Damon Lindelof's Watchmen

luv 2 show my inherent respect to "creatives" by stanning for a Watchmen TV show

assuming it has an above-average chance of being good based on immediately preceding work is "stanning" now, cool

most pre-release reviews of shows are based on 3-4 eps minimum, I'm assuming the trades will have something to say soon

apologies:

luv 2 show my inherent respect to "creatives" by endorsing scabbing over and over and over

if it makes you feel any better I'll be pirating it

https://images.amcnetworks.com/amc.com/wp-content/uploads/mt-legacy/scifi-scanner/w-i5-p9-06.jpg

What about all the awful non-immediately preceding work

Though the events of the original Watchmen comics play a significant role in the shaping of the series’ world—a place where the internet and cell phones don’t exist

lol when are writers going to stop finding ways to write themselves out of the corners that the modern world has painted them into and actually start creatively engaging with them

Watchmen (at least in its first episode) frames white terrorists and cops as being diametrically-opposed groups that have no ideological overlap.

speaking of problematic writing: holy shit

lol when are writers going to stop finding ways to write themselves out of the corners that the modern world has painted them into and actually start creatively engaging with them

just because Lindelof sucks doesn’t mean that ppl who are not Lindelof didn’t write Open Windows and Cellular and Content and Sherlock and Stuber and Broad City and Years & Years and Cyberbully and Mosaic and

sorry, i don't watch anything that's not comic-book-related

I thought we already had the "writing the world as it isn't to evoke something about the world as it is" discussion on the OUATIH thread

(of course that doesn't make every alternate earth a good or sound idea)

Based on how I feel about Watchmen, almost thirty years after I first read it, I am... intrigued but not that interested by this.

But based on how I feel about all three seasons of the Leftovers, I am ****super excited****

.. and If I'd only watched Lost and Prometheus, I'd be claw sharpening. But The Leftovers is so good, guys.

The only valid excuse for technological anachronisms in fiction is steampunk.

Wait, is this steampunk, if so then steamsign me up

Y'all, looking at his corpus on the whole, how much do you think Lindelof personally contributed to the quality of The Leftovers?

considering there are only two eps he didn't have a story or writing credit on, a lot!

also sorry but most of Lost was good

incidentally, Tom Perotta has a new series of his own w/ Kathryn Hahn

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs._Fletcher

Lost was a mesmerizing window into the world of mastercraftspeople as they devoted years to the loving assembly of a wondrously-intricate clockwork machine which, when they finally wound it up and set it into motion, ultimately twitched and heaved and collapsed on its creators and audience with a sad mechanical fart.

Why would there be no cell phones or a internet in the present-day Watchmen universe? Even if “everything changed” at the end of the book, that stuff grew out of technology that would have predated the Squid Event...

it’s because blue lives matter iirc

https://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2014/09/watchmen.jpg

see, it’s a rich metaphor, lindelof is good again

Most of Lost was NOT good, they pulled a bullshit 'the whole episode was a dream, nothing you just watched happened' move partway through the first series, which is when I abandoned it. The first EPISODE was good.

I agree it was bad but ilx certainly did not agree with that contention

I watched the first episode and went “wtf is this bullshit, are they supposed to be in purgatory?” then checked out, so the finale discourse was extremely satisfying

xxp there is no dream episode. maybe you're thinking of the episode where they gave hurley an imaginary friend, which was indeed a bad episode, but it was in season 2 i think.

only the "flashsideways" in the final season were purgatory. it was dumb.

just to go full challops, Lindelof was only co-showrunner on Lost and wrote way smaller a % of it than he did on Leftovers

Lindelhof is a walking "Do you see" meme and Lost was terrible from Season 2 on.

Nah, was an episode where pregnant australian girl died, turned out to be a dream

The trades have seen six of the nine eps. Variety is mixed, HR is pretty positive.

https://variety.com/2019/tv/reviews/watchmen-review-1203370058/
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/watchmen-review-1247215

That Variety review is really well written.

oh wow whoda thunk it

Here’s where things get tricky, and why the pilot, which screened at New York Comic Con, has drawn some criticism for setting up what looks like a false dichotomy between the Tulsa police and white nationalists. But Lindelof and his co-executive producers Kassell, Tom Spezialy, and Stephen Williams quickly earn back trust with the second hour, then in subsequent episodes that are full of graceful world-building, deft characterization, nuanced writing, but little thin-blue-line boosterism.

https://tv.avclub.com/damon-lindelof-s-watchmen-is-a-reckoning-worth-waiting-1839036902

lost was awesome, the leftovers was better, lindelof is gonna have a long leash for me with this show. especially considering how much the leftovers improved from season 1 to season 2

I was under the impression that the biggest blot on Lindelof's copybook was Prometheus

https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/454df05a-c590-4bd7-b3a0-734b0f26c6ac/d5lonet-2cb6c8e0-5611-4319-a593-d8c7651d4f41.gif?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzQ1NGRmMDVhLWM1OTAtNGJkNy1iM2EwLTczNGIwZjI2YzZhY1wvZDVsb25ldC0yY2I2YzhlMC01NjExLTQzMTktYTU5My1kOGM3NjUxZDRmNDEuZ2lmIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.VZ5uz64xn2YCcZjMQ_QHm94ole0mY-wk3wvZ4WWKorU

I mean his cinematic CV ain't great

Cowboys & Aliens
Prometheus
Star Trek Into Darkness
World War Z
Tomorrowland
The Hunt

The Hunt was pretty good! Mads makes everything better by my oh wait

I gather he's kind of a studio patchwork/for-hire type dude in the movie arena. Those movies are all pretty bad (the ones I've seen) but y'know everyone liked Chernobyl and that guy's movie CV ain't exactly pristine.

But it grows wearying to watch episode after episode of a project that so heavily borrows from its source material a tone of grandiose, baroque unhappiness.

Great! It sounds exactly like the leftovers, then

The thing about moving the setting of a, er, “property” from New York City to someplace like Tulsa is that the move was almost certainly budget-driven in part (filing in NYC is hella expensive, and dressing up Toronto to look like NYC is maybe played out a bit). It’s interesting if that move also reaps artistic dividends... but reading those reviews just made me wonder (again) why they’re making this a “Watchmen” series at all, instead of its own thing (other than the obvious “built-in hype” reasons).

I wonder if an element of shame about adapting Watchmen led them to then avoid it as much as possible.

Not sure "shame" ever enters Hollywood decision-making

Lindelof has boasted of his attitude toward shame already

I am ready for the thread pivot from "this will be garbage" to "oh this is kind of interesting actually but I wish it weren't Watchmen"

gonna be a long wait

as for "why is this based on a pre-existing property at all," that's because virtually everything/anything with a big budget that gets greenlit is (in recent HBO terms: GOT plus forthcoming spinoffs, His Dark Materials, Westworld...)

and to speak to this one last time, I understand (sic)'s bone-deep objection but I can't bring myself to care when Moore is far wealthier than I'll ever be and puts out 1000+ page opuses without so much as an editorial peep from his publisher

cool I will just start stealing as much intellectual property from those richer than myself then - starting with HBO, I'm sure they won't mind, should work out real well. Have you heard about my new TV show Game of MurderBoobs?

(also lol if you think Moore is richer than Lindelof and HBO and all the other jackals involved in this stupid fucking bullshit)

a quick google puts his net worth at $10mil, he's gonna be OK