WATCHMEN - Yes I've seen it.

And I'll answer yes/no questions about it if anyone can generate enough caring to ask them. Supposed to be reviewing it so I'll probably link to that as well.

Was Anthony Lane right?

I'd have to know who Anthony Lane was. Rilly.

Did you like it?

Does the new ending work?

You know, Dan, that's a hard question to give a yes/no to. I'm still struggling with it because I simply can't divorce the original book from the movie, and on the level of intangibles, the movie fell short.

The new ending works in WATCHMEN the film but is also totally nonsensical. I'll go into more detail if people can live with unmarked spoilers.

<3 Watchmen, must read again.

I say go for it, Matt.

Okay, the new "ending".

Dr. Manhattan is the giant enemy that unites mankind. Ozy uses Magic Blue Technology to wipe out a bunch of world capitals and make it look like Dr. Manhattan did it. That was set up and consistent within the film version of WATCHMEN. But at the same time, it's totally nonsensical since if that was the case, there's NOTHING ON EARTH ANYONE COULD DO ABOUT a giant, pissed-off blue guy blowing up cities. If Dr. Manhattan wanted to destroy the earth, then it's made clear that he could do it, questions about "even he'd let 1% of their missiles through" aside, there's nothing that shows he could be stopped, aside from his own perceptions of what we call time.

The aliens made sense, even though they were taken from "The Architects of Fear." It was a one-time HOLY CRAP THERE'S REALLY SOMETHING BIGGER THAN US AND WE BETTER GET OUR SHIT TOGETHER moment that the book supported. Putting that on Manhattan's shoulders just doesn't have the same impact.

Heh. Some yes/no answer.

space cock pwns space pussy

xp

Was Anthony Lane right?

As a rule, rarely.

you know, i was eavesdropping some guy in a comic book store expound about how 9/11 was our giant squid and it didn't solve anything and all i could think was that would be an awesome username and that's when i realized i was part of the problem.

The aliens made sense, even though they were taken from "The Architects of Fear."

i thought it was a goof based on reagan telling gorbachev that if aliens invaded, the us and ussr would team up to fight them

i was eavesdropping some guy in a comic book store expound about how 9/11 was our giant squid

this thought actually crossed my mind last night and then i laughed at myself

"our"?

I'm pretty sure that's like saying "Pearl Harbor was our giant squid." National (as opposed to worldwide) menaces are NOT in keeping with the Spirit of the Giant Squid.

I mean I'm not gonna be Bong Hit Analogy Defender but insofar as it was an "alien" attack (ie most Americans were unfamiliar with Al-Qaeda) that temporarily--if superficially--united the world against a common menace, it seems like there's something to it.

that said its obv hilarious on its face and doesn't stand up to close scrutiny

Does the film subvert the graphic novel's supposed critique of comic book violence by indulging in an excess of its own stylized violence?

Friends who attended early screenings say yes. Though less "subvert" than "miss the point of" is what it seems.

Yeah, point missed, largely.

"Does the film subvert the graphic novel's supposed critique of comic book violence by indulging in an excess of its own stylized violence?

― Mordy, Tuesday, March 3, 2009 8:43 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban "

i hope this is meant to be satirical.

Wow, that was... not that good. Hardly surprising. Those were some bad actors, and weirdly the Wilson brother who plays Nite-Owl looks as though his face was drawn by Steve Dillon.

Love the way a film which panders so much to the torture porn crowd (lovingly extended sequences of arms being angle-ground off, heads being hatcheted, child's leg being eaten by dogs, rape attempt in slow-motion, etc) attempts to have cake/eat it with bullshit about importance of humanity, etc, etc.

Dialogue/narration which worked on the page REALLY REALLY doesn't work coming out of actors' mouths. Especially not these actors.

I'm not a big fan of reviews that could've been written before the movie was made.

I'm not a big fan of movies which fail in exactly the most predictable ways.

not sure how the GN critiques comic book violence. it critiques the moral simplicity of comic book heroism in a way that encompasses violence, among other things, but i don't think it addresses violence directly, at least not in a critical sense.

Very poor. C-

Seriously though, I don't feel like wading through that giant ILE thread on this. ILC thoughts?

Alan Moore and Pat Mills talking abt the genius of Ken Reid:

http://www.archive.org/details/PanelBordersTheArtOfKenReid

Great examples of Reid's work here:

http://www.comicsuk.co.uk/Interviews/KenReid/KenReidOverview.asp

Does the movie get the substance or subtlety of the book? Of course not. But I enjoyed it anyway - as a companion to the book (I mean, really - there are all sorts of visual details and dialogue that are totally unsubstantiated by the film itself, referring to things in the book and possibly the director's cut) and just seeing things realized in a slick, vivid vision was fun. Certain moments especially, like Manhattan's origin, were really quite good, likely as perfect as you could possibly achieve on film. The opening credits montage was a great way to include the alternate universe/40s history quickly.

