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From Newsarama: (http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=122573)


Some odd choices there, but for now I trust Synder's casting decisions.

I'm not expecting much. The director of Dawn of the Dead and 300? I suspect it's going to come out being more of a summer event movie than anything thoughtful.

300 didn't have a lot of story to start with, so you can't really blame Snyder for the movie not being a real "thinker".  Ditto with the original Dawn of the Dead.  It's entirely conceivable that he'll be able to pull off a movie that has a real plot.

Um.  Not a huge amount of plot in Watchmen.  Don't get me wrong, worship it as much as the next guy, but come on - translating that plot to the screen should be a cinch.

After 300 and Dawn of the Dead, I give Synder a lot of leeway. He has shown a remarkable eye, and he does things with minimal plots. I love how the casting description for Ozymandias essentially gives away the big reveal at the end.

It's mostly people talking to each other. That may not be narrative but it isn't action either.

True, but it's amazing how you that changes from comic panels to a film screen.  Look at Sin City, for example.  Sure, not so much dialog in there, but I still reckon it'll be easily doable.

Watchmen isn't an action comic.  The action is mostly the prison break and the big finale.  You could count the zombie freighter wind-up too I guess.  Aside from that it's basically a murder mystery thriller.  Maybe Angela Lansbury can be in as Ms Jupiter.

Depends on how they do the movie, and what gets left out.  While I don't think it will be an action movie, some of the smaller action sequences could be extended for the movie (the murder of the Comedian, Vietnam sequences with the Comedian and Dr. Manhattan, the assassination attempt on Veidt, etc...).  I expect the Nite-Owl/Silk Spectre plot-line to be cut down the most

Yeah, the Nite-Owl stuff will be almost totally gone - and with it the entire commentary and reflection on old-style super-heroism. Which is one of the core aspects. The entire story is set up contrast to golden-age super heroes.

There really isn't anything special about the action in it.

That's the scary thing.  If I think back to recent superhero movies I can't think of one that couldn't be wrapped in a standard 32 pages.  The worst offender would be X-Men 3.  All they do is stretch out the fighting and glom in a couple of extra villains.  In fact, sounds like my old PnP Champions sessions :P

I really hope they don't make an action movie out of Watchmen.

To be fair, it isn't really the type of thing that lends itself to a movie. It's too reflective.

Speaking Of Angela Lansbury, there's a Murder She Wrote Music Re-mix doing the rounds of the net.  It's awesome.

Movie audiences couldn't really give two shits about that stuff.  Old-style super-heroism for them would typically be something like the Superman movies.  They'll just want to see Rorschach break some fingers, and really, that's perfectly ok.  I mean, I can see why Moore doesn't really like his work being made into movies, but as a fan I can enjoy a Watchmen movie as a separate entity from the book so long as it's entertaining.  There's stuff the book did, that just can't, in any way, shape, or form, be done in a movie.  If the movie is good, I'll accept it for what it is, rather than what it isn't.

The first thing that'll be cut will be the whole Pirate/Zombie comic story that made such a great allegory to the main story. I'm not sure I'd expect to see the kid and the newsstand owner, either, even though their final embrace was such a powerful symbol.

I thought the Pirate/Zombie thing was the worst part of Watchmen. It was just not needed, too preachy and hamfisted.

I thought the pirate/zombie thing was an homage to a real-life comic - or at least that was one of the chapter break readings?

I think you are right, I'd have to check though.

From Comiccon, Snyder basically said that he's trying to get money to shoot the Black Freighter scenes 300-style with Gerard Butler, strictly for the DVD.

It's getting an R.

Watchmen really moved me, it showed me comics could be more than superpowered wrestling matches.

The kid and newspaper guy
Dr. Manhattan smiling looking in on Niteowl and SS sleeping together.
Nite and SS being real heroes by saving the folks at the fire.  Right there they showed the reader that not all the costumed folks in that world were assholes. 

I could go on.  They have GOT to keep the Niteowl, SS relationship, to me thats the emotional core of the movie.

From memory, this was Moore's way of writing about horror comics without directly writing about horror comics. He took the view that in a world with superheroes (such as they were) people weren't going to buy superhero comics. So it was pirate comics that became popular.

The end chapter reading on it talks about the writer who went missing but was responsible for a lot of innovation in the genre, including the 'Black Freighter' story the kid is reading.

But yeah, that whole storyline can get cut without damaging the main narrative.

One thing that is apparently out is Mars - apparently that was determined as costing too much. I'll be interested to see what it is replaced with or how they handle that bit. Go underwater instead? Mt Everest?

A white room, walled with TV's.

 :roll:

No Mars scenes? Shiba shiba whu? How the fuck could that be too expensive? I'd think that'd be the cheapest part to produce, since it could be done as all CGI and greenscreen work.

They are doing that 300-style as well.
Interview with Snyder here. (http://www.chud.com/index.php?type=interviews&id=11243)

Mars 300 style would be quite cool. I'm pretty confident that Synder can pull this thing off.

Word.

I figured it was a tip of the cap to the old EC Horror titles, but I could be wrong.

I really don't see how the hell they can make Watchmen into a film that measures up to the source material. Terry Gilliam tried to get the project off the ground for years and years, then finally gave up becuase it was "impossible". The people who make movies think that just because computer generated effects are so far advanced now, that they can just go and make anything. I'd love for this movie to be great, but 300 left me wanting and I don't expect Snyder's next to be anything more than mediocre. Dawn of the Dead was fun though.

People used to think that doing Lord of the Rings in movie form would be impossible also.  Some things are going to get left behind in the transition, and some stuff is going to get changed, obviously.  Doesn't mean they can't make a great Watchmen movie though.

