Superhero Filmmakers: Where's Our Watchmen?

amirite in thinking the comedian -- the best perf in the film -- was in both the minutemen and the watchmen? all of that could have been simplified. in the context of a movie, we don't need that much backstory about latex girl's parents. the big reveal there was totally meh. not helped by me not getting what dr manhattan got from it. something like: well, that's pretty fucked up but it's given me a reason to save humanity(?)

not snyder's fault, but nixon still being in charge and all that malarkey was very 'period'. why include that cringe-y 'zomg ronald reagan is president?' line at the end? i don't know how they could have updated it but that line did not need to be there.

Haha, in the book it's Robert Redford, not Reagan!

The thing about the book is that there's a huge amount of supplementary material, diary and journal extracts, excerpts from books and magazine articles, photo albums etc etc etc, tacked on at the end of each chapter after the traditional panels & pictures. You can't add that to a cinematic release. You can add it to a DVD, though...

Yeah, I don't understand the change from Robert Redford. Considering that Reagan was already governor of California in 1967, and a potential presidential candidate in 68, the joke in the film is just stupid.

xpost. I don't think Dr Manhattan was asking "Does humanity deserve to live?" which is the kind of corny moral judgement you used to get in 60s Star Trek. It was more a case of "Does it matter if humanity lives or not?" The central question of Watchmen is "how do you save the world?" For Nite Owl and Laurie it's naively old-fashioned heroics. For Rorshach it's hardline manichean morality - save the good, punish the bad. For Ozymandias, who sees himself as one of history's Great Men, it takes something huge and sudden and drastic (in the book he compares the plot to Alexander cutting the Gordian knot). The Comedian basically says "Don't bother. It's all a cesspit." Dr Manhattan basically says "Don't bother. In the great scheme of the universe it's irrelevant."

Agreed.

Dr manhattans' conversion is pretty lame, but unavoidable if you were making the film. veidt's plot is pretty lame, but probably a big improvement on the book as far as filming it goes.

i enjoyed this a lot, am looking forward to a dvd release with all the possible extras.

Dr Manhattan basically says "Don't bother. In the great scheme of the universe it's irrelevant."

appreciating dorian's clarity on the superheroes' different motivations. slightly begged the question for me of how they ended up working together, what use they were. to the US government, dr manhattan excepted. what use was nite owl?

i dimly recalled one of the worst bloggers of all time citing his line about there being no difference between a dead and a live human body. making a point about humanism and how it is bad. this is the sort of thing that struck me as sophomoric.

K Punk?

Nite Owl was good at making coffee.

In the book there is no such thing as the Watchmen right? It's just the title of the comic.

I don't think they did work together - Veidt's plan for an updated Minutemen never comes off and they all go their separate ways, though crossing paths on various occasions, eg Vietnam, the riots. The point is that the old idealism that produced the Minutemen is dead and there's no chance of bringing together such disparate personalities in a common cause again.

Sophomoric blogger doesn't make the dialogue sophomoric. From Dr Manhattan, it's an entirely logical scientific observation. From a human being, I agree, it's just stupid nihilistic posturing.

with revolutionary road, which like watchmen i've been meaning to read for a logn time, i avoided the film coz i knew it'd spoil the book. if i saw the film after reading it (unlikely), it wouldn't damage the experience.

with this i reckon i might still like the book. the movie was pretty good for the first hour or so, and the first few minutes were awesome. the denouement and all the bs on mars turned me against the whole.

I just saw this tonight and my only complaints, or really the only flaws that actually managed to distract me, were that some of the music seemed really out of place/a bad fit and that the Mars bits were were pretty meh. I went into this thing kinda forgetting that comic book movies don't automatically suck so much these days, which worked to my advantage I think.

some of the music seemed really out of place/a bad fit

Nena right? they should've used that when Dr M and SS were drifting over Mars in the glass

All the '60s stuff or whatever, Hendrix and Dylan and I forget what else, I felt like someone was piping in a Wes Anderson soundtrack into the theater.

i quite liked the song choices -- better than the godawful score, at least -- and in keeping (from what i can make out) with the source material, which is informed by 60s counter-culture. (i read 'v for vendetta' and got that feeling about moore anyway.)

should've had some kids on the street poppin to Newcleus at one point

In the book there is no such thing as the Watchmen right? It's just the title of the comic.

in the comic, the phrase "who's watching the Watchmen?" shows up as graffiti in several frames...

^^ wonder if any headlines have used that as a pun

i can't wait to not see this movie

As it does in the film. But yes, Watchmen as a group doesn't exist.

but they all know each other socially?

