Watchmen

[Fernando]

So yesterday I saw this, well the firsts 4 chapters of the animated thingy they did last year and it's pretty good (so far).


some spoils

It's a verbatim adaptation of the book and has every single frame of the comic, the images have little movement (like those old marvel cartoons) and it's narrated by one guy, at first it bothered me a little that he also did the female voices, but got over that pretty fast, the thing is pretty long, the four chapters I saw lasted almost two hours and they went by pretty quick, the best here is the 1st chapter that has a lot of Rorschach and the dawn of doc Manhattan, that part where he talks about time while in mars and all that is amazing. All in all, I can't believe how good is this, when I first heard about it thought wouldn't work at all but it really does.


We'll see if the feature is as good as this.

[picolas]

the motion comics ARE really great. i just finished today. the way they handled the last two chapters was near-perfect. the opening of chapter 12.. i don't think snyder has it in him to take that incredible but simple approach. i wish they'd gotten rid of the speech bubbles altogether and yeah hired at least ONE actress, but i'm pretty sure based on the clips of the movie this'll be the better adaptation. it's stupid that some unknown may have adapted the material better but.. at least we got these.

[john]

I have never read Watchmen, though I've borrowed it on multiple occasions. This seems like a good way to rectify that... and get a free movie ticket, too.

I wouldn't expect something like this to work, so I'm very happy for this recommendation.

[SiliasRuby]

I got it on blu-ray and its spectacular. I heard over and over again that the ending in the film is tamer than the comic. I'm seeing it friday morning at 3:25AM at a IMAX theatre. So I'll tell ya soon.

[samsong]

impressive that this was worse than i anticipated it being.  will say more once more people have seen it.

[Ghostboy]

Exactly as I expected. A loud yawn, minus two sequences that I thought were pretty cool. Hollywood had to get this out of its system, and this is probably the least offensive version they could muster. It'll pass quietly.

[Pozer]

A loud yawn

a sleeper for me. literally. when i woke up at the end tho, those about, in and out of my party seemed to enjoy it quite much.

[modage]

impressive that this was worse than i anticipated it being.  will say more once more people have seen it.

did you see it across the street at Lincoln Square too?

[samsong]

nope.  went to the regal at union square.

[modage]

So. Much. Anticipation.  I started watching the Watchmen 5 years ago, following news of the film and wondering what shape it would take.  The short version: I liked it.  It was not without its flaws, but I did respect it.

The opening credits are the highlight of the film. As much as you may have heard about them, you still have to see it.  They are stunning.  While at first the music choices did seem odd to me, a few bars into Simon & Garfunkel's The Sound of Silence something struck me and I began to love it because the music did stick out.  It made me think about what I was watching, not as a superhero movie, but as a satire of pop culture of the last 40 years.  It's hard to hate on any of the changes from the book, mostly because outside of the "squid controversy" (which didn't bother me), I didn't notice them.  I did think the story needed a little more adapting to make sense as a film. Some of Rorshach's voiceover a little too hard boiled, the chronology is sometimes confusing and the characters emotions take a backseat to the action sequences. But the movie did a great job for the first 2 hours convincing me I was not going to be seeing the superhero film I was used to.  Until the last act, when the film started to resemble exactly that kind of movie.  A fistfight between heroes and villains is not a satisfying ending to a film about ideas.  It's climax fails where The Dark Knight succeeded.  But even before the end of the film I spent a little bit of time with this question circling in my head: Will I care about what has happened to any of these characters by the time I leave the theater?  Unfortunately, if the film has a central problem, this is it.