That's how I read it.  The art style is dead on, as is the writing.

Lord of the Rings is an action packed series of books. It might be hard to make into movies because of length and budget but the material itself translates ok.

The problem with Watchmen is that is just doesn't have movie type plot and pacing.

 :|

That's a good point, but I'm not sure if I'd compare Zack Snyder to Peter Jackson. Now, that I think of it, Peter Jackson and Weta should be the ones making Watchmen!

Really? I definitely agree with him. In fact, there were action scenes in the book not even covered in the movies. RotK is a war most of the book.

It does have a lot of action, and even a lot of action not covered by the movies, but there's a LOT of other stuff there as well, making action a relatively small part of the narrative.  The movies ended up being mostly action because that's the subset of the book that's easiest to translate to film in an entertaining way, but I'm pretty sure anyone who describes LotR as "action packed" is either talking about the movies and not the books, or skipping lots of parts each time they read the books.

I guess you're right. I am a bit rusty on the books though, since it has been a very long time. And as far as the movies go, I still have never seen RotK, mainly because I don't want to ruin the imagined ending that my brain has for the book. :)

Conceptually LOTR is an adventure series. That's not some sort of insult. I know people are going to hate that characterization of LOTR but I'll stand by it - no it isn't *just* an adventure but that is the primary appeal. There are elements of commentary and allegory in the story but that is far from the central focus. Can we not get into the holier-than-thou I must not have read the books BS? I've read them a few times, thank you.

Watchmen is not a big adventure book. There is very little action for the sake of action and the main plotline is not superheroes having some sort of adventure, fighting baddies and such. Most of the action in Watchmen is incidental and there isn't that much to begin with.

The actual plot of Watchmen is not particularly complicated; it isn't plot-driven. It isn't an epic adveture full of character archetypes and grand battles. It's a story about people, attitudes, the state of the world and the state of comics.

I'd be amazed if Rorschach comes off as anything other than some angry ass-kicker. Hollywood is good at certain things; introspection is not one of them.

In other words, when you read the books you focus on the adventure, because that's what appeals to you.  There's nothing wrong with that, since there's no one "right" way to read and interpret a work of fiction, but the fact that you personally focus on the 5% of the book in which something is fighting something else doesn't mean that the book itself is action-packed or that action is the central focus.  (It certainly wasn't the central focus as far as the author was concerned, anyway.)   I stand by my earlier statement:


Rest assured that there are also people out there who skip through Watchmen each time they read it so they can get to the bits where Rorschach is beating the shit out of someone.  (Those are my favorite bits, I confess.)  You could make a Watchmen movie that was nothing but Rorscach beating the shit out of people, maybe change the ending around a bit so that it was less of a downer, and a large segment of the population would love it.  You probably wouldn't, since it sounds like that's not the focus of the book for you, but that's life as an angry fanboy.  Welcome to our club.   :-P

Not, it isn't the primary appeal "to me." It is the primary appeal. LOTR is an epic adventure - you disagree? Watchmen is not an adventure story. Read the summaries of them on Wikipedia, Amazon or any other site. LOTR helped define "high fantasy."


That has absolutely nothing to do with what we are talking about. You *could* make a movie that was nothing but Rorscach beating the shit out of people, but it wouldn't be a Watchmen movie. In the story itself Rorscach beats the shit out of people what? Two or three times? Your movie would be 20 minutes long if it stuck to the source material at all.

LOTR is an adventure story - again that isn't an insult, and no it isn't *just* an adventure story, but that is what it is. The main plotline of the books is an epic quest. Watchmen is not an adventure story, if you want a cool comic adventure there are a hundred better choices. That's not what made Watchmen an award-winner.

I'm not saying the LOTR movies were great either. (I thought they sucked honestly) I'm just saying it translates to movies better. Not perfectly but better.

The thing about Watchmen is that almost every issue concentrates on a different character with only the Tales of the Black Freighter  to pull everything together. So how do you translate that into film? Also, the comic used a helluva lot of newspaper articles and magazine advertisements to strengthen the plot and give background. Not really the sort of stuff that will translate so well to film. I am looking forward to the project being made, but I'm really trying not to expect a whole lot from this flick.

That happens to be the aspect that a lot of people (fantasy fans and fantasy authors alike) have glommed onto, but that does not mean it's the primary appeal to everyone, or that the author intended it primarily as an action/adventure epic, or that an action movie is necessarily the only possible way to adapt it to film.  The main characters in the books by and large spend more time singing than they do fighting, and that was a very important aspect of Tolkien's vision of Middle Earth, but it isn't an aspect that has been carried over as much to other "high fantasy" works, nor to the most recent (and most successful) movie adaptations.  So it goes.  It doesn't alter the original books any.

I agree that a movie which was nothing but Rorschach beating the shit out of people wouldn't really be a Watchmen movie.  Then again, I think that a movie where the main characters almost never sing isn't really an LotR movie.  It's a generic action/fantasy flick inspired by LotR, and a pretty decent one as far as those things go.   And you could do the same thing with Watchmen.  There's plenty enough action there to spread out into an hour worth of screen time.  Just add in a few flashback scenes of the "golden age" so we can see the heroes at their top form, and stretch out the fight scenes from the book.  Take the "assassination attempt" on Ozymandias -- make it twenty ninjas instead of one guy with a gun, and do a big long Matrix lobby scene sort of thing where he beats all of them up in slo-mo.  The moviegoing public will eat it up with a spoon.  The couple of panels that show the Comedian's death in the beginning could be blown up into a five-minute sequence at least.  Rorschach's flashbacks, his harassment of Moloch, maybe an added scene or two showing him beating up a purse-snatcher in defiance of the general ban on heroes, his time in prison... shit, that's almost a whole movie by itself.

