Watchmen

[picolas]

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

why did we have to pay that price? just because you cast someone attractive-looking and put her in revealing latex doesn't mean you have to turn her character into a dolt as well. there are plenty of attractive actresses who can act, and sexy characters who can think.

i really just wanted to post this:

Watchmen Trailer: Sexy Edition

it's hilarious AND it predicted ebert's review! AAAAAAUGH!! is the best thing i've seen since the opening credits

[SiliasRuby]

why did we have to pay that price? just because you cast someone attractive-looking and put her in revealing latex doesn't mean you have to turn her character into a dolt as well. there are plenty of attractive actresses who can act, and sexy characters who can think.

i really just wanted to post this:

Watchmen Trailer: Sexy Edition

it's hilarious AND it predicted ebert's review! AAAAAAUGH!! is the best thing i've seen since the opening credits

Yeah, look at Natalie Portman. She's an attractive actress who can act like a sexy character who thinks.....I love that tobias funke was in the trailer.

[MacGuffin]

Having not read the comic at all, I pretty much agree with mod's review. It didn't blow me away. A lot of emotion and themes were lost in transition. Characters should have been fleshed out more; some storylines/flashbacks, especially the structuring of them, came off as semi-confusing and distracting which lessened what the film was trying to say about us and our world. And, yes, the ending came down to what The Incredibles would call "monologuing." But any scene with Rorshach were the exception. His sequences without the mask were the movie's high points. The film, however, will not, should not, win any awards for make-up because Nixon and old Silk Spectre had awful prosthetics. Anthony Hopkins looked more like Nixon than this guy did. Overall, I did admire the film. It's unconventionality did make me go get the DVD comic to get the whole story.

[Gamblour.]

I really liked it. It's the first film I've seen in IMAX, so that was really cool. It's fucking immaculate, and the sound is incredible. I feel like Zach Snyder sort of had an impossible task. For me, it was just like a living, breathing version of the book, which is why I left liking it. Even if that means it's not a good movie, and I'm pretty sure it's a subpar movie, but a great version of the book. Without deconstructing the text at all, it works pretty well. This would only be perfect in a mini series.

I think that the new ending is not only fine, but I like the elegance of it. I prefer it to the book, honestly. The squid felt more like a curveball, where as this really ties in elements for an audience that may not have read the book in a way that really works.

The actors are a joy to watch. Except Spectre. She's pretty awful, and hasn't got an ass whatsoever. My wife, who hasn't read the book, asked why the women were all slutty. At first, I said "you have to consider what kind of person would where that outfit to begin with." But then maybe that's giving them too much credit. I loved Patrick Wilson, just like I thought I would. I never thought of Dr. Manhattan the way he's voiced in the film, but it went beyond just depicting what's in the book. Dr. M is the one thing I think that made it beyond a basic translation.

The use of music was pretty off-putting at times. Leonard Cohen? Over a too-long sex scene? Hm.

Oh, and Nixon was so awful-looking it was distracting.

[hedwig]

i might end up waiting until this movie is playing at the dollar theatre. i just can't bring myself to pay more than a buck to see it.

anyway, i'd rather be watching this: .

[RegularKarate]

Well, I thought I would hate it and I didn't hate it.

Could've/Should've been much better though.
Spoilers

Patton Oswalt recently posted a blog defending the movie (without having seen it yet), saying that the angry nerds need to calm down because there's no way the movie could be 100% like the book... but some of the real problems of this film are that it tries to be too much like the comic, which while fighting against the comic world still understands that's the world in which it exists.  The movie seems to think that's where IT exists as well.

My main complaint about this movie is that it's basically a bunch of scenes from the comic poorly stitched into one big movie.  Some of the scenes really work (almost everything Rorschach and when Dr. M first gets to Mars), but some fall really flat.

I can't decide which was more atrocious, the make-up or the needle-drops.  Why couldn't they just get an older actress to play Sally Jupiter?  That was ridiculous!

Also, the weight of the ending didn't work because the film was so distracted with cooling-up the characters that we didn't really see the what-if universe that existed around them.  It just seemed like a straight-forward eighties instead of the nightmare that was portrayed in the book.

[Convael]

I guess I'll just reiterate what everyone else has said here... Nixon's makeup was so bad I thought they were trying to make it look comical on purpose, and the old Silk Spectre was such fucking terrible acting that it was obvious it was a young person playing an old person.  I don't think I've ever even seen Carla Gugino in anything else and it was still obvious she was some 30something playing an old woman.  I've never read the comic book at all so I don't have any gripes about the translation from comic to movie, I just thought the movie itself was bad.  Everything apart from most of the parts with Doctor Manhattan and everything with Rorschach was just pretty pathetic and most of it had the audience laughing.  The opening credits were awesome as most people have said... I don't have permission to post spoilers apparently:





SPOILER
At the part when Rorschach escapes from the prison and we see him follow the midget into the bathroom, when the camera pans back to the bathroom door I was thinking, "Please don't let there be blood spilling out the bottom of the door, Jesus Christ please don't it's too fucking predictable and obvious" and that's exactly what happened.  That's how most of the movie went for me.
SPOILER

[SHAFTR]

ugh.

I absolutely love the book, but I told myself I'd walk into the theatre excited for the movie.  I was disappointed.  Honestly, I was upset during the Comedian murder fight scene.  That sequence should be quick and brutal, instead if was extremely stylized and silly.  I guess that's my criticism of the whole film, the aesthetic was just too new and shiny, and not gritty and brutal the way the story plays out.  There were moments where I was enjoying myself (most everything with Rosharch, opening credits), but the rest of the time I was surprisingly bored.  This movie should have either been 2 hours and really a reimagined version of the story, or a 12 hour mini series on HBO that remained true to the book.

[Stefen]

Whoa. A SHAFTR sighting?

[SiliasRuby]

Why is it that the movies we love (aside from films done by premiere directors) have such a short amount of pages and yet 'crash', 'boondock saints', 'donnie darko' and 'watchmen' have too many?

[SHAFTR]

Whoa. A SHAFTR sighting?

It's been a long time, but I feel my knowledge of film is slipping, so I'm back for a re-education.

[©brad]

Why is it that the movies we love (aside from films done by premiere directors) have such a short amount of pages and yet 'crash', 'boondock saints', 'donnie darko' and 'watchmen' have too many?

because it's more fun to bitch?

[SiliasRuby]

Why is it that the movies we love (aside from films done by premiere directors) have such a short amount of pages and yet 'crash', 'boondock saints', 'donnie darko' and 'watchmen' have too many?

because it's more fun to bitch?

Possibly or maybe its because there many more ways to bitch about a film than to fawn over one.

[MacGuffin]

Whoa. A SHAFTR sighting?

It's been a long time, but I feel my knowledge of film is slipping, so I'm back for a re-education.

And The 2009 Xixax Awards!!!

[I Love a Magician]

other than profit/spectacle/entertainment, what's the point in making this movie? i don't mean to talk too much shit because i enjoyed it, but why make a movie that is taken almost scene for scene, word for word from a comic? it's fun on a base level to see something you like on the big screen, but is there any art to the movie other than replicating things?

i don't wonder this about movies like revolutionary road (which i've seen and read) because, even though it follows the plot and dialogue pretty closely, you can tell someone still had to put some thought into it (messing with the time frame, minor changes in dialogue, actually visualizing the world of the novel, etc). but with the watchmen (haven't read, but my friend said it was about 98% like the book) it's just taking the comic, casting actors, and replicating scenes from the comic.

can anyone explain that to me?