WATCHMEN - Yes I've seen it.

Basically I think it's impossible to make violence in an action movie (and let's face it, there was no way this movie would have been made by a major studio if it wasn't on some level an action movie) not appear stylized/fetischized/trivialized to some extent.

I think EZ is OTM; you don't see gore in any of the major superhero movies with the sole exception of Two-Face, whose entire character is predicated upon horrific scarring of half of his face.

pencil in a dudes eye, total childs play, but if there had been blood, damn that would have been gross

The line "The Dark Knight" walks between comic book violence and visceral awful violence is pretty great and done better than "Watchmen" IMO; I don't think this invalidates what "Watchmen" was trying to do.

i think the reason the violence is so over the top is because zac snyder is a hack who doesnt know how else to do it. i mean we can keep pretending that hes making commentary, but the violence in this and 300 just show that he has little or no imagination "hey its a fight - initiate quick slow extreme closeup of bloody stump blood spatter on camera lens DIRECTOR SEQUENCE".

As with many other things, he's only a hack if you don't like his style. "300" and "Watchmen" do the same thing for different reasons, IMO; "300" is basically attempting to fill time within a wafer-thin story by doing over-the-top violence porn in a wholly fantastic setting with monsters and giants and other assorted nonsense, whereas "Watchmen" is taking the same device and putting it into a world much more like our own and juxtaposing it against sequences where these exact same badasses are unsure, insecure fumblers who have issues navigating real life. It's partially going to be the movie's fault if it can't bring you into its story deeply enough to buy its presentation but it may also be your fault if (and this is a big if) you aren't willing to give the movie the chance to stand on its own in the first place.

(A great movie will draw you in regardless but I'm not making the argument that "Watchmen" is a great movie.)

Yeah, thats fair - I think I've said before on here that 300 is the second worst movie I've ever seen in a theater, so obv I am not down with his schtick. Still, claiming that his style is some sort of clever commentary on violence is revisionist at best. I thought that Watchmen was OK, but I'd say that the chance that using exactly the same presentation of the bloodshed was some sort of brilliant directorial move is bullshit. xpost

I mean its kind of like claiming that Jim Carrey's performance in "The Mask" was a brilliant and subtle homage to Tex Avery instead of "oh look, rubberface Jim Carrey sells movie tickets".

I thought that Watchmen was OK, but I'd say that the chance that using exactly the same presentation of the bloodshed was some sort of brilliant directorial move is bullshit.

I am not sure this sentence is saying what you want for it to say (unless "chance" is standing in for "idea")!

Anyway, I'd have more sympathy with that point if I hadn't read about a bazillion interviews with Snyder where he spent a lot of time yammering about how he wanted to brutalize the superhero movie and also if I thought that a decision had to be brilliant in order to be effective. The Jim Carrey example is a bad one because that entire character, from its comic book conception to how it's presented onscreen, is a blatant Tex Avery pastiche and your point doesn't make any sense unless you think every silly character Carrey does apes Tex Avery.

yeah i think chance there was due to getting interrupted mid sentence and just coming back and typing away.

and re: the Carrey example - i just picked the first crappy not ace ventura carrey vehicle i could think of. point remains, in the pre-truman show era, if you heard that jim carrey was in a movie, you knew what you were going to get, and if you hear that snyder is directing a movie, you know that the violence is going to look like. he can do a thousand interviews talking about his supposed intentions, but that doesnt change the fact that when he does violence, its going to look exactly the same. I mean, Rob Zombie did a shit ton of interviews about how he was going to re-invent the slasher genre when he did the remake of Halloween, and guess what? it looked like another cookie cutter shock slasher Rob Zombie movie. just taking your style and draping it over a script doesnt equal an interpretation, its an indication of the limitations of your abilities.

My counter-argument is that dealing in broad-brush comedy does not mean the Fire Marshall Bill, Vera di Milo and The Mask are all the same. The Rob Zombie argument is stronger largely because you're comparing apples to apples (director to director rather than director to actor).

I mean, if you hate what Snyder does it's going to negatively impact how much you like "Watchmen"; there's sort of nowhere to go from there.

btw Vera is still one of the best things Carrey ever did:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH0Tdxybvic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Icb_tRTnA4g

^^^jim carrey's peak imo

Nothing short of cash bribes can make me play those videos. Jim Carrey gives me the hives.

btw, I did watch this finally and it is fucking horrible in every way

Every way?

And yet, still better than The Dark Knight.

:)

Yeah every way. Bad enough that I don't even feel like reiterating the same criticism from above.
And DK is much better.

"it is fucking horrible in every way"

The rest of the movie I can leave up to personal taste but don't tell me The McLaughlin Group impersonations weren't amazing! The jowls!

The makeup for that was distracting and the whole scene screamed "I'M CLEVER! I'M BEING CLEVER AREN'T I! DO YOU GET IT? IT'S THE MCLAUGHLIN GROUP! SO CLEVER!"

What are your feelings of Dana Carvey's rendition?
http://dvdmedia.ign.com/media/reviews/image/mclaughlin.jpg

you're dying to say NEXT TOPIC aren't you?