If you can take the short story "A Sound of Thunder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sound_of_Thunder)" and turn it into the movie "A Sound of Thunder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sound_of_Thunder_%28film%29)," you can pretty much turn anything into anything.

(edit) All that said, I actually have some faith that they'll try to stick a bit closer to the source material than that.  I thought Snyder did a pretty good job on 300.  Watchmen is going to be tougher, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt here.

I remember seeing previews for that, didn't know it ever actually came out.

I don't think we disagree all that much, I just have much lower expectations.

I keep my expectations permanently low, so I'm never disappointed.

After '300' I am also giving Snyder the benefit of the doubt.  I want this movie to be soooo good, please please make it so.

Not to hot on the cast, in general.  I think they are gonna have to work the story a bit so that it doesn't become boring on screen.  Although Zack seems to have a good grasp on what he wants.. so there's hope for the movie to be good.

I read The Watchmen book last month, having heard about it for the first time with all the movie talk. While all the backstory was good to read, I am not sure how central it needs to be in a movie.  Looking forward to the attempt.

I found this tidbit at AintItCoolNews.com which goes over how the Tales of The Black Freighter subplot will be handled.

Looks like it's going to shot and added as an extra for the DVD release. (http://www.aintitcool.com/node/34628)

Careful observers saw it here first when I posted it 4 months ago.   :awesome_for_real:

 :grin:

  Some new production set pics. (http://rss.warnerbros.com/watchmen/) Dated Nov 26th

Wow, well, they are certainly doing a good job of recreating the comic world/style by the looks of those screen shots.

Looks like the Black Freighter DVD extra is going to be animated now (http://icv2.com/articles/home/12161.html).

(http://rss.warnerbros.com/watchmen/ComedianFull-thumb.jpg) (http://rss.warnerbros.com/watchmen/ComedianFull.jpg) (http://rss.warnerbros.com/watchmen/NIteOwlFull-thumb.jpg) (http://rss.warnerbros.com/watchmen/NIteOwlFull.jpg) (http://rss.warnerbros.com/watchmen/OzymandiasFull-thumb.jpg) (http://rss.warnerbros.com/watchmen/OzymandiasFull.jpg) (http://rss.warnerbros.com/watchmen/RorschachFull-thumb.jpg) (http://rss.warnerbros.com/watchmen/RorschachFull.jpg) (http://rss.warnerbros.com/watchmen/SilkSpectreFull-thumb.jpg) (http://rss.warnerbros.com/watchmen/SilkSpectreFull.jpg)

(http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/7230/otisdp4.jpg)


Minor complaints about released pictures:

Nite Owl needs more brown, less Batman.

Ozy should be all gold and white, no black at all.

Does Ozymandias look squished somehow?

I think some of it is the camera angle, and some of it is Matthew Goode being kinda slender and stuffed into a muscle suit so his head winds up looking too small for his body.

Comedian looks kick ASS.

Moosehands gets a cookie.  :drill:

And yeah, the Comedian looks really kickass.  Too bad he's a relatively minor part.

I dunno if I'd call his part minor really, he's in some pretty memorable flashbacks. 

But as to the pictures in general, while Ozymandias does look a bit young, these pictures could be what they all looked like in their prime before they retired.  Ie, buff Night Owl for flashback purposes, pudgier guy for the 'modern' scenes.  I know that some of the other characters, namely the first Silk Spectre, will have their appearance changed with prosthetics throughout the time periods.  Adding some padding under Owl's shirt to show he's softened a bit would be a pretty minor thing. 

And as a final tidbit I read recently, apparently if the studio's pleased with how the Black Freighter stuff can be cut into the regular movie, it could make it into the theatrical version, at least in parts. 

It's amazing how impractical looking comic heroines' clothes are in the comics when brought to live action.  Yeah we all knew it, but it looks really silly now.

She has heels on, fucking lulz

This is going to get me flamed something fierce I'm sure, but I've never heard of this. So I read up some at IMDB and came away thinking "dystopian The Incredibles". Which, honestly, is right up my alley.

Sorry-wise it's interesting, but based on this thread alone (and the 20 years in the making comment from Zack), it sounds like there's a cult. What's the draw? Should I go grab the book people are mentioning?

In a word:  Yes. 



Ultimately, it's been an influence on a lot of more modern stuff, good and bad.  Like you mention yourself, The Incredibles is a recent example.  I'd mention one or two others that come to mind, but throwing them out there would kinda be spoilierish if you're really interested in picking up the book.  It's also a damn good book on its own merits, though. 

You owe it to yourself to read Watchmen. The work is a benchmark title.

I can't speak as to how much someone who isn't particularly into comics will get out of it.  It's a great story, but much of its praise is due to its effect on comics and how it utilized the medium.  Ask virtually anyone who is into comics what their favorite stories are and Watchmen (and Dark Knight Returns) will probably in the top 3 of about 95% of the people you ask, so I wouldn't really say it's a cult following (unless you're of the opinion that comics in genreral are a cult following).

When I saw The Incredibles, I thought "wow, that was like a Disney version of Watchmen."  So, yes.

A.V. Club has a new Alan Moore career overview.

Primer: Alan Moore (http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/primer_alan_moore)

... and, as a benchmark title, it's been copied numerous times in various ways. Any modern comic reader could quite easily be disappointed in reading it for the first time.

I wasn't - I read it at the right time, on the heels of a lot of Image / Wildstorm titles that had made up my comic reading - but some people are. They read Watchmen and go, "Is that it?".

