Superhero Filmmakers: Where's Our Watchmen?

Anyway, I'm hardly a professional film cricket, but a few quick thoughts:

-- Movie didn't seem anywhere near it's 163 minute running time to me. It could've easily been 10 minutes longer from where I sat. Maybe I just have a higher tolerance for long movies.

-- Most of the acting was just fine, esp. Morgan as the Comedian, Wilson, and Haley. Could've stood a little more humor from Crudup. Goode, despite my worries, does a pretty good job of "arrogant douchebag."

-- As far as the violence, I know it's a part of Snyder's whole aesthetic and he obviously loves it, but I get the idea here that he was TRYING to play at the same thing Cronenberg did in A History of Violence and failing. By all rights, movies like "Iron Man" and "The Dark Knight" should be as full of gore as any Evil Dead movie; this superhero movie spares no punches in that regards.

-- Audience laughed like hell at the "Hallelujah" sex scene. LIKE THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO. Why are critics treating it as if the music choice undermines what's supposed to be a serious, tender moment? I always thought it was funny in the comic and it's even funnier here. And flamethrower/ejaculation punchline actually works better here than in the comic.

-- New ending is just fine. I saw it with a couple of MAJOR fanboys, and they were fine with the internal logic of it.

-- I was actually disappointed by the elimination of a single line of dialogue from Veidt: "I wasn't actually sure that would work."

Haven't seen the film, have tickets for tonight.

finished the book last night.

Interesting thing that I never noticed before...the band GWAR got their name from the watchmen!...

the truck driving lesbian that always stops by the newsstand is hanging up a poster for a benefit show her girlfriend is putting on and it's for a org called Gay Women Against Rape...but the GWAR are in bold block letters.

anyway maybe that is common knowledge, or just a coincidence but seems real to me.

CNN reviewer annoyed

the 'visionary' tag really fuckin annoyed me too

would claw his visionary eyes out of his head with my bare hands if I could

"From the visionary eye-clawer of ILX"

the thing is, this is probably exactly how i envisioned a movie of watchmen when i was, y'know, 13 - i distinctly remember imagining the comic as a series of super badass slo-mo shots. but this is why nobody asks 13 year olds how to direct a movie.

[21:57] HELLA like DYING: christ almighty its the goddamn justice league of america
[21:57] eviliraqi: holy farkin sh*t its the watchmen. scram boys.
[21:58] eviliraqi: *teleports chuthulu in from another dimension*
[21:58] HELLA like DYING: lol
[21:59] eviliraqi: heh. so u see. i did it like ten minutes ago.
[21:59] HELLA like DYING: pardon me gents but you won't be needing these *removes guns from all henchmen at superspeed* where you're going
[21:59] HELLA like DYING: INT: Prison
[21:59] eviliraqi: lol
[21:59] HELLA like DYING: Henchman 1: Aww nuts those goddamned watchmen!
[21:59] eviliraqi: *kicks the ground with hands in pocket, a small cloud of dust settles*
[21:59] eviliraqi: those rat fink watchment
[22:00] HELLA like DYING: lol
[22:02] eviliraqi: so u see gents...heh....i did it fifteen minutes ago...
[22:02] eviliraqi: did what ozymandias?
[22:02] eviliraqi: ozymandias: heh...u know....
[22:02] eviliraqi: CAMERA cuts to nite owls face, he is making the http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/4235/9fdaeae5af109b0913b2284fc1.jpg face
[22:02] eviliraqi: CAMERA cuts to ozymandias' face, he is making the http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/4235/9fdaeae5af109b0913b2284fc1.jpg face
[22:03] eviliraqi: Fin.

― cankles, Friday, July 18, 2008 7:09 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this was slept on imo

Will pull together more thoughts for the blog later today but some quick responses here:

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.

Agreed on both these points. Haley and Crudup were the best but even Haley was defeated with the journal entries, which came across as very "Captain's log, stardate etc."

New ending is just fine. I saw it with a couple of MAJOR fanboys, and they were fine with the internal logic of it.

There's a lot about the ending that's pretty lame, but the overarching conceit in terms of who the fall guy is instead of the alien isn't totally out there given what Ozymandias is trying to accomplish. Still, less impressive than I figured.

NYT now listing best selling graphic novels in hardcover, trade and manga; cites Watchmen as reason for doing this?
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/introducing-the-new-york-times-graphic-books-best-seller-lists/

DC's printed/sold a huge amount of the omnibus edition over the last nine months so it's not too surprising they're using that as a hook to hang this on.

Oh, Naruto, will you ever learn?

Repeated about eight times on that list.

but the overarching conceit in terms of who the fall guy is instead of the alien isn't totally out there given what Ozymandias is trying to accomplish

but... how do you reconcile the fact that there's no point in the world's powers joining forces against Dr. Manhattan? Like, why would the mutual threat of Dr. Manhattan solve anything at all?

^^^ ding ding ding

how do you reconcile the fact that there's no point in the world's powers joining forces against Dr. Manhattan?

Well, granted, they wouldn't be nearly as effective against Dr. Manhattan as they would against random dimension-hopping teleporting gigantic psychic vagina squids.

i'm okay with changing that, because the original concept (join forces against aliens = world peace) didnt make sense either, especially for something the 'world's smartest man' would come up with. i imagine that was kinda the point, rly

Also, movie-Ozymandias destroys more than just NY, making his fall guy a more global threat -- and, within the logic of the story, more of a unifying force -- than just NY-smashing space vagina.

seems to me that the more likely result of a God-like figure attacking the world would be everybody surrendering immediately

or is that essentially what happens in the film

Moore intends the jury to be out on whether Ozzy's plan is going to work long term.

that too

Also, movie-Ozymandias destroys more than just NY, making his fall guy a more global threat -- and, within the logic of the story, more of a unifying force

That plus he's a known quantity. Left hanging, though, would be this possible reaction from the rest of the world to the US after the immediate climbdown:

"Hey you clowns, YOU trained him to be the ultimate weapon. Fuck you."

