Watchmen

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

Not only did you idiots over-analyze the movie

 

Where did this happen?

[The Niggardly King 0]

Oh, I could never hear what Nixon was saying because everyone was laughing at the bad makeup.

Well, with the exception of "Frost/Nixon", I can't think of a single television or movie portrayal of Nixon that doesn't come off as cartoonish.

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088074/

 

Terrific performance.

 

holy fucking shit, I haven't see this in a while. It made me a Phil Baker Hall fan for life

[The Niggardly King 0]

Watchmen shouldn't have a 98-pound girl being able to twist a guy's head all the way around.

 

Ah, I see... can't handle a strong petite woman, huh? You misogynistic twat.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

I'm still seeing a lot of "this was bad because it wasn't exactly like the book" logic, which I frankly don't agree with. This is the most faithful reproduction of a comic book story (yes, I'm calling it that because it was originally published as a 12-issue series) ever made. Film has different strengths and weaknesses than comics do, so a 100% faithful translation is impossible. Many people are being hypercritical because every single thing wasn't exactly like it was in the book, instead of judging it on its own merits.

The plot is mostly faithful, and the images are faithful. The themes, tone, and several characters of the film are not terribly faithful to the book, unless you are reading the book in extremely simplistic fashion. I consider those a lot more important than, say, the blots on Rorschach's mask or Bubastis or a given line of dialogue appearing. That's not "overanalyzing" the movie; it's just analyzing it. If you enjoyed this incarnation, more power to you, but I think it's been made pretty clear why several people didn't, and it's not just cause there's no squid or Black Freighter.

[Gary Floyd 0]

It's frustrating to see this thread transform into "Jerk tries (and fails) to make an argument."

[Special K 0]

Really, if the movie had been the same up until the ending, and then they had just NAILED it, I would have been VERY happy. But they pretty much killed every emotionally resonant moment in the ending:

the visceral destruction.Veidt's elation. Rorschach's death. Jon and Veidt's conversation. Jon watching the sleeping lovers, smiling sadly and leaving. Sally kissing the Comedian goodbye.

Every one of these, fucked up or omitted entirely. It really makes the film land with a thud.

 

 

By the way, when I said "Jesus Christ" in my earlier post, I wasn't literally talking to Jesus Christ, but using a common figure of speech. Even though none of you were alive when Jesus was, I expected people to get what I meant. But since no one knows me personally, I guess I shouldn't take that for granted.

Not only did you idiots over-analyze the movie, but now you're over-analyzing jokes about the movie. Keep up the good work, guys.

By the way, one thing that really bugged me about this movie? There were no word balloons over people's heads. That was in, like, almost every panel of the comic, but Snyder didn't do it at all! Completely ruined the spirit of the book. I also didn't like how the characters weren't all outlined in black ink.

 

Jerk, stop pouting because people asked you to explain your opinions and you don't know what irony is.

 

Not one person has simply pointed out differences and whined, they've explained clearly why they do or do not like the changes.

You sound like CronoT. For shame.

[SuperJerk 0]

*sigh*

 

Shit fucking Christ, guys, it is just a movie. There's no law that says I have to agree with your opinions. You guys are taking this thing WAY too seriously.

[Nighthawk 0]

Shut the fuck up.

[The Ghost of bps21 0]

I was talking to a friend of mine about it and I landed right near where Special K did. They got so much of it right...that as a fan of the book I was thrilled often. But the ending (which is my favorite part of the story by a mile) didn't work. I think it's equal parts the bloodless destruction of New York leaving me feeling like they were standing around debating nothing of particular importance, and part that Ozymandias is such a weak looking motherfucker. It's the only extended time that his performance really had to carry anything...and it sank like a stone.

[SuperJerk 0]

*sigh*

 

Shit fucking Christ, guys, it is just a movie. There's no law that says I have to agree with your opinions. You guys are taking this thing WAY too seriously.

 

Exhibit A:

EDIT: hey, 3-man chain responding to that comment.

 

Exhibit B:

Jerk, stop pouting because people asked you to explain your opinions and you don't know what irony is.

