The Watchmen

[Ziero]

Re: The Watchmen

What was funny, I didn't even realize that his johnson was showing until I saw the guy sitting about a seat down from me pointing at the screen. I was too busy looking at the special effects lmao. I could also see a kid asking "Mommy why is she bent over the pool table, and why is he behind her?" I also thought most of the soundtrack music was pretty good, for some reason it had that Fallout 3 feeling to it.

It's amazing how everyone would point out and focus on the wang, while completely ignoring the fact that you could see little swirling universes and pulasting streams of energy running through Dr Manhatten's body just under his "skin". They detail they put into him made him into something that was far more then just a glowing blue naked guy. And the funny part is that the actual glow effect wasn't CG, the dude ran around wearing a glowing blue suit and they just CG'd his skin over that.

I thought the movie was excellent. Terrifically done.

Thoughts

I wasn't a huge fan of what they changed the ending into. I'm not sure why everyone would think Manhattan was still watching. He left because he was freaking out about giving his friends cancer and I figure the explosions would have been seen as a temper tantrum. Not him wanting everyone to make nice. I get why they didn't use the book's ending, it would almost certainly come across as campy. Ofcourse I think in both the book and the movie, it would just delay the old feuds and you'd be right back in a nuclear standoff within a couple years.
The sex scene struck me as a bit much. Don't get me wrong, she had terrific boobies and I didn't mind seeing them, just after awhile it felt like watching Cinemax late at night. And I did miss it when they're on the couch fooling around and Veidt's tv special is on with him doing acrobatics and such and the announcers keep making overt sexual innuendoes the whole time. It got the point across and it was just hilarious.

I wish they would have done more showing how f'ing smart Veidt was. The guy really is ridiculously brilliant.

Ziero: I got my copy off of Amazon. Hardbound and wasn't all that much as I recall. I'd definitely recommend it. Excellent read.

spoiler

While I agree that if they left it as a random alien attack ala the comics, then yes everyone would have returned back to their original hostilities in time. But throwing the blame on Dr M, and making it seem like the destruction was a "retaliation" or even a prevention, of the imminent nuclear war that was about to break out, the world would be forced to think twice before attempting it again. If everyone around the globe thinks he's still watching, and that he's willing to bring down his "hand of god" again if they get out of line, people will more or less behave...on a global scale.

As for the sex scene, as far as I'm concerned it was supposed to make the audience feel akward and uncomfortable. It was supposed to be bad. The whole point was to show that Night-Owl, the most "normal" of the group still had his problems. He was unfufilled without his mask, only a half a person unable to truely live life. Without the adventure and excitment of being a costumed hero, he couldn't find the joys of just living...like being able to screw a really hot chick. Despite his mild mannered, super polite, boy-scout persona...he was nothing but an action junkie who had to put his life at risk to even feel like he had a life at all. In the end, he wasn't a "man" without his mask.

Though I agree that the couch scene would have been better if they did the whole gymnastic bit with Veidt in the background, if nothing else then to show that he was as much of a genius physically as he was mentally. And I don't know about you, but being able to outsmart Dr Manhatten not once, not twice, but repeatedly and consistently through-out the entire story showed just how smart Veidt was. At least to me.

And I just figure a hardcover version would look nicer on my bookshelf, but in the end it'd all come down to price. When push comes to shove, I'm a cheap bastard.

[Durahansolo]

Re: The Watchmen

I also thought all of the costumes were awesomely made. I want Adrian's costume for Halloween ;_;

[DakAttack]

Re: The Watchmen

I thought the movie was good. It took more thought than I was willing to put into a movie to understand it, but after a while I gave in. Everybody was flawed and human, except Dr. Manhattan, who was becoming less and less human. Everything else seemed to be a matter of circumstance.

Sitting behind my girlfriend and I were another couple, and the woman was talking throughout the first half of the movie. She would say stupid things about how the people on the screen better not kiss, or that somebody should get blown up or shot or something. She sounded really immature. Around half way through the movie a drink or high pair of men wandered into the theater and asked the couple behind us if the movie had just begun. They stayed, and were making loud, inane, obnoxious comments about every little thing in the movie. They would say things like "Watch this dude, he bad. He a bad dude. Watch him, he about to do something bad." and would laugh and kick our seats. Ironically, it was the couple that got up and moved first, then my girlfriend and I. Closer to the end people began throwing things at them.

[Durahansolo]

Re: The Watchmen

Closer to the end people began throwing things at them.

