Watchmen

Jonesy

Wild Horses
I can understand Moore wanting nothing to do with Hollywood but why give the go ahead for adaptations. I'm assuming he must do.
 

Jonesy

Wild Horses
I'm not certain but the impression I get is that he actually doesn't have control over it.

Right. Well the release of the film has piqued my interest in the man and I'll be ordering my first graphic novel in Watchmen.

From what I've read on Wikipedia he sounds like a decent bloke. He apparently stopped a strip for a local newspaper early in his career after a homphobic editorial.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Yeah. Having read the comics again recently, I was also struck how 'glossy' the film looked in comparison. It lost the 1984 style British grimness in translation.

Exactly right. There's a bit at the beginning where Evey nips out for a cappuncio.

WRONG

I thought V for Vendetta was absolutely appalling. The ending was the worst kind of "we, the people" cheesefest imaginable.

Saw Watchmen yesterday - it's about a million times better, but it'd be hard not to be. Aesthetically it's pretty great, the opening credits are killer. However, it's a very literal adaption... and what works on the page doesn't work on the big screen. I found Dr Manhattan's epihany cornball and hoky watching it, while I didn't at all when reading. It's okay but that's about it.. (and my intention is to damn with faint praise).
 

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
I rather enjoyed V for Vendetta, but then I'm not a comic book nerd, and haven't read the original. or Watchmen for that matter.

Watchmen sounds interesting for its flaws. I suspect it may be too close to the original to be a good film... vaguely interested in reading the comic though. Apparently they've printed a vast amount of new copies.
 

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
I have just this second ordered Watchmen.

I hope it's better than the Invisibles, that really didn't live up to the billing.
 
D

droid

Guest
Its on a completely different level.

Cant recommend V enough either. Probably the most articulate and poetic political comic ever written.
 

mms

sometimes
yes from hell is pretty amazing. def the best thing he's done.
the film was a joke though.
 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
I saw Watchmen last night and it was very sloppy. The change in the ending would actually have been forgivable if the rest wasn’t completely missing the point and done in this paint-by-numbers way. I believe Zach Synder believes he really has made an edgy movie, although I don’t think he understands at all what made the Watchmen an edgy comic. Alan Moore was experimenting with the blockbuster superhero genre with this dark, political and psychological look at what a superhero might realistically be, given the way people really are. Zack Snyder made a poorly-paced, poorly-explained blockbuster comic book movie and slapped an R-rating on it by throwing in extraneous blood splatters, CGI cock, Matrix-style fight scenes (and here I was thinking the point was they weren't superheroes) and a laughably pornographic sex scene.

Edgy.
 
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UFO over easy

online mahjong
yeah thought it was awful as well

weird combination where its superficially quite faithful to the comic, apart from the ending and a few ridiculous moments (night owl and silk spectre basically killing those muggers towards the end? what the fuck was that about.. and that daft sex scene... and the entire soundtrack), but still managing to completely miss everything about the book that made it great.

in recreating the comic i think the nature of the film itself is kind of cloaked. it's only in the bits outside of the original story, like the fight scenes for example, that you get a glimpse of what the film is really about - nothing at all.


it was also really long and boring
 
I disagree. I don't think I've seen a film that replicates the tone, feel and look of it's source material as well as this does.

I watched it only a few days after reading the comic. It was like taking the same medicine, only in liquid rather than tablet form.

The film felt as empty as the comic, whose philosophical and political points are cliched and simplistic - the kind you read daubed on the walls of a university toilet. It's a pose, a pose that, when you set it in a real context (parallel timeline - Nixon ,Vietnam, Cold War etc.), has no resonance: the world was not and is not like that. There are heroes and good people everywhere, and love and profound emotion.

What we have here are some navel-gazing vigilantes tediously musing on their broken lives/souls while trying to save a world that they don't actually seem that bothered about, a world we are given only cynical and stereotypical glimpses of: rioters, paedophiles, the Doctor's selfish wife, the onlookers during a rape/murder.

