picked up #1 mostly because of the cover. i had never heard of Alan Moore, but as soon as I flipped through the pages, i knew this was something completely different from the Teen Titans and Justice League books i had been reading. It has been vindicating to see it become one of the most lauded books in comic history.
The problem with the violence, is that comic book violence needs to be brutal and extreme to evoke some emotion in the reader. The director was true to those scenes, but they are MUCH harder to watch when brought to life. And i actually turned away in a few.
If the watchmen is tasteless, it is only because it is a reflection of our world. Rape, murder, abuse are realities. The point of the Watchmen is about the risk of sacrificing our humanity in the service of saving humanity. It really would have been more topical before the election of Obama, because the US response to 9/11 was an example of a country destroying itself to save itself. Now, i think the country has moved back towards a more sane, less destructive path.
Re:Send me! (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not really hard to do better than "oh I can't adapt a thousand-page book in less than three movies OH HERE'S A BUNCH OF UNNECESSARY SCENES, HERE'S LIV TYLER BEING PRETTY FOR THIRTY BORING MINUTES, also, ELEPHANT-TRUNK SURFIIIIING IS HOW WE ELVES ROLL, DAWG"
Re:Dots? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a really dick move to wait for the film to be over before asking for the money back for the anti-piracy dots.
If you were a good person, you'd walk out in the middle and ask.
Waiting until you've enjoyed the whole film before asking for your money back is like eating the entire meal and then complaining to the manager that it was too cold.
Re:Send me! (Score:3, Insightful)
Proust wrote about cake. Joyce wrote about the pleasures of a good turd. Kafka wrote about a giant spider. There's no received wisdom about "acceptably literary topics".