See, you guys should've reported the idiots when they first started the talking. I remember a few years ago when I saw Gothika there were kids that were like 15-16 swapping seats and screaming loudly at parts that really weren't that scary. Then they were running to the front and laughing. Eventually somebody reported them, and this big scary ticket taker came and kicked em out, everybody clapped lmao.

[Lmnop]

Re: The Watchmen

It isn't all about bad ass fights, or crazy plot twists (although it has a few), it's about being human. It has so much depth that If the movie does anything, I hope it inspires people to read the book. That's all I can hope for.

^What he said.

The couch scene was in the book, iirc. And was completely awkwardly fine (I don't think I need a spoiler block to discuss this). It was the other sex scene with those 2 that was borderline pornographic (I said as much in the theatre when the scene ended and got a lot of consenting nods from people around me).

The movie, to me, was gratuitous. The sex was over the top, and while I appreciated the gritty blood, the gore was also over the top. The thing with the bars in the jail, for instance, mostly pissed me off not because they decided to be so gory about what they showed. It pissed me off because I knew they were going to show it exactly like that! Why did I know?

Zack Fucking Snyder.

And so I come to the point of things: did anyone else feel they were watching 300 again? The 300 team is a 1-trick pony. From the fight scenes (my friend barely noticed the entire prison riot fight - I told him it was because he had grown accustomed to that method of showing them fighting. It was as bland as Walker Texas Ranger) to the aforementioned fan service-styled graphic content.

Too bad, because take that crap out (well, minimize it. I need some bewbs) and I'd say they did an absolutely amazing job of streamlining the story into a 2 hour, 43 minute feature film.

I also liked the changed ending. It was basically the same, they just pulled it off differently They simply lacked the time to explain why the original book's ending would make sense and not be lol-worthy.

[Raydeus]

Re: The Watchmen

I liked Max Payne. But it was still inferior in every aspect when compared to the game.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: The Watchmen

I want to see the Watchmen flick last friday. I had only ever read issue #1, not the complete story, so just going off that, the effort seemed relatively faithful on the story front. I did notices some scenes were resequenced and changed, but they stayed in the spirit of the original story, so that was OK by me.

I don't really see Lmnop's complaints. Watchmen was gratuitous before the 300 director got his hands on it, I don't think the sex was gratuitous, particularly since I saw more of Manhattan's blue penis than I did Sally Jupiter's assets.

All the characters were well done, from the good details to the unsavory ones. The origins were well-developed, though I felt this was at the expense of developing the other angles of the story. Had I never read a comic book in my life, I would have scratched my head at how they delivered the antagonist to the viewer.

Rorshach was my favorite from the comic and he was probably the best of the cast with how his character was delivered. In fact, I can't really find any complaints about the casting. The main thing I didn't like that was gratuitous early on was the soundtrack. They could have cut these soundtrack montages short a few minutes to develop the subplot a little more than they did.

I don't consider this the greatest comic book movie ever, but I do think its much better than most of the ones I've seen. TDK is still tops for me, but Watchmen would make my top five easily.

[Lmnop]

Re: The Watchmen

I meant it when I said the part about minimizing it. I honestly expected and wanted the movie to be bloody, gritty, and harsh. I expected some nudity. It was staying true to the source. The problem is when you put too much focus onto it. We get the idea in the comic that a man lost his arm, complete with dangling arm and an armless bloody man at the side. We don't, however, watch every inch of the process of it getting sawed off.

We know the kid bites off a chunk of flesh and it's painful, we don't actually need to focus in and watch a section of cheek come apart. This reminds of a Tarantino situation. Pulp Fiction was being attacked as an overly violent, brutal film. Yet if you watch the movie, you find the camera always pull away or cut out for the worst of it. You don't even watch the syringe enter Uma Thurman's chest. And that's just an adrenaline shot; not a knife. But the cut away made things seem worse (I sometimes think it's because of this negative press that he made Kill Bill the gorefest that it was as a sort of joke).

Let's see if I can make sense of what I just said... the 300 team could learn something from this. We don't need to be disturbed by awful images to get the grittiest of experiences. As a fan of the book for how dark desperate it was, I'm insulted that they would think their audience needs this. I simply feel appealing to the "Saw movies are cool!" crowd in the same theatre as "this story is about characters, not super powers" crowd is more than stupid -- it made it feel low class.

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It's still a very good book->movie adaptation though.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: The Watchmen

Ultimately, the movie was focused on the characters.

Almost too much, but then, so was the book. I just thought the villain could have been built up to a little better than it was done. I still understood what was going on, but I couldn't blame other people if they had the Blair Witch moment of "WTF" when we got closer to the ending.

