Superhero Filmmakers: Where's Our Watchmen?

It's still a better than whatever Roeper's going to come up with.

Well, yeah. I'm waiting for Rex Reed.

Morbius will love this:

“If you look, when you see Adrian (Veidt) hitting this would-be assassin in the trailer, the guy gets hit with a stanchion, one of those brass stanchions, and the guy flies in the fountain,” Snyder revealed to us, making reference to the scene in Alan Moore’s classic comic where Ozymandias avoids an assassination attempt.

“(The assassin) has a gun,” Snyder explained, remembering the difficult process of transforming his dark, R-rated film into a trailer for the masses. “So the MPAA said, ‘Look you can’t have him (holding the gun)‘ … I don’t even think it’s one second. I think it’s like 12 frames. He’s pointing the gun at the camera, and they said, ‘You can’t do that.’”

For years, the MPAA has prohibited weapons from being pointed at the “viewer” in advertising, presumably for fear that it will freak them out. That’s why you always see guns pointed at angles on movie posters and in film trailers.

“So we erased the gun,” Snyder grinned. “And put a walkie-talkie in his hand.”

As many film geeks remember — and are still angry about — Steven Spielberg famously re-released his family classic “E.T.” in 2002 after using CGI to transform the gun-wielding federal agents into less-threatening agents holding walkie-talkies.

“It was a total Spielberg reference,” laughed Snyder. “Because I was like, ‘Well, it worked for Spielberg, so we should do that. Just put a walkie-talkie in his hand!’ … (The editors) were like, ‘But then you cut to a real gun!’ but I’m like, ‘No one will ever see that; they’ll think he had a gun in the other shot, so it’s fine.’”

I think the idea of making movie watchmen about other superhero movies is a pretty smart move. I didn't see 300, cause it looked like a piece of shit. But then, the comic was a piece of shit, too! So maybe given an excellent comic to adapt Snyder will be able to make an excellent movie from it.

On the other hand, maybe I'm just wishin'.

Okay, so Snyder has done:

"Dawn of the Dead" (remake): a movie I will never see
"300": good brainless fun and stylistically awesome
"Guardians of Ga'Hoole": lol waht teh eff
"Watchmen": stylistically intersting based on the trailer but seemingly way too large a project to successfully make the transition to film

What makes him an idiot? I know nothing about him.

Dawn of the Dead was ok for a completely unnecessary remake

yep

yeah dawn of the dead wasnt nearly as bad as it should have been

Watch a minute of a Snyder interview.

Some morons can make good movies btw. But I don't think a moron is going to be able to make a good movie out of Watchmen. Hell I don't think a GENIUS could make a good movie out of Watchmen.

I'm kind of with Shakey on this one. It seems at best pointless, I dunno, I might be wrong, but s.th about the whole thing seems kind of leaden and unimaginative, like Dr Manhattan's mars clock base thing in the comic was all freaky and other, somehow. In the trailer, oh look, more CGI puffery (yawn) seen it before. Kind of hard to explain how/why exactly, but it rubs me up the wrong way totally.

In all fairness, I'm sure that's going to look more impressive on a movie screen than on a computer monitor.

(unless of course you've got a 914" monitor)

did you take 3 minutes to actually calculate the size in inches of a movie screen?

give him some credit, it was 2 minutes

oh wait

6 looked liked a 5

I had to find out what the size of a movie screen was first!

ANYWAY.

I thought the mars clockamajig looked great! The only effect in the trailer that looked kinda shoddy to me was the Vietnam bit.

I'm cautiously stoked, but I don't blame anyone for being uber-skeptical about this at all.

dawn of the dead was a decent remake but i don't know why anyone need to see it, really. 300 was pretty retarded. this one could be good, it at least looks interesting, as i should hope it would.

this is kind of a shitty comic book anyways

out.

I'm wish Shakey and Pash and AlexSF. I wish this hadn't been made.

I look at it from the angle that, since it has been made, I am hoping for the best from it.

^

pretty much

For years, the MPAA has prohibited weapons from being pointed at the “viewer” in advertising, presumably for fear that it will freak them out. That’s why you always see guns pointed at angles on movie posters and in film trailers.

RONG!

http://www.klast.net/bond/images/ge_usadv.jpg

Thirteen years?

After a second watching, I am lolling at Dr. Sadface.

i agree that there is no point to this really and i've always been against the idea kind of in principle but now, i mean, the movie's made, i'm gonna check it out. i mean, i could rage about it all day but at this point might as well wait to see it first.

Yeah, what slocki and Ned and others said. Lots of things -- Lolita, Naked Lunch, etc. -- have been called "unfilmable" over the years, and yet decent movies have been made of them. Now, clearly Snyder is not Kubrick or Cronenberg. Hell. he's not even Ron Howard or something. But he's also not McG or Michael Bay or Brett Ratner; he appears to have some clue as to how to direct actors, and he appears to want to make the best movie possible of the source. I hope what appears to be an almost slavish desire for fanservice doesn't overwhelm getting to the meat of the story, but all I can do is wait and see.

i am going to enjoy the CGI show

i would forget about trying to enjoy this film as a representation of the book's story - total waste of time. but as a representation of and tribute to the book's visual ideas and style it should be good (people will complain about the effects realism no doubt - dem loons).

i agree that there is no point to this really and i've always been against the idea kind of in principle but now, i mean, the movie's made, i'm gonna check it out. i mean, i could rage about it all day but at this point might as well wait to see it first.