That said, I'd recommend reading it. As very minor spoilers, it's a title where the characters are mosly human and the idiocy of being an unpowered costumed superhero is brought into the spotlight without the bearest hint of comedy. Damn it if Rorschach (sp?) isn't awesome though.

I only read it for the first time about 7 or 8 months ago and loved it.

Reading Watchmen is a rite of passage for anyone serious about comic/genre fiction. It is a masterwork that is only diminished because so many are copying it these days. Yes, you owe it to yourself to read the comic before seeing the movie.

Not to spoil things for Darniaq, but am I the only one who thinks the Comedian is Moore's best character in Watchmen? (as opposed to favorite: my faves are Nite-Owl and Rorschach.) When I first read Watchmen, I was really examining my personal beliefs, so Rorschach's "origin" really got to me. Now that I'm a bit older I still  :ye_gods: over  :nda:

Niteowl was my favorite, the Comedian was just too out there for me.  Dr. Manhattan was a close second.

Rorschach and Ozymandias for me.

****SPOILERS****

One of my favourite parts of Watchmen is that there are no heroes at the end. No-one walks away unsullied. It's a very neat and believable touch. I hope the movie can stick to that - I'm annoyed at "Wanted" for not having the guts to stick to its premise and would hate to see "Watchmen" go the same way.

My personal take on it -

It's not really a superhero story - it's a murder/mystery which starts with the murder of the Comedian, a former superhero. Two retired heroes, Silk Spectre and Owlman, investigate his death. As they do so, all sorts of mind-bending stuff about what's really going on in the world is revealed.

A lot of it involves three more former superheroes -  Rorschach, Adrian Veidt and Dr Manhattan. These three have all realised, in different ways perhaps, that running around in costumes fighting gangsters isn't actually going to solve the world's problems.

Rorschach decides that the world is going to hell and there is nothing much he can do about it. But he decides to carry on taking out scumbags as best he can because what else can he do? Plus, he's getting loonier by the day.

Veidt has come to the same conclusion as Rorschach about what can be achieved as a costumed hero, but it leads him in a different direction. He decides that if he can't heal the world by beating up criminals he will do it some other way.

Dr Manhattan, formerly called Jonathan Osterman, is the only person in the story who actually has superpowers. He concludes that as he is basically a god and barely human at all any more, mankind is simply not his problem.

And then all sorts of stuff happens.

So I dunno if that sounds interesting to you - if you read it, you might see it differently anyway. It's got lots of Alan Moore's philosophical musings mixed up with lots of plot twists, so it's always entertaining.

The first Watchmen video journal is up (http://rss.warnerbros.com/watchmen/).  Mostly just a look at constructing some of the sets for those interested in that sort of thing.

I must get myself a Watchmen smiley pin for my work bag.

Tales of the Black Freighter now to be released as its own dvd 5 days after Watchmen opens in theaters (http://icv2.com/articles/news/12633.html)


Also...

(http://www.aintitcool.com/images2008/mmpic.jpg)

That makes me wish Raul Julia was still alive.

That pictures is made of win.

This information raises my hopes that Watchmen will be good on film. I don't like my hopes being raised; it just leads to disappointment.

Just think about how many Alan Moore comics have had good adaptations to film.

From Hell and V turned out OK.

Besides, Zack Snyder is the guy who managed to make, against all odds, hate, and the worst of expectations, a Dawn of the Dead remake that is better than the original (yes), and 300. If he can't come up with something decent, then it probably won't be his fault.

I think better is too strong a word.  Maybe just different?  I like the original for its cheesiness and the newer one for some cool scenes.

Fair enough.  :-)

I guess my point though is that he's worked with some difficult material and/or expectations and managed to come out with excellence.

Snyder's "Dawn" remake is not better than the original. Romero at his best could conjure a better gross-out from karo syrup and stuff from the butcher counter than most modern horror directors can get out of a $100 million budget. "Dawn" defined the zombie flick, invented the zombie apocalypse, and was the apex of the genre.

However, "Dawn" was also the apex of Romero's career.  He said all the best stuff he had to say there, Snyder's "Dawn" remake is better than "Day of the Dead," "Land of the Dead" or "Diary of the Dead."

300 is not a great movie, but it is a fun movie, and it's a $65 million movie that looks like a $200 million movie, which is awesome. Snyder's capacity to build a blockbuster effect on a shoestring budget is a big asset to the film, but his fanboy loyalty to the subject matter won't serve him well.  Moore is going to hate whatever Snyder does, regardless of how dearly Snyder loves the work or how faithful he tries to be.

As a narrative, "Watchmen" is kind of messy. It's digressive and unfocused, and it goes off in a lot of directions. The "Black Freighter" stuff is the most conspicuous, but the story has a lot of tangled subplots, a lot of flashbacks, and unspools slowly.  Anything that gets cut out will piss off the fans and Moore, and if it all stays in, the movie will be incredibly long and difficult for audiences to follow.

Also, the New York in "Watchmen" looks nothing like New York today, the nuclear anxiety of the 80s and the resulting climax doesn't really tap into today's terrorism anxiety, and the finale is going to seem pretty stupid. To turn this into a top-notch movie, a director is going to have to reshape it and make it his own, and Moore is very possessive of his work, and the fans are very protective of Moore. I think this is a doomed endeavor.

The comic book movie I want to see is "Dark Knight Returns." Watchmen seems irrelevant and mired in the 70s.  "Dark Knight" seems forward looking, its geopolitical conflict aspects name check Vietnam and the Cold War, but seem relevant to Iraq and the war on terror. The media saturation aspect is more current than ever, and offers a real opportunity to call attention to the artifice of this genre. 