Yes; they were, or nearly were, the Minutemen V.2, in one way or another, until the anti-mask legislation banned costumed heroes.

The title I assume is a meta thing; Veidt, Manhatten, Rorsharch and Comedian all being watchers and judgers of society. Niteowl and SS not so much.

enrique, you are absolutely spot on abt 'the death of the sixties dream' being one of the underlying themes of the WATCHMEN comic, and indeed abt it being one of moore's overriding obsessions/concerns. moore is happy to admit that he's one of those hippy socialist idealists who came of age in britain (in the midlands) in the early 1970s, and that shared sense of failure/dissapointment/betrayal colours so much of his work.

haven't read the book but loved the film - yeah, there were things that could have been done better/differently, but i thought it was a great cinematic experience (i think in part because i don't go to the theatre often and i saw this in a really old and beautiful one). the soundtrack was kind of weird: i mean, i loved it and thought it was great etc. but considering the movie is set in 1985... but then i figured 'well this is an alternative 1985' so i could see how it fitted.

dorian completely otm

I don't think they did work together - Veidt's plan for an updated Minutemen never comes off and they all go their separate ways, though crossing paths on various occasions, eg Vietnam, the riots.

Actually it's former-Minutemen Captain Metropolis who's trying to get a new group together. I've always thought that this scene is *the* key event in the entire book - so much so that we see it repeatedly from different points of view. As Dorian pointed out upthread, there's an entire range of heroic-motivation present in the room. When the Comedian torches the map and the meeting breaks up, Veidt contemplates the charred map (and its labels of various "social ills") with Nelson's voice over of "someone has to save the world."

I wish the movie emphasized this scene more and left Nelson in.

i wish they left in the list of 'ills' capmet was intent on combating - promiscuity, black unrest, campus subversion

I wish the movie emphasized this scene more and left Nelson in.

lolz Snyder got rid of the homo

lolz Snyder got rid of the homo

I forgot to look for them in the dinner scene (since there's evidence that Cpt. Met. and Hooded Justice faked their deaths. See:
http://watchmen.wikia.com/wiki/The_Fate_of_Hooded_Justice_and_Captain_Metropolis

lolz Snyder got rid of the homo

more like he relegated the homo to the opening montage

Wow some people have a lot of time on their hands.

This is bizarre: you have three of the male leads on Rachel Ray right now and she's wearing one of the bloodied smiley buttons.

Squid: apparently in the film.

Well that should make Hitler happy.

Squid: apparently in the film.

I saw it. I need to see the movie again so I can just enjoy it instead of looking for easter eggs (I noticed the snow globe is in there too)

ugh, this movie sucked

I was wondering if you were going to give in and go. (And I don't blame you for your reaction at all!) What bothered you the most?

My final ramble.

Still trying to put impressions into words, but the short version is that it felt like somebody took my favorite couch and put a plastic slipcover on it.

Just noticed that Hollis Mason's murder is in the Japanese trailer.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3621/3342219689_2d6279f8dd.jpg

i liked this

didn't read this thread yet so sorry if these things have been covered already, but i have two questions:

1. how the heck did this movie not get an nc-17 rating? insane violence + boobs + wang + doin' it + general tone

2. how can they spend millions of dollars to turn billy crudup into dr. manhattan but still use terrible fake old-person makeup for the 1980s version of the main chick's mom?

that being said, i generally enjoyed the movie. some of the acting was pretty terrible and the end went on way too long but it looked pretty awesome and kept me entertained. i think i was the ideal audience for the movie, having read the graphic novel once (so i wasn't confused plotwise) but not being emotionally invested in the sanctity of the source at all

i found the nixon make-up way more distracting to be honest

http://fullbodytransplant.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/byosquid.jpg

I have the Complete Motion Comic at home on DVD now; anyone seen it?

^^^saw that on sale at the Virgin Megastore going out of business sale the other day and did not understand the product - is it for people who are too lazy to move their eyes across the page or something?

Don't make fun of people with disabilities, Shakey.

Just felt like watching about 200 cgi-animated commercials and the only thing in common was the same characters, each scene was like a separated thing wich didn't have much to do with what happened next. Simply couldn't take any interest in any of them or in the plot itself. I can kind understand that someone who loves the comic book would like, in a fanboy way though

You know when a movie opens up with the "easy listening pop song soundtracks a gruesome murder" distancing effect that you're in store for one of those sordid movies with nihilistic posturing. I liked Se7en but the genre has become its own cliche over the years.

"easy listening pop song"

yeah, fuck nat king cole