It's weird because I see both sides of the critics on this one, I can't disagree much with either side, I just happen to fall a bit more on the positive one, maybe because I lowered my expectations to something roughly V for Vendetta level. The big twists didn't seem well done, though it's hard to tell, knowing as I did - but Adrian was the only major miscasting, too obviously evil. Not to mention most of his backstory was cut. And the various alterations to the final scenes (hilariously awful "Nooooooooooooooooo!") really didn't work, and it slightly downplayed the utilitarian moral choices the heroes made. I don't object a ton to the missing squid, basically the story was the same.

I think I read one review that complained about how Rorshach's thought box in the comic in in the prison ("You're trapped in here with me") was made into real dialogue in the film was an interesting point. I can see how fans would be bothered by that, because it's a good example of how certain things that were quiet/subtle in the book were overblown and screaming in the film, but when I saw the scene I just laughed - this is the movie it is, you know what I mean? It starts with the Comedian murder in crazy slow motion, not a blood stain on the sidewalk.

> It starts with the Comedian murder in crazy slow motion, not a blood stain on the sidewalk.

Exactly the sort of thing I feared, and that's keeping me away.

took some of my charges to see it this afternoon (aka, I just got paid, by the hour, to watch a movie). felt too long and too slight by turns.

A friend of mine just wrote up a fairly thorough writeup on Watchmen tie-ins, merchandising, etc. that might be worth reading if anyone wants to read something about the movie that doesn't really discuss the movie (which I assume everyone is sick of reading about at this point).

http://andanotherthing.chucklehound.com/2001/03/this-is-time-these-are-feelings.html

I saw the film too - and liked it.

I think I read one review that complained about how Rorshach's thought box in the comic in in the prison ("You're trapped in here with me") was made into real dialogue in the film was an interesting point.

Nerd-level detail, but that's actually in the psychologist's thought box as he's quoting Rorschach.

Wow, of all the things to complain about, that was among the most meaningless one.

Not many things make me laugh (outside of Gabriel Garcia Marquez). This did

The movie, on the other hand, absolutely wallows in sensational violence and overactive sensation. Truly, this is a Watchmen for the Geoff Johns era. If, as artist Frank Santoro recently remarked, the original comics were "a Lutheran reformation text knocking on the door of the Catholic establishment by a devout believer," then the movie kicks down the castle church's door, leaps onto the altar and pounds all the wine in sight ‘cause it just don't care and then it flexes its muscles and slips on its shades before saying "the treasures of the indulgences are nets with which they now fish for the riches of men." Then it pulls out a skateboard and grinds down a pew out a window. Also, this happens after the Enlightenment.

Inspired!

What I wrote on the ILE thread:

It's not a bad film for what it is. I couldn't help but spend the whole time scrutinising it and comparing it to the comic, and of course it fell well short. None of the people I went with knew the book well (one guy had read it ten years ago), and they were expecting an entertaining, darker than average superhero flick, and that's what they got. None of them had the slightest problem following the plot, by the way. I felt a bit curmudgeonly with my complaints afterwards - everyone was like 'lighten up you nerd, it was pretty decent.'

One point it failed utterly on - I asked one friend if he'd guessed that Viedt was behind everything, and he said he had right from his first scene.

One point it failed utterly on - I asked one friend if he'd guessed that Viedt was behind everything, and he said he had right from his first scene.

I am not surprised by this. When I saw it, it seemed so unbelievably obvious that he was behind everything, but I thought it was just because I was so familiar with the comic. Sinister and effeminate basically screams "I am the bad guy" in Hollywood movies I suppose. I thought the portrayal of Ozy was all wrong from that point of view - reading the comic again now he comes across as (and looks like) a typical spandex hero, albeit with added intelligence, rather than some skinny androgynous dude.

Other than that I was perfectly happy with the movie. In some ways it did a better job of really underlining that all these superheroes are essentially psychopaths, but maybe that was just through the gratuitous violence. Thought the ending was basically fine - alien stuff wouldn't have worked outside the context of the comic. Rorshach was pretty spot on.

The martial arts scenes were guff like Matrix-lite or something - I honestly never really got the impression from the comic, that, maybe Ozymandias excepted, the characters were versed in any fighting other than street brawling. Sex scene was completely shit. Soundtrack was abysmal, but I generally dislike movies that are soundtracked with familiar popular music rather than a specifically written score.