I always thought Ed Harris would be perfect in a Dark Knight Returns film. Then again, it's too late for that... He's starting to look really old now.

Mel Gibson would be awesome.  Harrison Ford would be awesome. Dennis Quaid could do it. Michael Douglas might be interesting.

You could even bring back Michael Keaton, although that would seem like kind of a stunt.

Also, David Bowie as the Joker would be kind of spectacular.

You are wrong on just about everything you said, starting with how Romero is a good director. He's a schlock hack with dreams of pretensions of grandeur.

But this:


V for Vendetta. It was very much about the paranoia of the late-70's British government, yet the movie version did a decent job of not seeming dated at all. And that was by the Matrix twats. Synder is a good director at being faithful to his source material without totally fucking it up. If anyone was going to make Watchment watchable and relevant, he would be the guy.

Moore won't like it no matter if it's a direct, panel-for-panel remake, and even then, he probably wouldn't like it. Moore just doesn't like his work being fucked with in anyway, period. Sometimes he has a point (LXG), sometimes his point is valid but the film is still decent (From Hell) and sometimes he should just cash the check and shut it.

If "top-notch" includes "financially successful" as part of its definition, then Snyder is going to have to change something. Making a movie that only appeals to Alan Moore and the League of Extraordinary Watchmen Nerds is going to fail hard in the box office. To the average moviegoer, this isn't Superman we're talking about here. It's not even Iron Man.

He's pedantic and lefty and hippie-ish, and his symbolism and thematic material aren't as tight as, say David Cronenberg's. But "Dawn" is still better than "Shivers," and Romero essentially invented the modern zombie and the zombie apocalypse concept.


Alan Moore was right about "V." That movie was a catastrophe. "V" was the most unlikable superhero ever, he was a terrorist, the dialogue was awful and the high point of the movie was a guy knocking over some dominoes.

I like Romero. I was one of the ones hating on the idea of a Dawn remake. Didn't go to theaters or anything.. I caught it on TV later, and changed my mind then.

Anyways... I don't really care about symbolism or anything of the sort. I just like funny gags, and that sense of apocalyptic doom you get in good nuclear/alien invasion/walking dead flicks. I crave that kind of hopelessness in a horror movie... Because absolutely nothing else seems to scare me except "apocalypse". And Snyder, and his cast, pulled that off better than I've seen from anyone in a long time. Including Romero.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, some things just don't translate to movies and Watchmen is one of them. I thought 300 was pretty lame. This will be interesting.

"Watchmen" is an adult version of "The Incredibles".  (Or rather, "The Incredibles" was a kids' version of "Watchmen," but you know what I mean.) 

And we all know how poorly Incredibles did, right?

Not to mention that "Hancock" movie coming out this summer, which will probably do quite well.  A superhero movie does not need to be Superman to put butts in seats.  The last Superman movie wasn't even that great.

The problem with Watchmen is that it isn't very Hollywood beyond the basic premise of superheroes.  It deals with a lot of complex issues which could be done very well, but probably won't be.  I'm still rooting for it, though.

People go to see a movie based largely on how good the trailer looks, though.  If they have a trailer with a few good superheroey bits (not hard) it'll have a pretty good opening weekend.  If the actual movie has a few more good superheroey bits, and the writing is decent, and it looks pretty, it won't die a horrible death after that.

As someone who follows such things, I saw a lot of blowback on "V for Vendetta" because it wasn't EXACTLY like the comic. I thought the film was fantastic and a great update on a theme, but plenty of the hardcore thought that because it wasn't about Thatcherite England, it failed. Same will happen with "Watchmen", but to a greater extent - it is perfectly set up to be a post-9/11 commentary, but if it goes down that path, I expect to see a lot of wailing about how it was politicised or corrupted or something.

Also, as a side point, no-one really cares about Alan Moore except that hardcore. "LXG" (which I find watchable) made $175m in revenue off a production budget of $78m. How 'true' it was to the original comic was irrelevant to the majority of people who went to see it.

Finally, I really don't care what Alan Moore thinks of what other people do to his work. If he's going to write a story where Dorothy (of Oz) masturbates during the twister, then he can suck it up when some other person gets hold of his work and takes it somewhere different.

I just read LXG volume 1 and 2 the other night. I think a fairly literal adaptation of LXG V1 could have been a fine film. It didn't need to be changed, so I can understand complaining about it. The story as-is was structured fine for a Hollywood movie.

Volume 2 was pure unadalterated shit however. Amazing how quickly it jumped the shark.

The problem with Watchmen is that it has very few actual super-heroey elements. Calling it an adult Incredibles doesn't make too much sense. The Incredibles was still mostly an action movie, Watchmen is a book about talking and feelings. It has a lot of qualities that translate very poorly to the screen: a generally wistful mood, rather complex characters and motivations, relationships, no clear central character, a historical perspective, etc.

I just leafed through my copy. Action makes up 5% of the story, and the switching between characters is going to be a nightmare.

And 300 was basically retarded. I understand why people liked it but it wasn't a complex, well-told story with lots of great characterization and multiple plot threads. It was homo-erotic ass kicking.

I suspect Watchmen will end up being The Adventures of Rorschach.

Watchmen would serve well as a seven or eight part HBO series. I still feel that this flick will hold up well on its own though. As long as the Watchmen movie achieves that feeling that everyone inhabiting its world has lost something great, I think it will succeed.

Also, 300 was awful in the sense that it was too loyal to the graphic novel. Some of the action was cool, but I could have done with something inspiring the way William Wallace is inspiring in Braveheart. 300 played out like a slow motion commercial for capes, swords and tanning oil. *Nods to Sin City for making the mediocrity possible.