I also think there had to be some ugly moments to really drive the point home, particularly with how The Comedian was developed as a character. TMI? Maybe, but I think it was important.

[Karinya]

Re: The Watchmen

I think the violence was *intended* to be cringe-inducing - to make you think about what would happen if people actually put on masks and beat up other people. They'd, well, get beat up. A lot. It's not like the old Batman TV show where the word "BAM!" appears on the screen and someone falls down. That's the point. It's a deliberate attack on the conventions of the genre that don't show what actual violence actually does to people.

You might as well say there was too much gore in Saving Private Ryan.

(From that perspective they may not have gone far *enough* - there were still people who had a "Severed arms! Cool!" reaction. Maybe it's unfair to blame the moviemakers for the immaturity of the audience, or maybe they just need smell-o-vision to get the really gutwrenching awfulness of real violence. I didn't hear anyone cheering for the violence in the flashback scene with the Comedian and the first Silk Spectre, though, so maybe American moviegoers aren't completely hopeless.)

Similarly, the sex scenes didn't look like what the average moviegoer expects sex scenes to look like - i.e. porn, people performing for the entertainment of an audience. Instead they looked more like actual people actually having sex, which is a process of little interest to anyone but the participants. Actual people actually having sex tend not to have quite so cheesy a soundtrack, but again, the intent to screw with (so to speak) the expectations of the genre was completely intentional.

Ozzy's characterization may have suffered a little, but honestly, how much do you expect them to cram into 2 hours 43 minutes? That was the main problem with making it a movie in the first place IMO, the form is just too short for everything that went into the original (thus squeezing out the Black Freighter, nearly all of the non-mask characters, etc.) Within the limitations of the format, I think it worked pretty well.

The overall message - Somebody should have been f*ing *watching* these guys! What, you're going to trust someone because they wear a funny outfit? Are you nuts? - came through fine, IMO.

[Lmnop]

Re: The Watchmen

I think the violence was *intended* to be cringe-inducing - to make you think about what would happen if people actually put on masks and beat up other people. They'd, well, get beat up. A lot. It's not like the old Batman TV show where the word "BAM!" appears on the screen and someone falls down. That's the point. It's a deliberate attack on the conventions of the genre that don't show what actual violence actually does to people.

You might as well say there was too much gore in Saving Private Ryan.

(From that perspective they may not have gone far *enough* - there were still people who had a "Severed arms! Cool!" reaction. Maybe it's unfair to blame the moviemakers for the immaturity of the audience, or maybe they just need smell-o-vision to get the really gutwrenching awfulness of real violence. I didn't hear anyone cheering for the violence in the flashback scene with the Comedian and the first Silk Spectre, though, so maybe American moviegoers aren't completely hopeless.)

Violence and atrocity, sure. Watching every inch of the gory process, that's just fan service. I could probably argue that it was faster and much easier than it'd be in real life too but... whatever good enough.

Similarly, the sex scenes didn't look like what the average moviegoer expects sex scenes to look like - i.e. porn, people performing for the entertainment of an audience. Instead they looked more like actual people actually having sex, which is a process of little interest to anyone but the participants. Actual people actually having sex tend not to have quite so cheesy a soundtrack, but again, the intent to screw with (so to speak) the expectations of the genre was completely intentional.

Making sure we know they're lined up for the correct angle for a penis to best enter a vagina doesn't sound very un-porn. "I think I can imagine how it we- oh, nvm. I won't have to."

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I'm obviously not going to have anyone on my side for this. I just feel they did a terrific job of filming the unfilmable, but then shat on it by trying to appeal to a lower class of entertainment.

[Telera]

Re: The Watchmen

I actually knew nothing about it. I'm not into graphic novels, or even superheroes on the whole. My boyfriend was raving about it a week before release and I asked him what the fuck it even was. He was convinced I'd been living under a rock, that the previews were everywhere, but I swear I hadn't seen one preview for this movie on TV or elsewhere. I seriously hadn't even heard of the title. I usually catch previews for most all the big-deal movies, even with the little I watch TV. Kind of mind-blown how this rave got past me.

This may be partially because I don't care for GNs and wasn't even looking for it, but it feels odd to have something uber-hyped fly right over me. Now I know what it's like to be on the flip side of people who have never seen Star Wars, and don't even know what it's really about.

[Caspian]

Re: The Watchmen

Saturday Morning Watchmen
Click "watch the movie" Watchmen if it were a saturday morning cartoon. Kinda funny.

[Durahansolo]

Re: The Watchmen

Watchmen comes out on DVD and Blu-Ray today.