Superhero Filmmakers: Where's Our Watchmen?

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.

I'VE SEEN BLUE PENIS

i've seen schlongs of blue, eyes of white...

what a bunch of dumb gay trash - possibly the worst/hardest to sit through movie i've seen in a theater since battlefield earth

there was some good stuff, the comedian was PERFECT, nite owl good, the cgi dongs were delightful, my nigga bubastis was the highlight (FORGIVE ME, GIRL) but mostly it was just anus in movie form

the cgi dongs were delightful

making you sit thru the movie was worth it for this imo

i don't really understand why the ending was changed. the movie was bizarre enough that a giant squid monster warping into NYC wouldn't really have been out of place.

whatever review it was that said it made them question the quality of the source material was OTM. it all just looked and felt tremendously silly on screen. this was honestly painful to sit through 80% of the time.

Saw this again and took my wife to see it, she has no exposure to the source material, and she really liked it.

We joked about why there were no credits for "DIGITAL WEENUS MODELING" or "WANG WRANGLER."

Digging back through this thread I found this from an interview:

Snyder replies that darknes is relative."SAWis dark because people get their arms sawn off. People get their arms sawn off in our movie too, but it's different! There's a moral lesson."

Given how this turned out I have to question this.

the entire title sequence:

http://motionographer.com/theater/yuco-the-watchmen-titles/

so quickly, is this worth seeing or not?

i liked the graphic novel but i'm not a rabid fan or anything. i was looking forward to going, but the mainstream reviews i've read have been about as damning as one gets for a major movie. and now i find my initiative completely sapped... (this is why i never read reviews anymore, i got caught up in the hype with this and forgot myself :(

Quickly summing up the film critic and ILXOR reactions from the past few days, the answer is:

NO, NO, NO, YES, MEH, YES, NO, NO, MEH, NO, MEH, MEH, NO, NO, NO, YES, NO, NO

I saw it yesterday and enjoyed it a lot. Yeah, certain elements were changed and left out, but the overall look of the movie is just fantastic. I can't imagine going into it without having read the book (I think it would feel a bit long if you didn't know where the story was going), but as a casual fan of the comic, I'd say it's worth seeing.

Hearing for months about how they cut the movie down to keep it at a reasonable theatrical length makes me feel like I've seen an extended trailer for the three-hour DVD version.

Why go to all that trouble of creating a CGI penis if you leave out the explanation as to why he walks around naked?

*It was okay, really faithful
*Probably better if you've not read the comic
*Manhatten, put some pants on, you're giving me a complex
*Was that the Sherminator from American Pie?
*I didn't really feel like seeing it again
*Awesome opening credits
*Liked the prison break scene

I watched the opening credits via the link above. Since that seems to be universally regarded as the best part of the film, that's me done.

No wonder Snyder seems to be doing so much press, trying to save the ship from going down.

I think he's doing so much press because the movie just came out

I've probably read the book 10 times. The book and Dark Knight Returns were responsible for getting me into comics for several years. I went into this movie with a chip on my shoulder, and ended up being pleasantly surprised by it.

* Pacing of the movie was odd, jerking from action to slow-paced flashbacks. Neanderthals a few seats down talked and took phone calls during slow-paced flashbacks and any scene involving geopolitics

* I don't understand why everyone is saying Laurie actress did such a horrible job. I did not notice her bad acting. I did feel they could have gotten a more charismatic and convincing actor to portray Veidt. It to judge since I knew the story really well, but it seemed hard to believe that he could have fooled anyone into thinking he was good in any way.

* I think I liked the movie ending better than the book ending. I am a huge fan of Alan Moore, but the squid was always kind of silly. I think squid worked better in the book than it would have in the movie, because the book felt a bit more surreal and dreamlike than the movie ended up being.

* Really did not like the music in the movie very much. I could have lived without the awkward use of 99 Luftballons and the Cohen song in the love scene was hella cringe-worthy (no doubt intended, but still...) The classic rock stuff was okay, but just blared too much and was too obvious for me.

Highlights: Prison break, love scene in Owl's ship

Looking forward to the extended cut, but I hope there's an option on the Blu-ray to watch the theatrical version.

yeah i hated the music so bad, except when they used the pruitt-igoe music during the manhattan flashbacks - whole movie should've been on some philip glass ish

Not read the reactions on here, but just wrote this for another forum and thought I'd stick it here too;

1. The Watchmen thing is difficult. Should you have to have read the graphic novel to "get it"?

2. I have (a couple of times, initially many years ago, but again over the last few months), and I thought the film was brilliant, a solid 8/10, can't wait to rewatch it on DVD.

3. Oddly, possibly, I found it INSANELY funny at various points; the love scene in particular had me literally howling with laughter in the cinema, it was played, edited, and soundtracked so fantastically. (No one else seemed to laugh like I did, though, which makes me wonder how many people there knew the source material well.)

4. The source material for both Sin City and The Dark Knight is directly influenced by the Watchmen graphic novel; Watchmen as a film may have come later, but it is the earlier films that take so much from it, and not vice versa. People have been trying to make this film for 22 years.

5. But because Watchmen is almost shot-for-frame modeled on the comic (to the extent that the rewritten ending was, prior to being storyboarded, illustrated by the guy who drew the original comic, so they could get the feel right), anyone who's not read the comic wont get that, so feeling as if it's derivative is understandable.

6. I don't think you'd get masses from this without having read the graphic novel, or knowing many comics (and many comicbook films) very well. Partly because the plot and setting is so complex, and also because Watchmen is, as well as being a comic, a comment on and satire of comics; the characters are all archetypes, the history drawn in such detail - to convey the full richness of it you'd have to a; double the length of this film, and b; make sub-films to establish the universe - like in the graphic novel there is a sub-story about a kid reading pirate comics, which is a comment that, in a world wear "costumed avengers" are real, people need comics about other sets of characters, and so pirate comics become popular.

7. The rewritten ending (I wont say what the graphic novel did or what this does) is a serious improvement. It wouldn't have worked in a film; I don't think it works that well in the comic, to be honest, the new ending actually works better on both levels.

8. Casting was GREAT. Fuck me if that dude wasn't exactly Dan Dreiberg. Awesome.

9. Billy Crudup's blue wang.

10. I'm glad they went full-on and made it an 18, kept the rape story, the brutality, the gore, stayed faithful to the spirit of the comic, didn't open up the possibility of a sequel. I think they'll have pleased all but the most fascistic Alan Moore fans.

Yeah, really enjoyed it.

have a feeling this will not do well at the box office, and insanely well in DVDs

think i'll see it tomorrow?

agreed on most points in xpost above...still, something kinda gnaws at me...the scene where Lori tries on the owl goggles drew howls of laughter and thunderous applause in the theater...am I not "getting" something here?

I'll still buy the pirate story/under the hood dvd when it's out in a few weeks.

I think it will do well in box office. Every high schooler guy is going to see this (except maybe in the bible belt). My friend who hadn't read the book saw it and said it was badass. I would have enjoyed the new ending more if I hadn't had to pee so much. I think my friend understood the movie well enough, he didn't think it dragged or anything. He did open his phone during a geopolitical Nixon scene but my friend is an asshole.

The blue wang never wobbled, it should have. also in Vietnam, he should have taken off that fig leaf so that he could have dick slapped some bitches.

But yeah I was one of the folk who liked the film. I'm not planning on watching it again though. I barely ever buy dvds or rent a movie I have already saw.

The blue wang wobbled, definitely. In Veidt's palace place at the end there was a walking bit, and a slight wobble. I was bracing myself shortly afterwards for major wobbleness when Crudup went down the stairs, but they cut at his thighs just in time.