Superhero Filmmakers: Where's Our Watchmen?

I mean, that's almost my favorite "lady or the tiger?" ending ever. (Though Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana comes close.)

I wonder if they're gonna include all the little details that indicate it's an alternate timeline, like the electric outlets to charge cars, those weird pipes people smoke instead of cigarettes, the blimps you can see in the sky all the time, etc.

And does anyone know who are those folks playing the newsvendor and the kid? They're pretty big roles, if the movie is faithful to the comic.

Emilio Estevez and Laura San Giacomo

fuck this film. just make Watchmen Babies cartoon happen.

still think they should've done it in two parts tho

Boy, Emilio has gone to ruin since Breakfast Club!

but i never realised Max Headroom and the geek scientist dude in Taken were actually the same person until now :o

the makeup fx are pretty impressive!

x-post

two parts would have suited it perfectly.

it's just a pity peter jackson couldn't have done this. /sarcasm

those stills on that site are showing good ATD tho e.g. the Veidt Sport poster on the bus shelter.

http://www.watchmencomicmovie.com/photos/rorshach_badge.jpg

WHO IS DARKMAN

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I honestly put in about 5 minutes trying to figure out of those stills were shot in Gastown or New West before reading the not-at-all smallprint and twigging on to what "BACKLOT" means. Impressive.

with pretty much every comic book movie they do that noirish rim-lighting effect where a backlight defines a bright outline to the bodies, mimicking the pen-and-ink outlines you see in the comics (cf. that photo of rorshach up there) ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/rimlighting/ )

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8c/Watchmenbabies.png

is that from a recent simpsons??

it's funny

lol

high quality

http://www.chud.com/articles/content_images/5/hr_Watchmen_6.jpg

OK, WAU

What's so wow about that pic? It's a scene from the comic done in live action, pretty much what one expected.

That Simpsons episode with Alan Moore was very funny. I think he should do more voice acting. I thought the whole episode should've been devoted to the comic book story line, instead of the not-so-interesting gym plot.

That's what's WAU, that it's done exactly right and so raises expectations that all the rest of it will be done right too.

I guess so, though I'm not sure if adapting to the comic super-faithfully is the same as doing it right. One thing I liked about the V fo Vendetta movie is that they took the liberty to add new ideas to the story, even though not all of them worked.

That's WAU right there, because V For Vendetta was utter shite, like taking a big dump over the still-warm corpses of Moore & lloyd.

Btw, if you want to have go through incredibly detailed annotations and analysis of Watchmen the comic, this site is a great read, even though it hasn't been updated for years.

Looked at that site years ago, Jess Nevins' annotated Watchmen was better IMO (but even then wasn't really saying anything I didn't grasp in the first place, unlike his LoEG annotations).

Also:

One thing I liked about the League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie is that they took the liberty to add new ideas to the story, even though not all of them worked.

Just as valid a statement.

Eh I didn't mind LoEG, just as a cinematic romp. From Hell on the other hand...

Ah, but it "took the liberty to add new ideas to the story, even though not all of them worked."

(Actually, I didn't ming LXG as a BIG BUDGET CRASH BANG POW ACTION FLICK, it just wasn't LoEG. And I re-watched From Hell the other week and it's not as DREADFUL as I remember, although the stars are still piss poor.)

I haven't seen LeOG, so I can't comment on that, but obviously I thought many of the new ideas in the VfV were actually good. Like the Benny Hill tribute, or the unmasking scene in the end, or the fact that Evey questioned V's motives more than in the comic. In the comic she often felt like a puppet for V, which sorta goes against the anarchist theme of the story. I don't think the movie was great in any way, but it had lots of interesting stuff going on, like the whole terrorist theme - I think putting more emphasis on that than in the comic was perfectly valid, when thinking of how world politics had changed in the 25 years between the comic and the movie.

I think that Watchmen site has lot of observations I probably wouldn't have noticed even after several rereads of the comic. For example, someone notes that the speech bubbles in it are different shaped in different eras; the 40s bubbles are more round and bubble-like, innocent in a sense, whereas the 80s bubbles are more angular and edgy, and the 60s bubbles are something in between.