I wonder what kind of film Christopher Nolan would have made.  Or previously attached directors Darren Aronofsky, Paul Greengrass or even Terry Gilliam.  While the version we got was almost certainly the most faithful, and visually stunning, it was likely the least involving emotionally.  These characters are supposed to be human, just like us, but seem to be invincible when they put on their costumes.  This is not a Spider-Man film about a hero strugging to deal with his superhuman responsibilities.  These people have no superpowers or special abilities.  What kind of person chooses to put on a costume and fight crime?  This is one of the central ideas explored in the book that I felt was mostly overlooked in the film.  Sure Nightowl is impotent and Silk Spectre has Mommy issues, but even Peter Parker is a nerdy outside of his suit.  Watchmen was supposed to dig deeper into the psychology of these flawed characters and show us why they chose to put on these costumes.  Seeing them fight awkwardly and fail instead of with assurance and with superstrength could've given the film the humanity it needed to feel closer to the characters.  At 2 hours 40 minutes the film is certainly epic, but not always involving.  It must be admired from a distance.

[picolas]

spoils

- the first 2/3rds of this almost had me convinced they could pull off the story in a different/distilled way with almost the same kind of resonance (+ or - a few bad choices), then in the last 3rd (prison break onward) they utterly drop the ball on some of the most important stuff.

- but right off the bat they RUINED silk spectre and they RUINED ozy. silk spectre is an idiot. there's no reason manhattan would be interested in her. she's just a vapid, totally not mysterious, sexed-up woman. it's disgraceful this shit is still happening today. ozy meanwhile is THE MOST OBVIOUS VILLAIN EVER. the genius of that character is how collected and unflappable he is. how he considers himself the good guy through and through. there is not one 'literal' thing about the translation of that character. he couldn't be more opposite. it is amazing how much they ruined those characters, yet got others spot-on or close. the plight of dr. manhattan was reflected pretty well. and his look and voice and the sound design around him was wonderful, and kind of original even, in crudup's voice/physicality. hailey KILLS as rorschach. near-perfect performance. it's unfortunate how edited for time his backstory is. his motivation, so delicately and wonderfully described in the book, is lacking. no explanation of the mask either. the comedian is also very well-delivered.. nite owl lies in the center of the messed-up to great spectrum. he's well-acted and his look/attitude is just about right, but they turn him into more of a buffoon and since spectre is an idiot, his arc is less interesting.

- i agree with mod about the opening credits. i was astounded.

- i found myself looking at my watch a lot in the final hour. not out of boredom, but out of oh-shit-they-only-have-this-much-time-left-to-convey-all-this-information!!! i still believe there could be a way to distill this story. but they stretched out so many unnecessary parts. mainly extended fight scenes. and owl sex. and naturally other things suffered because of these odd choices. for example...

- the mars argument is BUTCHERRRRRRRRED hard. it's one of the most powerful sequences in the book, but because they've made spectre into such an idiot, she can't have this wonderful argument with manhattan, at first showing how supremely annoying he can be, and then getting him to change his mind by being true to herself and reflecting the preciousness of humanity... that and it's obviously being edited for time. all this adds up to make manhattan's mind-change fall sooooo flat, like it's an arbitrary thing he just made up. and the comedian-father reveal is extremely unclear at first and feels like a tacked-on revelation.

- the ending is severely messed-up. the decision to replace the squid with manhattan isn't bad and gives manhattan better motivation to leave. i'm not knocking that. the presentation of the 'evil' scheme is extremely unclear in the new way its written because the use of manhattan is never stated until afterwards. so he's not explaining his 'masterstroke' at all anymore really. the decision to make all the tv's play one news clip is dumb. there must be a cacophony of news sources gradually confirming world peace! the pure nixon address is silly and unreal. and nite owl trying to save shach and coming back and having ANOTHER fight sequence.. UGH. eveyone must be in SHOCK! at how brilliant ozy's plan was and how many people died!!!!! instead it's just so.. messy. everything about it lacks the precision of the original final act. and flat-out cutting the final love scene and the last confrontation between ozy and manhattan... it's just bad storytelling. it's garbled. the amazingness is lost because it's so confused and poorly revealed..... the other big problem with the last act of the film is because we've lost all these secondary characters or they've been reduced to almost nothing, we don't feel like the WORLD is at stake. it's more like these bunch of crazy people playing a game with each other. we know nothing of the real people they're fighting for. the real sense of dread/danger/scope is lost because of this.

maybe i'll write more later. i really thought this was going to be a cool/adequate version more than halfway through. but i left feeling more negative than mixed. even though there's so much in those first 2/3rds that feels so right.