Hey, Sin City was awesome in every way!  SILENCE!  :drill:

I liked Sin City. Cool movie, for real. Clive Owen, hot babes in leather, car chases and lots of action. Hell, it even made Elijah Wood look like a badass. It also ushered in 300 which mostly spawned internet memes as its legacy.

300 lacked substance, I agree... But it's one of the rare shallow flicks that I still find pretty cool.

Sin City is shallow in many ways too, but it's still great just for Mickey Rourke alone (at least, that's the one story that wasn't shallow). Rosario in leather helps big time though.

I've never read V.

The movie was crap.

Just throwing that out there.

Well, using the comic book as your storyboard for some scenes is one thing, but actually trying to make the film look like a comic book is sort of hit-and-miss. I thought Ang Lee's "Hulk" was a spectacular failure in that regard. "Sin City" and "300" can be counted as successes. 

Sam Raimi very much brought his own visual style to the "Spider-Man" films, and "A History of Violence," which was based on a graphic novel, adopted the narrative while mostly shedding the comic-book motif of the source.

"Watchmen" is going to be very faithful, in narrative, in shot composition and in dialogue.  Moore demands reverence, and Snyder is going to be reverent, and the film is going to be flat as a result.

If they made a movie out of "Dark Knight Returns" I think it would be best if large segments of it looked like news footage.

If it really looked like the comic, then Batman would look Adam West era retarded.

Actually, that's EXACTLY what makes it a great story to translate to a movie. It may not be a OMGSUMMERACTIONBLOCKBUSTER type of movie, but shit, dialogue films make up most of the movies that are released. Most people don't think of dialogue movies as superhero movies, but again, superhero movies don't have to be action movies. Synder has a real opportunity to make a kick-ass flick that takes the superhero movie genre in a different direction, just like Watchmen took the superhero genre in comics in a different direction. The real test will be how much leeway the studio and producers give him to tell Watchmen as the right kind of story.


300 the graphic novel was as much about the stylistic interpretation of a very simplistic story as well as the base archetypes behind military history as mythological treatment. The story was never about characterization, as most of Miller's characters are pretty thin symbolic archetypes of specific genre stalwarts. Translating 300 into a movie while retaining those stylistic themes was, IMO, a monumental task and I was surprised as hell that Hollywood let Snyder ditch the typical visual style of epics like Troy in favor of the more stylistic approach they took with 300. It was a bold move by the director, studio and producers, and it paid off. But notice that it wasn't a summer blockbuster release. Had it been a summer release, they might have been tempted to go the more traditional route and it might not have done nearly as well. Watchmen is also a March release, and I think that will help it tremendously.

The Incredibles is a cartoon, made by Pixar. It succeeded for the same reasons as Toy Story, Monsters Inc, and Finding Nemo. Pixar. Pixar. Pixar.

Hancock, if it succeeds, will do so because it features Will Smith with superpowers. Will Smith. Will Smith. Will Smith.

What does the Watchmen have? Another gloomy, I'm-a-cranky-tortured-artist Alan Moore comic, with a cast of nobodies. How are they going to hype this? For hype is the only way they'll get butts in the seats.

"From the director of 300 and the writer of V for Vendetta..." would be the obvious choice.

... comes a story of mystery, betrayal, lust, and murder!

Who are the heroes?

Who are the villains?

Who ...

watches the Watchmen?

For the teaser trailer, they could say that over footage of the guy spraying "QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODIOS" on a wall.  And then have three seconds of Rorschach kicking the crap out of him.  Fin.

They can also insert those little quick clips. Someone moving around just outside the camera, (the owl), with a flapping noise from his cape. Dr Manhattan burning commies in a jungle. Ozymandias addressing a crowd of fans. Or investors. Or Watchmen. Glimpses of a mysterious island.

Someone should write this stuff down.

"The Incredibles" (and the rest of Pixar's output, for that matter) succeed because Pixar makes strong stories as much as anything else, not just because they are Pixar. It was also Brad Bird behind it and a risk for the studio.

As for "Hancock", but the same token, if it fails it will because it has Will Smith with superpowers.

We'll have to wait and see for "Watchmen". I'm guessing a lot more action will occur in the film than appears in the graphic novel in order to show how effective the characters are at fighting / training in comparison to how dysfunctional they are otherwise.

They aren't really very effective at fighting and training though.

Silk Spectre and Nite Owl take down that gang that accosts them pretty handily, and that's with Owl, if not both of them, being way out of their prime.  Rorschach does pretty well against the police team that comes after him, considering he had a grappling gun and a few odds and ends on his person.  We really don't see much of the Comedian in action, but within the comic he's supposed to be pretty good at what he does too.  And Veidt, besides being a genius as well as being able to kick ass, catches a fucking bullet at the end.  So really, while they're not, like, Superman levels of badassery (except for Manhattan, of course), they're all above normal levels in varying degrees.  So there's more than enough to build upon for a movie, especially if he goes beyond the material a bit and shows stuff mentioned or hinted at in the book. 

You had better not just called Blue Beetle II crap, or there shall be repercussions.  :mob:

Wanna rez this derail because this I'd want to see. Need to wait a few years though so Christian Bale can play out the current run (the first of which was awesome and the second looking like it could be).

And I'd say a CGI-buffed-up Dennis Quaid would be fantastic. The right combo of age and crazy-stare.

Who for Superman though?