 

Exhibit C:

Shut the fuck up.

 

I rest my case.

[Special K 0]

SJ, everyone in this thread was having a perfectly fine time agreeing and disagreeing on the merits of this film. You know, having a conversation on a topic. Something you apparently can't do without making broad generalizations and blanket statements and failing to back them up. The only thing people can agree on is that you have shit for brains. Is everyone else in the thread wrong or just you?

 

You don't know what irony is. You seem to think that ironic means 'apt' or 'fitting'. It kind of means the exact opposite. Do you misuse the word 'literally' a lot too? You further compound this by seeming to think sharing that you think something is kind of apt or fitting (or in your world 'ironic') is making a joke. It is not. You cannot present a cogent argument. Everything you say is a non sequiter.

 

State specifically what you did or did not like, or share an observation. Do not start screaming about how everyone takes the movie way to seriously. We don't. We just think you are incredibly fucking stupid. Stop derailing the thread. Stop making terrible non-jokes. You are awful.

[Cartman 0]

I enjoyed the movie alot. I have never read the GN so the different ending didn't phase me much. I think we all know the reason behind the "Bloodless destruction of NYC" so bearing that in mind it makes it hard to complain about it too much. I wish there wasn't such a censorship involved these days, especially in Hollywood, but that's the way it is and that is not going to change for a long, long time.

[The Ghost of bps21 0]

It's a complaint based mainly on the decision to make so many previous things so graphic and violent beforehand. It makes the destruction of NYC look like the most harmless thing that happened in the film.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

I know 9/11 is probably the reason Snyder/the studio didn't do a bloody New York, but why? 9/11 was, as viewed by most, bloodless; there weren't bodies all over the city or anything. Assuming some sort of sensitivity to the event anyway, why the almost-insulting shot of New York being rebuilt, with the WTC towers quite prominent in the middle of the shot? That felt like a joke/reference the movie hadn't quite earned. The movie was all over the place.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Since I don't think I made it clear earlier, I actually liked Watchmen for the most part. It succeeds as an entertainment and little else; this thread proves just how easily Snyder & Co.'s house of cards falls apart under even the slightest scrutiny.

 

And that's what happened in this thread, SuperJerk. It did not take a great amount of mental power to point out what's wrong with the film. Unfortunately, you are incapable of realizing that, just like you are unaware of the definition of irony, or how "jokes" actually work. You are not good at what you do.

[The Ghost of bps21 0]

I know 9/11 is probably the reason Snyder/the studio didn't do a bloody New York, but why? 9/11 was, as viewed by most, bloodless; there weren't bodies all over the city or anything. Assuming some sort of sensitivity to the event anyway, why the almost-insulting shot of New York being rebuilt, with the WTC towers quite prominent in the middle of the shot? That felt like a joke/reference the movie hadn't quite earned. The movie was all over the place.

 

A friend of mine pointed this out to me too. I think my mind just kind of dismissed it because the movie is set in a time where the Towers would still be up.

[Nighthawk 0]

I rest my case.

 

Your case that you're a jackass? Yes, we know.

[Boner Kawanger 0]

I saw it Sunday, I just haven't had much of a desire to share my opinion. I might have mentioned it earlier, but I haven't read Watchmen in a few years. I think this is why, that while I was watching the movie, I enjoyed it as much as I did. Sure, there were a few parts where I was forced to think something like "Did that warrant going into slow motion?" or "How did that guy lose all that blood in three seconds?" which took me out of it. I still enjoyed it though. Then I got home and found out my roommate had a copy of the graphic novel in his closet. I finished rereading it last night and promptly dismissed the movie. While I feel that the crew should be applauded for how much content they transferred from the book to film (especially given the requests of the studio), it seems to me that they merely threw as much as they could at a wall while blindfolded and got lucky to get close to the target.

 

What I mean by that is this was a movie made by people who enjoyed Watchmen but didn't really get everything they should out of it. Let me make it clear that I'm not one of those people who feel like the squid was a necessity or something like that. To be honest, I preferred the master plan in the movie to that of the book. It made it feel more...organic (ironic, considering they ditched an alien in favor of a godly figure), like it was more natural to the story.