Never thought I'd see Lee Iacocca get his brains blown out in a movie.

Talked to the daughter, who went to a midnight show last night...I think I'm going to skip this after all.

Never thought I'd see Lee Iacocca get his brains blown out in a movie.

?

Lee Iacocca, or rather an actor portraying him, gets his brains blown out in this movie.

so I gather. but um, why? don't remember that being in Cnyder's "bible".

Dr Manhattan does it. That's what he's framed for.

The whole movie is secretly an anti-bailout manifesto.

(It's an addition to the assassin-attacks-Veidt scene.)

why kill a secretary when you can kill Lee Iacocca!

The inclusion of a *lot* more real-world people/analogues in this film -- Iacocca, John McLaughlin, Pat Buchanan, Eleanor Cliff, down to brief cameos by Warhol, Bowie, Jagger, even the Village People -- prompted this in Matt Maxwell's (very spot-on) review:

This leads to the various traversals of the uncanny valley in WATCHMEN, or at least the ones I noted. The Nixon makeup looked fine televised, when you’re seeing a screen inside the movie, but when you’re seeing him au chair as it were (yes, I know more than a little French, I too went to college) his face flattened and rubberized. Kissinger not so much. Though this goes to the insertion of other real-world celebrities of the time, John McLaughlin and Lee Iacocca spring right to mind.

They were simply bad ideas. Instead of rooting this in a fictional world, I’m immediately drawn back into “oh, that’s right, we’re in a fictional world that wants to convince us of its real-worldness.” We get to jump back and forth over the uncanny valley, hooray. Perhaps in text or with the separation of the comics page, these ideas would work, but the execution of film left a lot to be desired.

man, i dunno about seeing this now.

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x80/zia_narratora/rorschach/18.png

from entertainment weekly
"...But that's a real problem for the movie, since the Cold War nuclear fears of the '80s never did come to pass. "
what, you cant enjoy nuclear war on a hypothetical level?

I havent seen the movie yet but

from the boston globe
"Can audiences who haven't read the comic play along? I'm not so sure they can; the narrative density that's so rewarding on the page turns exhausting, even oppressive, after a mere half-hour of screen time."
isn't that what many people want? a really in depth experience?

"Snyder's... much less comfortable with narrative cohesion or simple human emotion. He can show us what the end of the world looks like but has no idea how to convey the sound of two people talking. And this movie has a lot of people talking."
the human emotion part can be forgiven - most superheros try to hide their emotions except well anger. but seeing a loveless love scene would be problematic. and finally, the Globe mentions the most common complaint - making the speech natural when the narrative is often unnatural - and Rorschach's journal writings being said out loud don't help this any.

so basically I have a good idea of all the movies flaws before going to see it - which will help me enjoy the movie more because I will already know what flaws to expect. what I dont know is if the stylish sequences and "squishy" camera angles will be take away form the film or add to it. I imagine a little of both.

i saw it today

i liked it, enjoyed the first hour a lot, but near the end it did seem a little... meh

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/03/give_it_this_mu.php

(Jeff Wells is a clown, btw, but this is a relatively interesting review by his standards.)

I enjoyed this. I think they did about as well as they could, given the density of the source material. Veidt, Nite Owl, Rorshach and Sally Spectre were all excellent; the others ranged from very good to okay (I though Laurie was way way way better than the reviews were saying she was.) I liked the slo-mo stylistic flourishes in "300" and I also liked them here.

Still liked "Slumdog Millionaire" more; so far that's my favorite movie of the year.

(Actually, dude who played Nite Owl was really, really, really, REALLY fucking good, I thought.)

I thought it was about as good as I expected, i.e. not very. Really can't stand the slo-mo stuff which doesn't help.

Liked: Rorschach's face mask was very good, Nite Owl really good as Dan says.

I liked it well enough.

For a sprawling 2 1/2 hour-plus movie it felt kinda cut to the bone, narratively speaking. Makes me actually want to see the 3-hour version that'll be on DVD later this year.

Yeah, I can't really fault anyone in the cast - although Gugino as a "65-year-old" was pretty rough.

I'm not sure the movie takes itself as seriously as some of the reviews have. Snyder lets himself have a little fun with the material, which I liked (IE the corny Dan/Laurie scenes).

I mean, obv. Snyder worships the source material, but the movie has a weirdly hokey '80s vibe to go with the setting.

Gugino as a "65-year-old"

why u gotta ruin my adolescence dogg

i saw it today
i liked it, enjoyed the first hour a lot, but near the end it did seem a little... meh
― homosexual II, Friday, 6 March 2009 22:45 (Yesterday)

I agree.
Slo mo and fast mo was cool in my opinion and I thought the cgi owl copter thing looked great/realistic.
The climax should have been the same as the book though.
I didn't think Dan/Lori scenes were corny - stayed true to the book. Maybe some of Dr. Manhattan's lines at the end were corny but I cant remember if they were in the book or not.

I had to pee near the end (making the end more meh cuz I wanted to get out). I still would have rather had a giant octopus.

But all the way up to Antartica was A+ for me.

oh, you meant corny as in funny... yeah I chuckled a couple times during the movie

but we all hyped the book and movie a little too much methinks

What I mean is that I think Snyder recognized the ridiculous nature of the Dan/Laurie scenes (esp. the owlship love scene) and decided to play it up rather than cloak it with moodiness, which I appreciated.