[john]

Saw this last night - very hit and miss for all the reasons already stated.

The opening credits really do happen to be the most shining moment of the film (just like Snyder's Dawn of the Dead opening/closing credits) ... I've watched them two more times since last night.

http://chud.com/articles/articles/18407/1/THE-AMAZING-WATCHMEN-OPENING-CREDITS-ARE-ONLINE/Page1.html

[SiliasRuby]

I might be in the minority who loved this film....like when GT hated 'There will be blood'...and maybe this review (since its so long) should be in the green screen area, but screw it.

I'm not a huge fan of most comics. The only ones I read though as a kid was 'Batman' and 'The Flash'. I was very attached to them. They were my favorite. I need to get back into them. There was a certain smell to comics in general that always appealed to me. Two week ago, right after I thought I was going to read 'The Straw Men', I suddenly felt the urge (since I read all about 'Watchmen') to buy the Graphic Novel and the complete motion comic. I was engaged. I was involved. I was officially hooked on comics again. A side note, I need to read Frank Miller's comics to see if he really just stick to doing his own comics.

I've always found that most Comic Book Movies aren't really grounded in reality, not the way I wanted them to be and they had such on the nose dialogue. ('Watchmen' does too, but it makes up for it being ballsy in other areas.) Thats why I got rid of my 'spider-man' DVD's. After rewatching them I wondered why I had them...Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker is such a whiny bitch...I like Tobey though. 'X men', while above average, weren't my cup of tea. I'm just saying that flat out.

The first 'Superman' had an iconic touch to it. It felt so right that Christopher Reeves was Superman. It was perfect. He even had the look and since it was such a touchtone role, I could understand the frustration from fanboys when they heard of this Brandon Routhe playing him in 'superman returns'. On the other hand, you had to go with an unknown in the film. No other star in Contemporary Cinema could trump Reeves and rightly so...so no other actor would touch it with a ten foot pole. I won't touch the sequel's because aside from the second one that came out two years later, the rest are dismal. The only reason why I have 'superman returns' on Blu-ray is because kevin spacey is in it and I consider him one of the greatest actors of his or any generation.

The First two 'Batman' movies by Burton brought a okay campy-ness that way overdone in the 'Spider-man' movies. And we all knew Jack stole the show, turning his performance in the 1989 into a humorous, extremely memorable one. The same goes to Danny Devito and Michelle Phieffer but to a lesser extent. I won't mention the third and fourth Batman because they are utterly terrible as we all know. When I heard the news that a new Batman film was in the works, I was hesitantly excited, knowing how much I cherished the first two. 'Batman begins' was an origin story that was less focused on any villians and more of how Bruce became batman. Maybe I'm alone here but I felt there was too much back story. It didn't entirely feel like a batman story. It spend way too much time building Bruce's training. 'The Dark Knight' was such a huge feat in that it had everything you wanted in a superhero film and yet it really wasn't one. Not in the conventional sense. 'Heat' was the best comparison. So, while 'The Dark Knight' had some flaws (the overtly technical gizmos didn't work for me), its a 95% perfect film.

My actual review:
Some people I have talked to over the day today were comparing 'TDK' to 'Watchmen' and while I see the similarities I can't condone or comprehend the fights and the anger I saw in people's eyes. You could feel the complacent frustration in the air between two such geeks and before I had to bolt out of there I felt a very fat man and a very skrawny kid were going to through down. A really strange image. The only heavy similarities that I could pick up on were that one they were trying to have full realized characters the other being trying to bring the absurd and the rediculous to a more grounded reality. 'TDK' achieves those two requirements. 'Watchmen' however does not, although not for lack of trying.