I think From Hell is better than its given credit for, if you just think of it as a quirky psychological thriller, and don't view it in comparison with Moore's massive, detailed historical study. It was quite obvious the directors couldn't put all that in one Hollywood movie.

wtf, the whole unmasking deliberately undermines any anarchist theme, it places the responsibility under one man (even though other people end up taking up the cause - or, in fact, do they? Some of the people we see in the final sequence are ACTUALLY DEAD (irrespective of the fact V has allegedly asked them to stand DIRECTLY IN FRONT of several tons on building he is blowing up) so may well be a figment of his dying brain or Evey's insanity.

The Wachowskis even went as far as to say they removed as much of the anarchist stuff as possible to get it released. Moore himself has referred to it as a clumsy "Republicans vs. Democrats" analogue.

I thought the point of the unmasking was, that like in the comic, V was not an individual rather than the idea of revolution/anatrchism, and the unmasking shows the variety of people acting under this supposedly uniform idea. So it's not an ideology of the faceless masses. I agree that the movie definitely is less anarchist than the comic, but I was talking about the specific treatmeant of the Evey character. In the comic the way V manipulates him to do what he wants is a bit too smooth and easy. Also, it's notable that in the movie she doesn't take V's mantle after he's dead, like she does in the comic. I've always thought that was one of the most problematic parts of the story... If V is seen as the idea of an anarchism rather than as a real person, then his actions are sorta justified. But Evey, on the other hand, is presented as a real individual, so her becoming "the guardian" of the revolution goes sorta against the idea of anarchism, in my opinion.

they're not doing the giant squidalien explosion in this right? shame

I'm confused now - why does Evey going along with things undermine the anarchist message?

xpost to Tuombot

Because anarchism is about free will, but in the comic it seems V has pretty much designed her fate from the beggining to the end.

This is also why I think the prison cell part of the story, both in the comic and the movie, is problematic, as great an episode as it is. If V wants to make Evey see the point of his anarchism, it should come by her free will and not by force, as it happens.

That's very specific interpretation, and a definite strawman. I mean you could just as easily argue that in the outset (such as with the Bishop) he uses her as a tool, but then realises that with the 'correct' education she will come round to his way of thinking.

Or then there's the film version, where V looks up his ADDRESS BOOK OF ALL THE ANARCHISTS and sends them all a mask whereon ALL OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL they decide to ALL turn up together.

Why am I bothering, this is like arguing with Geir.

Or then there's the film version, where V looks up his ADDRESS BOOK OF ALL THE ANARCHISTS and sends them all a mask whereon ALL OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL they decide to ALL turn up together.

Saying that something is gonna happen at a specific place, be there if you want to, is pretty different from locking someone into a cell. Or do you think that sending invitations to a demonstration is somehow against free will? You can still decide if you want to come there or not.

At 100% turnout against invitations? WHERE DOES HE GET THEIR ADDRESSES FROM?

How do you know it's a 100% turnout?

> they're not doing the giant squidalien explosion in this right? shame

spoilers!

> I'm not sure if adapting to the comic super-faithfully is the same as doing it right.

would also result in a 12 hour film. all the stills and all look great but how can they reduce it to 2 hours without killing it?

Based on the size of the square they are in (and rough comparison with previous demonstrations there) there are about 50,000 people there. (I seem to recall something in LitG at the time saying there were somethiing like 20,000 extras used and composited in multiplied to make the crowd look bigger). Given he sent them all a mask each, which he was having made somewhere without attracting suspicion despite being under an OH NOES FASCIST state so the scale of production has to be a limiting factor on how many he can send out, even if he only sent them with a first class stamp that's £20,000 not to mention some pissed off Post Office staff.

xpost to Tuombot

i can't believe anyone's wasting valuable bytes of bandwidth on the VfV film

Er, maybe the scene was just symbolic, you know? It's not like the movie implied in any way that he forced anyone to come there, so it seems kinda pointless to point out that oh no, maybe this scene in a allegorical sci-fi movie wasn't altogether realistic in terms of the logistics.

let go

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/35862

Nite Owl looks pretty good but Veidt too obviously 'evil' maybe? It's all looking v Batmanny.

Comedian and Rorscach are good. Bit iffy on the others.