They are very effective at fighting and training. One of the things Watchman shows is that a "good left hook" (probably misquoting Nite Owl I there) is useless against nuclear armageddon or a real superpowered being. The fact that the graphic novel did a lot of its fighting off-panel helped emphasise this.

RE: Fanboys vs. Mass Market Appeal. I have to admit I'm not really looking forward to this movie. Last I heard, to answer Unsub's earlier post, the movie will depart from the comic's "conflict resolution" (as opposed to ending, if you know what I mean; I don't know if the ending is different or not. Who cares?) and is given a more standard one. I'd prefer a Watchmen movie free from compromise.

Provided the movie contains Dr Manhattan's crushing reply to Ozymandias after the 'event', I probably could be content with a change made to the narrative.

Probably.

Probably...

Uh ?

There isn't a colour for desparate optimism in the face of overwhelming common sense to the contrary.

I couldn't remember which quote you were talking about off the top of my head.  That was my confusion.

Been a few years since I read Watchmen but I guess it's the bit about 'all humans are ants and you are no more than the most intelligent ant, sorry dude' that Dr. M says to Ozymandias after everything turns out to be part of his scheme to save the world by bringing it to the brink.

I figured he meant:

So, I've never read a published comic thingy.

But I'm intrigued.  How does one go about...obtaining this Watchmen stuff? Do I go to the library?

Amazon.com link to the
Graphic Novel (http://www.amazon.com/Watchmen-Alan-Moore/dp/0930289234/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213123158&sr=8-1)

Collects the whole series.

eh, Darniaq hasn't said he finished reading it so I was going to say something,  but I guess it's like saying, "rosebud was the  :nda:"  :awesome_for_real:

Most comic shops that cater to more than just the mainstream Marvel/DC fans ought to carry a few copies of Watchmen.

There was a copy in the high street book store in Colorado Springs last time I was there. I think it was a Barnes and Noble.

Yeah,I remember seeing it in a few bookstores also.

A comic shop that doesn't have a copy of Watchmen isn't a proper comic shop.

I might even argue the same for bookstores in general.

EDIT: ****OBTUSE SPOILERS FOLLOW***


Yep, that's the one. Ozymandias has been so focussed on his 'end' goal and seeks reassurance from Dr Manhattan that he's got some kind of resolution. Manhattan levels him with a reply that tells Oz he'll be dealing with this for the rest of his life.

***END SPOILERS***

Well it looks like I was wrong: they are no longer doing that retarded ending and doing one with more original Watchmen and less retardation :p :


http://io9.com/391488/learn-how-watchmen-changes-the-graphic-novels-ending

So I'm reading this now.  First graphic novel ever.

It's a bit strange, but I just finished Jon's backstory or whatever.  Really awesomely done.

I forget, is Jon Manhattan?

Yep.

Yup, it really was incredible to read.

Ugh. It seems another blog in the kotaku-brand stable. Fuck, they need a better image host. Or a better server.

Bruce Campbell?

Have the trailer in front of half my prints of Dark Knight.  It is fucking awesome.

Has it been linked yet? I'm illiterate. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quZqZsDTCpM)

Holy shit. I had a happy in my pants.  :drill: :drill: :drill: :drill: :drill:

Gametrailers, while it lasts (http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/241236.html?playlist=featured)

That gave me chills and tingles.

Oooh, and there's a QT version at a little nicer resolution here, comrade.

http://kino-govno.com/?trailers&id=watchmen (http://kino-govno.com/?trailers&id=watchmen)

I am shamefully happy to see a blue weener.  :drillf:

Why don't we go for a 720p HD trailer instead straight from the crapple site. (http://movies.apple.com/movies/wb/watchmen/watchmen-tlr1_h720p.mov)

I hope this ends up being as good as this suggests it will be.

Then again - Silk Spectre: who gives a fuck if it's crap - I'd watch it just for her!

they did watches and mars and o my something to look forward to

This is looking good.  They're doing a better job with it then I had hoped for.

Fuck, I've watched it 4 times now, and it still makes me happy in the pants. The HD version even let me glean some details I couldn't see in the YouTube version, like the Veidt label on the can of hairspray Rorschach uses as a flamethrower and the way his mask moves. I want this movie NOW.

 :drillf:

Fuck yeah.  I'm psyched after watching that.  There's lots of little details they seem to be getting in there. 

In case anybody is wondering, that trailer includes the best thing to have come out of the Batman & Robin movie: Smashing Pumpkins soundtrack contribution.

That looks awesome.  :ye_gods:

Just bought it off of Itunes. 

The B&R soundtrack had its moments.

Oh, and it looks like Australia doesn't get Watchmen as a trailer before "The Dark Knight".

Oh. Mars! Giant glass clock palace made out of mars sand.  :heart: :heart: :heart:

Goddamn, I mean  Goddamn!  I spotted several scenes lifted straight from the comic panels.  I actually think they are gonna do this right.  I've waited 22 years for this movie and it looks better than I imagined.  I mean, for  me, if Watchmen is great where do I go from here movie-wise?  All of my favorite pop culture icons have been done and all done reasonably well;  Spiderman, Iron Man, LOTR and now Watchmen. 

Maybe a great DND movie is all that's left but we know that'll never happen.

Go Go shitty video game tie-in! (http://ps3.ign.com/articles/893/893007p1.html)  And a prequel no less, from a no-name developer.  :uhrr:

Are they aware that Alan Moore will appear there one day in a puff of black smoke and start ripping out hearts?

Chili Con Carnage isn't terrible and as a prequel & beat'em up I don't know. I don't like it. But at the same time, I haven't played a Beat'Em Up in YEARS.

I puked a little in the mouth only from reading that IGN review. I hope Alan Moore does his heartripping before the game comes out.