In the end, it didn't need to be made but as with LoTR, I'm content to shrug and say it was inevitably going to get made at some point and it was probably the best they could have done. Easily the best adaptation of a Moore comic to date.

> Easily the best adaptation of a Moore comic to date.

That's a mighty small piece of candy.

OTM about Veidt's villianosity from the first scene. He was portrayed as cold and distant and basically inhuman from the start, a feeling I never got from my reading of the original.

And "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" on the muzak in Veidt's office? Really, soundtrack guy? Is that the best you could do?

reading the comic again now he comes across as (and looks like) a typical spandex hero, albeit with added intelligence, rather than some skinny androgynous dude.

Also, he comes across as a nice guy in the comic, not an aloof weirdo.

Agreed on the shitness of the soundtrack. Any bits of original score I noticed were truly awful as well.

Thought the ending was basically fine

Actually, doesn't the very very ending now make no sense at all? In the book, it's very open-ended -- the New Internationalist guys might find out about Veidt's squid conspiracy. But in the movie, it doesn't really compute -- there's no way they could really tie Veidt to Manhattan, and Manhattan could still (theoretically) come back for revenge.

I'm tempted to say V for Vendetta was a better adaptation -- as a movie, I liked it even less, but it worked on its own stupid terms as a story, while Watchmen was just, well, all over the place.

I still find it odd, though, how the movie can be so much the same as the book while being completely different. It's a bit like the movie equivalent of tracing, I guess.

As for the score, it occurs to me they could have slightly de-shittied it by doing new remixes of these "classic" songs, as to how they might have sounded in an alternative history. They still would have been laboured and intrusive, but at least a bit more interesting/odd for the audience.

That's not a bad idea. Now if they'd done that with more interesting musical choices (and maybe fit Gary Numan's "I Dream of Wires" over the end credits somehow) they might've been onto something.

Or if maybe they'd taken the UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD approach and get interesting musicians to do original material....

The fights are utter shit. I fucking hate bullet time and it takes away the very real sensation of violence and coreography of violence in a defined space that the comic has. The very worst is the scene between The Big Figure and Rorschach in the prison. That scene in the comic is just so perfectly rendered, with Rorschach barely moving but very precise, you understand the plan. Here it comes across as sloppy and simply violent before being a perfectly thought takedown.

Overall, the movie is absolutely superficial and dumb, the thing it reminded me most is the Harry Potter movies, with their "and then this happens, and then this, and this, and this, and this, the end" rhythm. Absolutely hated the compression of Rorschach origin, which takes away all its impact. Also this takes away any kind of narrative crescendo, feeling like a series of "events" rather than a story, which makes it incredibly boring.

When they billed this as "from the director of 300" I should have realized that meant everything it implies.

I mentioned to a friend that I wished they used all the set design and technology to create a Taxi Driver-styled city, much like Zodiac rolled back San Francisco to the 70s without having many "look, we recreated the past!" montages.

Veidt casting and acting was horrible, along with the action/sex sequences. I get that Watchmen is supposed to be gritty, but having a bloody mess in a comic panel doesn't mean you have to linger on the shot in film, or that the equivalent of having realistic violence is to repeatedly show bones being snapped and arms chopped off.

Also, anyone else think they mispronounced Rorschach in the whole film?

Hey! The Rorschach pronunciation bugged me too! But I thought that I was the one pronouncing it wrong (for me it was always "Rorshash")

Does a soft 'ch' sound exist in American English? That might be what's throwing you. In the US, there's no such thing as a 'shedule'.

A friend of mine told me she has a large, bright blue vibrator that she's now taken to calling "Doctor Manhattan."

always thought rorschach (in watchmen) wld be pronounced as close to 'raw shark' as poss. for obv reasons

I spent roughly from Nite Owl and Roarrrrrrcheark arriving in Antarctica to the end of the film ganting for a piss, so I would like to see it again when I can enjoy the ending without such distractions. But I still think it was somewhere between pretty good to very good, possibly even totally awesome.

Oh man, and the intro was just bad

do you mean the big fite or the montage? I loved those.

Montage was actually really good (except for super-obvious musical choice). The big fight was a load of crap, though: made it seem from the very start that these guys were all super-powered. And sudden slow-mo/bullet time can go fuck itself.

really, io9?
http://io9.com/5313581/see-the-moment-that-should-have-been-in-zack-snyders-watchmen

this scene seems just as shit as the rest of the movie.

or rather, it's everything that was shit about the movie, encapsulated in 2 or so minutes.

