Damon Lindelof's Watchmen

yep, it's all limbs

just awful

He's good with vehicles, bad with humans

Other ppl have pointed out his love of 35mm does not help

i really like Batman Begins, The Dark Knight is good but also has diminishing returns, and it gets worse as it goes along. Dark Knight Rises is dreadful. First Burton Batman is one that I saw far too many times for such a mediocre film. Batman Returns is better in every way but I'm not really super into it either.

no one ever talks about the Schumacher Batman films because the second one was such a joke but Batman Forever was HUGE at the time, it hit at exactly the right moment with that cast and especially that soundtrack.

yeah the soundtrack largely boosted the excitement for the movie. I pretty regularly heard "Smash It Up" and "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" on rock radio, and obviously...."Kiss from a Rose".

it was a time when people were excited about a film that could land both Chris O'Donnell AND Jim Carrey.

apparently the Doom Patrol show is largely based on the Morrison run

never gonna watch it, but fair play I suppose

https://live.staticflickr.com/864/41083398414_100f1967eb_b.jpg

mh is that a... a muted endorsement of SWAMP THING

I stopped watching because it was boring

speaking of swamp thing i want to get some of moore's run for my mom as a holiday gift (she likes his watchmen and loves the show) but there are so many editions! can anyone recommend one?

start here:
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmultiversitystatic.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F06%2FSaga_of_the_Swamp_Thing_-_Book_One.jpg&f=1&nofb=1

I have all of those (actually have the original version of that signed by Bissette and Tottleben) but it looks like there's a new version of the series that includes the issue before The Anatomy Lesson "Loose Ends" which isn't in this version.

But I think the entire Moore AND Veitch run are tons of fun. I was a huge Puma Blues fan back then as well and was really excited about what was going to be the finally of the Swamp Thing travels through time run of Veitch's drawn by Michael Zulli but DC scrapped it (very controversially). Was at a convention, probably where I got those other signatures, and Zulli was there with a binder of all his pages of that issue. I said "So this is the Swamp Thing non-issue?" and he said "actually it was quite a big issue".

but there are so many editions! can anyone recommend one?

there are no editions that include all the art and text and have the right colours, afaik

This early (unused) Batman poster sure seems to imply a DKR inspiration:

https://cdn-static.denofgeek.com/sites/denofgeek/files/styles/insert_main_wide_image/public/batman_alternative.jpg

That poster looks more art deco robocop than DKR though.

seems to imply a DKR inspiration

on whom?

art deco robocop

nailed it. nothing to add to this except my first thought was yo it's gotham not METROPOLIS

Was that poster design really an official product of the studio, and not just some fan thing? I find that hard to believe... even the copy is weird ("In the not too distant future"?).

It looks like PC game box art of the era

Xpost it's not a fan thing. B.D. Fox created it, but it wasn't used

Which makes sense as he did the RoboCop poster lol

I think it's the copy and not the art style that makes it sound like DKR. Was that the official plot of the movie at some point?

Not in the Mankiewicz scripts, the Englehart scripts, or afaik* Hamm's scripts. Nicholson wasn't signed until after Keaton was attached, which was obv after Burton & Keaton made Beetlejuice. English screenwriters (inc Monty Python-associated actor & Brazil co-writer Charles McKeown) did rewrites during production, as the WGA was on strike, but it's p unlikely (not impossible, as the Furst designs weren't era-specific) that such a major plot element would be both introduced and discarded in the middle of the actual shooting

http://www.projectionboothpodcast.com/2014/12/episode-199-batman-returns.html * <- going off memory of the interview in this podcast

Just have to interject that I chatted with Moore and Gibbons for a bit as a fanboy back in '87 - I may have already told this story: "Jim Shooter hates bugs!", Aubrey Beardsley etc -- and they were both lovely humans and really like the nicest artisitic heroes one could wish to meet. But I am digging the hell out of this tv series as well :(

Anyway, I was reading more of the Peteypedia stuff, and in a profile of Lady Trieu, this little tidbit was included which points in the direction of a theory floated above:

Those recent undertakings include breaking ground on a “Millennium Clock” (see story on A1) and sending newly legalized HDTVs to every residence in the tri-county area “as an apology for any inconvenience our construction efforts may cause, as well as the occasional atmospheric disruption.”