The characters were there, just not fully flexed as they could have been. There's always going to be the heavy comparison between the book, which everyone should read and the film. While I agree that that the graphic novel is a bit better and has a slightly different ending, the film is a entire entity unto itself. Thats what those geeks in the street didn't realize when they were muttering to themselves. Its also what Stephen King could never understand about what Kubrick did with 'the shining'. Turning his story about a alcoholic novelist failed teacher battling with inner demons and outer ghosts into THE epic freudian horror film. Getting back to the characters...Laurie Jupiter, the older incarnation of Sally Jupiter (I love you Carla Gugino, but your makeup sucks) the characterization of Richard Nixon are the only weak characters. The rest of the actors do what they can with their characters. Rorshock (Jackie Earle Haley) and Nite Owl (patrick wilson), are quite amazing when they are portrayed by their respected actors.

Its overstylized but it works on a visual level because its so identical to the comic and therein lies the other problem. Some of the dialogue is exactly what Alan moore wrote in the comic and some of what he wrote in the comic is stilted but I was expecting that since I'm so used to bad dialogue in comic book films.

I think Snyder was the only guy who could have done this comic book film but he gave it so much justice that it felt out of place in some parts. Some obsessive freaks and fan boys were pissed about the differences in the ending. Frankly I think its fine but I have a problem that if Zack was so faithful to almost everything else, why go and change the ending? Maybe it wasn't his say and we will see something different in the director's cut.

Overall, I loved it. Its a step in the right direction as far as comic book films go, along with the 'the dark knight', not that I'm comparing, as to what I mentioned above.

A great spectacle of a film thats as hollow as all hell.

P.S. The credit sequence was one of the highlights of the whole 163 minutes.

[SiliasRuby]

What? No one wants to say that I'm completely fucking wrong?? Debate me? Debase me? Huh? Huh?...I Miss Pubrick

[New Feeling]

Saw this on friday and thought it was a pretty great time at the movies.  I think this compares favorably to every post-millenial comic book movie other than the Hulk.  Yeah Dark Knight included.   

I went in with very low expectations (I actually thought I'd just take a look and get a refund in the first half hour) and was pleasantly surprised by how much it didn't suck.  The book has been a favorite since I read it in 2001, and I've probably read it once more since then, but not recently, and I wasn't particularly concerned with the faithfulness of the adaptation, though if I were I can't imagine I could've been much happier.  It seemed like a pretty faithful retelling, save for the Alien/Manhattan switch, which I thought made good sense and fit quite nicely.  The book is obviously a much more fascinating and perfect beast than the movie but I think both are successful in their own way.  The book is a masterpiece of super-hero conspiracy fiction, the movie is a kick-ass sprawling summer blockbuster.     

This movie was just the right blend of action, drama, humor, envelope pushing, and stylistic daring for a big budget tentpole extravaganza.  Almost all of which have left me completely bored in the last many years.  Sure the ending was a little crappy but certainly no crappier than we're used to for this kinda film, and the first three quarters are pretty much bang-on.   

Sure Silk Spectre was a little boring, performance and character-wise, but I thought that was a small price to pay for some genuine sex appeal in a super-hero movie, which has been missing almost completely since Tim Burton stopped making them.  And I mean seriously there was even titties and a full blown sex scene.  Which was just goofy enough and just hot enough to be totally enjoyable for me.  I also have to say it seemed like Dr. Manhattan's schlong was making a lot of people uncomfortable, but I was very glad to see this much penis in a movie for once.  I can't think of a movie with more penis shots, and I've gotta give props there too. 

I thought most of the performance were quite fine, Rorshach and Nite Owl and Dr. Manhattan especially.  The Dr. Manhattan origin flashback with all the philip glass going on was very effective, I thought. 

The action was well choreographed and easy to follow.  The structure of the story was a bit of a mess but respectably ambitious.  The musical selections were goofy at times but generally brought some (maybe unintentional) humor to those scenes which was much appreciated, given the probability that this was going to take itself way too seriously.  I can gladly say that that was almost never a problem.  I can imagine what Nolan would've done with this and if it were anything like his Batman movies I'm very glad we don't live in that reality.   

Some complaints:  the old-age make up was almost embarrasingly bad, the climax was a under-whelming, etc.  But honestly I can't think of many things that bothered me during this.  I don't think it's top 10 material but I can safely say I'll enjoy watching this again.         

And yeah the opening credits were off the hook.  That JFK bit, I was like