Okay, serious question: i haven't seen the film yet, though I think it's next on my netflix. Is the rest of the movie as bathetic, contrived, detail-obsessed, sadistic and tone deaf as this scene? Cause if so, I may skip entirely.
I did see the opening credits; somehow this seems like an extension of them.

Yes, it is.

the opening credits are the best part

Is the rest of the movie as bathetic, contrived, detail-obsessed, sadistic and tone deaf as this scene?

Pretty much. I did like it and all of its lurid ridiculousness, but its definitely the EC Comics version of the story.

Gawd, IO9 is shit.

definitely the EC Comics version of the story
Aw, now you've made me want to watch it again.

More like the Image comics version.

The movie's ridiculous but I still think kind of enjoyable - as long as you just come in with low expectations and are willing to ignore the really obviously bad (and wrong) stuff. I think I still liked it overall. Just don't take it too seriously.

It's more bathetic, more contrived, more detail-obsessed, more sadistic and more tone deaf than that scene. It's the Orgy cover of "Blue Monday" of comics adaptations.

All of which makes it better than The Dark Knight.

Eh, dark knight was okay. Maybe i'll try this anyway.

absolutely hilarious that anyone ever thought this film would be any good

still better than The Dark Knight.

That's Hongroesquely wrong.

hongroneous

I am kind of lolling at how offended this movie makes people.

I not offended by it being a bad adaptation, just a bad movie.

saw this on the back of an airplane seat, mind, but was ultimately pretty meh about it. maybe it would've impressed on the big screen, but whatever

dark knight >>>>>>>>>>> watchmen, jesus wtf is wrong with you

Agree with everyone's criticisms of the soundtrack (apart from the Glass stuff, which was obvious but worked) and that they screwed up Ozymandias. Not convinced about the ultra-violence gripes - I think this is mostly a consequence of onscreen violence being sort of intrinsically more shocking/disgusting than comic book violence, people forget that the violence in the comic is pretty extreme and fetischized already. I mean:

I get that Watchmen is supposed to be gritty, but having a bloody mess in a comic panel doesn't mean you have to linger on the shot in film

I think you kinda do, if faithfulness to the comic is your main concern? Those panels in Watchmen are kinda made to draw attention to themselves, for the eye to linger on the carnage. I obviously don't think Moore and Gibbons were just doing torture porn, but I don't think that they were particuarly careful in avoiding it, either.

And I don't think the movie "missed the point" to a great extent - the characters remain as pathetic/psychotic/misguided as they were in the comic, and the final ethical dilemma remains unchanged. Yeah you can watch the movie and come away with the idea that Rosarch is a fucking badass - thousands of people read Watchmen and came away with the exact same thought, this is how the 90's happened!

Mostly I enjoyed this movie, and it actually made me warm a bit to what is still probably about my ninth favourite thing Moore has done. As far as the Dark Knight comparsion goes, well at least the stupid bits of of Watchmen (fucking to Leonard Cohen!) are bizarre and hilarious, the stupid bits of Dark Knight are just boring and faintly offesive (prisoner dude doing the right thing on the boat, for example.) But then it's sort of unfair to compare the two, Batman has decades and decades worth of variations and so it's pretty easy to notice that grim outcast realistic Bats isn't a particuarly interesting or entertaining concept when compared to Batman: The Animated Series or the 60's tv show or Brave & The Bold or that issue where he travels back in time and walks around arm in arm with a musketeer.

I think the bloody scenes in the comic were sort of a counter-reaction to the fact that for most of their history superhero fights had been unrealistically clean and bloodless, and still were pretty much so in 1986. With those scenes Gibbons & Moore probably wanted to point out that in real life beating people up does a lot of severe damage, that this is what it would like if Batman fought street thugs in real life. The fight scenes aren't really aesthetisized, they look nasty and are over quickly. Now, with the Watchmen movie in 2009, it's a very different situation: there's a long history of aesthetisized and bloody violence in movies, and Snyder falls firmly into this tradition. He does all these intricately coreographed violence ballets, but he also shows the bloody results of violence. So basically he wants to have his cake and eat it; to both do cool fight scenes and moralize on the effects of violence. In the comic, the violent scenes are a critical commentary on the sanitized nature of violence in superhero comics. In the movie, they simply don't work in a similarly critical manner.

I think the violence in the movie is meant to be a commentary on the sanitized violence of super-hero movies. The Batman movies are ultra-violent yet nearly bloodless; the same for the Spider-Man, Hulk and Fantastic Four movies. Whether he succeeds at making that point is debatable.

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?