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-great-achievement-of-watchmen-is-in-showing-how-black-americans-shape-history

IIRC Trieu also produces American Hero Story so that seems like a pretty big hint

have we talked at all about how clever it is that dr. manhattan - a person who spans time and place - is half-jewish? a flux identity on two levels - jewishness as 'white passing' itself - both as a fact of reality and a hysterical 'truth' white supremacists fear vis-a-vis unseeable alien contamination, and half-jewishness itself as a sometimes tolerated sometimes oppressed condition that (on his father's side) also puts him in ambiguous relationship to the traditional jewish community itself. an insider/outsider. and then that he then lives as a black man for a decade - simultaneously challenging + reaffirming the shared + echoed narratives between the black + jewish communities. was his background as a holocaust refugee invented for the show? (sorry if this was discussed more upthread i sorta had to skip through a lot of the thread while i was catching up on episodes). one thing that does a little bit annoy me about the show is that for as great as it looks and how savvy a lot of these ideas about identity + race are they're still v much "comic book" ideas not really unpacked or deeper on a level beyond signifying their awareness w/ these discourses. (i mean what do i expect from a tv show really idk.)

was his background as a holocaust refugee invented for the show?

I think it was, IIRC the comic only was one short scene with him, where we find out he was a watchmaker, and it's kinda implied he might be an European immigrant, but it's not confirmed. It's actually Veidt whose parents are said to have come to the USA in 1939, which would imply they were fleeing the Nazis, but again it's not confirmed. The movie made that implication explicit, stating that they were indeed refugees, but the series is clearly in the same continuity with the comic, as there's no squids in the film. (I actually liked the change the movie made to Veidt's plan, it made more sense than the whole ludicrous "fake giant squid with a psychic's brain" thing, which I always found to be the weakest part of Moore's plot.)

Going to do some sic bot shit

P sure it is not even really implied that doc Manhattan's dad was even an immigrant in watchmen? The "before watchmen" comics from 2012 have Manhattan being the son of a Jewish refugee from nazi germany

My copy of watchmen is thousands of miles away in my childhood bedroom so I cant check it tho

Long, interesting (to me) article on the series wrapping up: https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/watchmen-damon-lindelof-behind-the-scenes-1203436108/

“What I’ve learned over time is you need to know the answers to the mysteries,” says Lindelof. “If you don’t know those, you’re lost.”

You forgot to capitalize the L, Damon.

P sure it is not even really implied that doc Manhattan's dad was even an immigrant in watchmen?

ok, I was 99% sure Veidt’s sign on Europa said “help me daughter” and I think they’re about to make that clear

oh shit I was actually right

Ha ha no lube man

I didn’t notice on other episodes, but gr80’s friend Cord had an executive story editor role on this one? At least, pretty sure it’s the same guy

Not so sure about that ending.

"the refrigerated vault with all your vials of cum..."

Why did Veidt have a big production team for his crumby VHS confession to Redford.

idk how I felt about this ep. the Cavalry being used as puppets kinda defanged a lot of that conflict.

it was the ending they deserved. despite their plan and all their work, they were still outmaneuvered by someone else. (a minority no less)

tho, Lady Trieu should have hired whoever made that phone booth.

They were and weren’t? The kavalry were always going to be a tool for actual power, and seeing the actual power get blasted was kind of nice, considering how well the supposedly nice widow convincingly turned into a smug racist

she's still upset about dying on the Titanic

The frozen squid incident reminds me of a friend who was adapting a chain’s generic architectural blueprints for their store to be built in an upper midwest location. They gave him shit for a bunch of roof changes and he had to explain, to his irritation, that if the location got three inches of snow or hail of note it’d be completely demolished. People south of true winter don’t get how to build a roof.

This def played more like a S1 finale than a series finale to me