Nite Owl's reaction to the massacre - putting his hand to his chin and thinking a bit - sums up the whole exercise, I think. The snide, offhand way it has with its Hiroshima allegory (Laurie's comment: "that's all they wanted, tandoori to go") is particularly irritating too.

It is a comic made to impress: with its twist on the superhero myth (hardly revolutionary), with its oh-so-learned use of popular and classical culture references (Dylan, Alexander, Juvenal, Jung etc.), its sub-noir language and so on. The book doesn't seem to care about anybody or anything. The Watchmen are impotent, the people are sinful and the world will die whatever. We are doomed blah blah blah.

I never felt invested in aims and motives. The potential is there for a moving epic yet the plot, world and characters never cohere. Soulless.

Moments stick with me: The origin of Rorschach's 'face' in the comic and his brilliant portrayal in the film; the scene on Mars; the Comedian almost pleading with those around him to save him from himself (not as well put across in the comic); vivid and lucid imagery; use of recurring symbols give it a fateful/playful mood....

Hurrm.
 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
From the reviews I've read it seems the opinion is polarized: either the critic loves the book and dislike Zach Snyder's commercialization of it (changing the ending, putting in matrix-esque fight scenes, etc.

= Me

or they hate the movie because they hate the book (The Washington Post, The New Yorker)

= You

I was telling my girlfriend afterwards that this movie fails because it's almost not going to please anybody. If you've read the book and liked it, you won't like the movie. If you've read the book and disliked it, you won't like the movie. If you haven't read the book, you won't like the movie.
 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
... and the entire soundtrack

Dear god, this part could not have been any worse. It was so bad, I started thinking maybe they were trying to take the piss or something. Then I realized, no, it's most likely just one more brilliant concept conceived by another idiot who is told he's a visionary.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
The film felt as empty as the comic, whose philosophical and political points are cliched and simplistic - the kind you read daubed on the walls of a university toilet. It's a pose, a pose that, when you set it in a real context (parallel timeline - Nixon ,Vietnam, Cold War etc.), has no resonance: the world was not and is not like that. There are heroes and good people everywhere, and love and profound emotion.

What we have here are some navel-gazing vigilantes tediously musing on their broken lives/souls while trying to save a world that they don't actually seem that bothered about, a world we are given only cynical and stereotypical glimpses of: rioters, paedophiles, the Doctor's selfish wife, the onlookers during a rape/murder.

Nite Owl's reaction to the massacre - putting his hand to his chin and thinking a bit - sums up the whole exercise, I think. The snide, offhand way it has with its Hiroshima allegory (Laurie's comment: "that's all they wanted, tandoori to go") is particularly irritating too.

It is a comic made to impress: with its twist on the superhero myth (hardly revolutionary), with its oh-so-learned use of popular and classical culture references (Dylan, Alexander, Juvenal, Jung etc.), its sub-noir language and so on. The book doesn't seem to care about anybody or anything. The Watchmen are impotent, the people are sinful and the world will die whatever. We are doomed blah blah blah.

most of your criticism is valid, boombox, but most of those points such as cliches and stereotypes and cardboard cutouts and "soul-lessness" can be applied to most fiction out there, be they novels, films, or comics. what work doesn't want to impress the audience? and if you want to make the distinction between that which tries too hard and that which doesnt: there is surely a place for grand theatricality, and works which try to impress in obvious ways (as there is for works which are subtle and understated).

also in Moore's defence, it is difficult in a work of such scale and scope to be completely free of cliches and stereotypes, and to have the kind of nuance and detail which would presumably warm the characters to you. he was trying to paint a well rounded picture of a decaying society, one dimensional, maybe, but did a pretty good job of it.

but your philosophical gripe seems pretty meaningless to me: it's like saying Romeo and Juliet is too one-dimensionally dark and sad - because there are lots of happy lovers out there! get me?
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I think I'm just going to read the book.

I've had it on the shelf for a few years, never really got round to it. THIS interview with Alan Moore is really interesting, though, and it has made me want to read Watchmen (and From Hell, V For Vendetta etc...).
 
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