 

That said, the road to the master plan was pretty bumpy, mostly due to the mishandling of Ozymandias. This could be my bias, because as I read the book again, I rediscovered that while Veidt wasn't my favorite character, he was the most fascinating. It's a shame so much of his character development was sacrificed and I have a bad feeling that what I wanted to get from the character in retrospect was never put to film and thus won't be in the director's cut or extended edition (mini rant: what the fuck is the difference?). Allow me to expound.

 

I don't remember being so engrossed in Watchmen when I owned my copy. It really is something you have to read over and over and absorb more and more each time. By the time I reached Chapter XI, I began to view the movie as flawed. For a "visionary director", Zak Snyder really dropped the ball in the final act, because XI is more cinematic as a comic than his movie ever dreamed of being. I've never experienced something like this in reading a comic, but everything just flowed. If it had a score, it would have been one of the more tense experiences ever experienced in any form of entertainment. The movie version just fell flat.

 

I realize certain elements like Dr. Long and his problems at home and the juxtaposition at the end with the problems on the street corner had to be cut, and these necessary sacrifices took a lot of tension away. Watchmen should be about the death of people (insert the complaints about too much gore throughout and the total lack of death in the climax), but this movie is merely about explosions. Hell, more people die in the movie than the book but the grief was completely lost. I'm not saying it was completely devoid of emotion but that it just couldn't execute the idea properly.

 

Before I go on and on, allow me to summarize. The Watchmen movie is an accurate portrayal of the first time you read the book. It's awesome. I hope that the next time I see it (if I do-not a knock but christ when I bought the extended LotR DVDs, I never found the time to watch any of them) I can pick up on things I didn't notice, especially if it's a different version. But I doubt it. Alan Moore says there are things done in his book that can only be done in the comic book medium. He knows more about writing comics than I do, but I think that a visually inclined director could have nailed one of the central ideas of Watchmen-the parallelism of the story and imagery. Take, for example,

the death of Rorschach. They actually improved on one aspect (just as they detracted from it with Dan's anguished scream) with the bloodstain forming a final rorschach blot. Yet they remove striking imagery such as the reoccurring shadows of lovers.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that substance was sacrificed in favor of style, a sacrifice that will make rewatching the movie a chore whereas rereading the book is its own reward. Sorry for going overboard with the paragraphs; I didn't expect to do that.

 

 

[dubq 0]

I got the motion comic bluray on sale at BestBuy today.. aside from be being voiced by one guy (which is fine, really, it's just weird for the female parts) ..I thought it was pretty awesome. I'd actually like to see more graphic novels done like this.

[dubq 0]

There's a difference between "I'm in a debate on television" makeup and "I have a fake nose which is bigger than most penises" makeup. Combined with the actor's cartoonish impression, it was less than perfect.

 

Gugino's makeup was worse in that it simply did not make her look anything close to a convincing elderly person. Neither did her performance, where she wasn't even trying to change her voice to sound like an older woman.

 

Yes, Nixon did look cartoonish.. but I got the impression that he was supposed to look cartoonish. As fo Gugino's makeup, I didn't see the problem with it. You all must be wearing extra high-definition glasses or something because it looked fine to me.

[Boner Kawanger 0]

I think they did or are doing a Batman Black & White motion comic..

[Fuzzy Dunlop 0]

I got the motion comic bluray on sale at BestBuy today.. aside from be being voiced by one guy (which is fine, really, it's just weird for the female parts) ..I thought it was pretty awesome. I'd actually like to see more graphic novels done like this.

 

Does this include the stuff at the end of each chapter, like Under The Hood and everything else?

[Special K 0]

Alan Moore says there are things done in his book that can only be done in the comic book medium.

 

There's a reason the best, most affecting part of the movie is Jon's reflection on the moon. In the movie, it exists as essentially a series of still images and narration, not dialogue.