-- s1ocki, Friday, July 18, 2008 3:14 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Link

Yeah, that sums it up. I'm sure I'll go see it too.

Last night I had the thought that while Hollywood is crapping all over Alan Moore's no-adaptation preferences, I'd love to see a Miracleman/Marvelman film. It would be interesting to watch it gradually turn from slick and cartoony to grim and bloodspattery over two hours. It would be 500% awesome to see the Warpsmiths on screen. But the property is so tied up by that fuckhead Todd Macfarlane that it probably won't happen.

but as a representation of and tribute to the book's visual ideas and style it should be good.

except it looks nothing like the comic book...? the color scheme of the book is really bright and garish (duh, just like much of the comic book history the story references). and as for visual ideas its clear there's a ton of details that they've changed for all sorts of stupid reasons. Using comic panels as a storyboard /= tribute to book's visual ideas (actually its fairly cheap and lazy)

New Alan Moore interview at Entertainment Weekly:
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20213004,00.html

He really does seem to be generous with his time for interviews when it's all about stuff he doesn't really give a shit about or would rather not think about.

except it looks nothing like the comic book...? the color scheme of the book is really bright and garish (duh, just like much of the comic book history the story references). and as for visual ideas its clear there's a ton of details that they've changed for all sorts of stupid reasons. Using comic panels as a storyboard /= tribute to book's visual ideas (actually its fairly cheap and lazy)

-- Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, July 18, 2008 3:36 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

dude you need to chill on this

McFarlane owns Miracleman? When did that happen?

Yeah, this is news to me too.

In 1996, Todd McFarlane purchased Eclipse's creative assets for a total of $40,000. It has been suggested that McFarlane was mainly interested in the Miracleman rights; the rest of Eclipse's characters and properties were incidental, though he did not expect to keep them idle. McFarlane's plan was to reintroduce Eclipse's characters through two new Image Comics anthology titles, Todd McFarlane's Twisted Tales and Todd McFarlane's Alien Worlds. However, these were never printed and to date the only Eclipse character to appear again has been The Heap in McFarlane's Spawn title.

McFarlane clearly had plans for Miracleman, but had neglected to consult Neil Gaiman, the last person to have held part of the rights. In 1993, Gaiman had created the characters Angela and Medieval Spawn for McFarlane. Gaiman claimed that he had created them with the understanding that he would retain creative ownership of them, an ownership which McFarlane now disputed. His plans stymied, in 1997 McFarlane reached a supposed verbal agreement (and according to Gaiman, a written one as well) with Gaiman in which Gaiman would cede his half-ownership of Cogliostro and Medieval Spawn in exchange for which McFarlane would trade his rights to Miracleman. A subsequent letter from McFarlane to Gaiman would void this deal, if it ever legally existed, as McFarlane claimed that he already owned the two characters and pointed to a copyright notice on Spawn Issue 7 and cited them as the product of work-for-hire. He also stopped paying Gaiman royalties around this time for the action-figures and other items featuring the characters that were still in print. This was another of the direct causes for the legal action. At the time, no one was aware that the rights for Miracleman were not included in the purchase of most of Eclipse Comics' assets and both men believed that McFarlane held a large stake in Miracleman. That was a fact that would not become clear until after the lawsuit concluded. It turned out that McFarlane did, however, own two trademarks for Miracleman logos. Gaiman and Marvels and Miracles, LLC would take action to try to block him from being able to reregister these trademarks.

He's obviously a complete cunt, especially as he was always shooting his mouth of about creators' rights when Image first launched.

^^^for realz

I am super-pissed there is no collected edition of the stuff, and my brother has all the individual issues we bought as kids :(

slocki you don't understand, the thingy on the celluloid doesn't look exactly like 4-color glossy ergo THIS MOVIE SUCKS QED.

Wait...

So you're mad that, instead of faithfully recreating all of the comic book tropes that were recontextualized in the source material, they are recontextualizing the comic book movie tropes of the past 20 years? Do I have that right?

not exactly - I was pointing out that blueski's criteria for enjoying this film makes no sense

ie this film is not a tribute or homage to the comics' visual style

Oh, okay. I wasn't really paying attention to the part you quoted (lol).

I'd argue that the film is a tribute/homage to the inspiration of the comics' visual style (ie, repurposing the visuals of predecessors in its genre) but I wouldn't argue it very strongly.

that seems to be Snyder's excuse but yeah I don't find it very convincing

You don't find it convincing in that you think it doesn't work or you think he's lying about why they updated the costumes?

oh its probably a little from column and a little from column b

column A bah