 

Also, I doubt it'll be fun to go back and pick through the movie frame-by-frame to find all the little visual nuances you missed, like little subplots going on the in the background foreshadowing events to come, counting how many times you can find the 'splatter', etc. It could be, Snyder could have hidden all sorts of fun stuff, but I doubt it, subtlety not being his strong suit and all.

[dubq 0]

I got the motion comic bluray on sale at BestBuy today.. aside from be being voiced by one guy (which is fine, really, it's just weird for the female parts) ..I thought it was pretty awesome. I'd actually like to see more graphic novels done like this.

 

Does this include the stuff at the end of each chapter, like Under The Hood and everything else?

 

No Under the Hood, but the stuff with the kid reading the Black Freighter is in there still. I think that they're releasing Under the Hood on it's on with an animated version of the Black Freighter at the end of this month actually.

[Special K 0]

^Indeed they are! In fact, I think the ad in the theater said in stores now... but I'm not sure.

[Boner Kawanger 0]

Oh, a few pages back someone said they didn't understand why Dan and Laurie go incognito at the end of the book. The reason would be that the police were onto them for breaking Rorschach out of prison. They'd even been to Dan's home a few times.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I know 9/11 is probably the reason Snyder/the studio didn't do a bloody New York, but why? 9/11 was, as viewed by most, bloodless; there weren't bodies all over the city or anything. Assuming some sort of sensitivity to the event anyway, why the almost-insulting shot of New York being rebuilt, with the WTC towers quite prominent in the middle of the shot? That felt like a joke/reference the movie hadn't quite earned. The movie was all over the place.

 

A friend of mine pointed this out to me too. I think my mind just kind of dismissed it because the movie is set in a time where the Towers would still be up.

But most of the people (or most of the American audience) watching the film are going to make some sort of connection in the shot of the still-standing World Trade Center and a partially destroyed New York. Why was it in the film? What were they going for here? I just don't think anyone making the film thought this out anymore than "hey, won't this look neat?" And it didn't help that, as has been pointed out, the climatic sequence is a sort of nonevent compared to the almost pornographic violence throughout the movie.

 

It's not that all this offended me, but I definitely found it weird and distracting. This also isn't to suggest they should've done some Zoolander-style removal of the WTC entirely, but that they shouldn't have picked such a moment in the film to display it so prominently. At the screening I attended, I could even hear people pointing it out as if they just noticed it for this first time, even though the towers were visible at other points in the movie.

[The Ghost of bps21 0]

I'm gonna have to wait till I see it again. I was too busy sitting in awe thinking "That's it?" at the climactic destruction of the city. I was really expecting a violent bloody wasteland after all the buildup. And...to be honest...it really needed it.

 

It's kind of the same complaint I had with the movie Serenity (although I love the movie). At the end they find this planet and everyone is dead...but instead of there being millions of bodies just...everywhere in some horrific scene...they find a small controlled group of dead. Now...that movie went for a PG-13...so I get it...but man do I wish it had been bigger so as to lend more power to the crews decision to run a suicide mission to get the truth out.

 

Watchmen went with an R...so they could have done whatever they wanted...and I obviously understand why they didn't...but then...maybe they shouldn't make a movie where the climax is dependant on the massacre of all those innocent lives in NYC.

 

...

 

That was a long thought to get to the point where I say...yeah...I'm over 9-11. If you have to blow up NYC in a comic book movie...just do it.

[Nighthawk 0]

Solution would be to show it prominently earlier in the film, but it's the fault of the audience. They were clearly visible during Adrian's introduction, where he's looking out his office windows. I even noted that as a good moment to show them.

 

I'd venture to call them NY's most prominent landmark, while they were around, but I don't think they had any particular significance here, and you can't have them destroyed in the attack, for political reasons, so there you go. They're going to have to be there, so may as well place them front and center ("won't this look neat").

 

And I agree... I never cared about 9/11, but by this point, I won't even grant them the courtesy of politely sidestepping it.

[Fuzzy Dunlop 0]

I never cared about 9/11

 

Huh?