Maybe you can play the Dr. Manhattan minigame and see how many Vietnamese you can incinerate in three minutes.   

Watchmen Posters revealed (http://blog.newsarama.com/2008/08/01/wb-releases-those-watchmen-posters/).

Very nice.

Having never read Watchmen,
seeing as it came out two years after I was born, it's interesting to see that they just used the promotional posters from back then and updated them for the movie.

Yup. Zack Snyder is trying to stay true to the comic as much as possible. Before he came on the script was totally different than the comic having to do with terrorists or some sort of crap like that and he managed to convince the studio it would be best to follow the comic and keep the original ending as well (studio heads wanted a "Hollywood ending").

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Yeah, I have a lot of respect for him after 300.  Even if you didn't like it, he kept it VERY true to the comic.  Some extra stuff in there, but pretty much all in line with the comic (many of the scenes where right out of comic panels, much like many of the scenes shown in the Watchmen trailer).  I've always been a big proponent of directors being slaves to the material rather than slaves to their Ego, and he seems to fit the bill.  I was kind of nervous about a watchman movie, but knowing that he's behind it as well as seeing the trailer has pretty much erased my fears.

Also, his Dawn of the Dead remake was excellent, and I LOVED the original.  He pretty much as my undying trust now until he fucks up (much like Blizzard does with games for me).

I love the first comment there: "Please don't let us see blue wang!".

I'm betting on them pulling an Austin Powers for that scene.

Nope.  When he first pulls his skin back together, he is 'Wang Out'.  That scene is in the trailer and he's Speedo'd up.

Sorry.

Damn you, MPAA.   :angryfist:

Err, he wasn't wearing a speedo in the scene where he pulls himself back together (in the dinning room) in the trailer.  He just looked a bit ambiguous in the region in the short flash we saw.

He was wearing a Speedo when he was melting Vietnam's face, but that's fine because he was wearing one in the Comic in that scene as well.

Teleku is right.

How sad is it that I just went back and rewatched the trailer to verify that?

Alas, I don't have my trailer on me, but I will check in the morning.

If that's true (and who am I to say it's not), damn my memory.  I was sure I remembered thinking 'No Wangs.  Phew.'

Are you saying that you are afraid of the cock?  :drill:

That's no excuse.  Go read it.

The wang is not in any way obvious.  I had to pause the frame to see that he wasn't wearing the dark blue speedo from the Vietnam shot.

Basically, he's naked but they aren't making a big deal out of it one way or another.  Which is pretty much how the comic handled it.

My bad.

It's a Michaelangelo weenie, which to our modern porn-conditioned eyes makes it almost non-existent.

You should check out the trailer on IMAX.   :ye_gods:

Should I really?  (http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/40386/Smileys/joker.png)

I'm almost done. Picked up the whole bit for $20. So good.

WTF (http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20213273_3,00.html)

What's the problem?

That they wanted a whole different storyline, detail and ending from the book… …granted, it's nice that they're being "convinced" of the erroneous ways, but WTF…

At first, I thought you were unhappy with them veering towards the source material, rather than away from it.


This always bothers me a bit, because the story implies that the villain will pretty much be burned at the stake after the story has ended. I knew who the villain was going in, and still ended up more than happy with the final chapter. Just look at the villain's face in that character's last frame, and you can see that person's fate is sealed.

I'm glad they stuck with the 80's theme. Using Reagan edges too far into The Dark Knight Returns territory.

I'll always be curious about Gilliam's take on the work. Odds are, some unholy disaster would have kept it from seeing the light of day anyhow.

What are you talking about ?

US audiences might not be as accepting of film with a faked terrorist attack on US soil that leaves thousands of US citizens dead as they once were.

US Audiences are mostly full of cockbiting imbeciles.

But they have the numbers. Only those who want a short career in show business want to be involved in critical successes that fail to attract an audience.

I'm not a fan of Snyder, but he's got guts for saying, "This is Watchmen, so it is going to follow what happened in the source, regardless of how it makes people feel". If "The Dark Knight" had bombed, I could pretty much guarantee someone would be re-editing / re-shooting the narrative of "Watchmen" right now.

It's Hollywood.  They always have a hard time believing someone outside their industry might have written a good story.

I disagree.  The last shot we see of the villian's face is hammering home the sudden rush of uncertainty, a feeling that he's never experienced before and did not anticipate through all of his plans.  He isn't sure he'll be burned at the stake.  He's no longer sure of anything.

And this matches the final panel, with the editor's assistant reaching toward the crazy stack.  Does his hand finally come to rest on the journal, or pass it by in favor of a letter about chemtrails or fluoridization?  I don't think Moore felt any need to answer that question, or even leave it to the reader to decide.

It's actually part of what I think will be impossible to translate to the screen.  Everyone in the Watchmen is struggling to control their world, and ultimately they all fail in different ways.  The only two exceptions are the Comedian who's attempt to laugh off control leads to his death when confronted with the fact that control is an inescapable function of the human condition, and Manhattan who achieves true control only to lose his humanity in the process.

You're both nuts.  The Book is ABOUT getting away with it.

Of course he got away with it.  For the rest of his life.

That wasn't Manhattans' point.

Maybe Hollywood is right. The original story seems to be too hard for many people.

The one who would have blown the whistle is dead. Everybody else shrugs their shoulders and says "Harm done, so those sacrifices better not be for naught". The truth is buried in the ramblings of a convicted madman who may or may not be published in a third rate rag that nobody takes seriously.

They got away with it.

I agree with Tebonas and Ironwood and Mooshand all to some degree. When Manhattan says that nothing ever ends I took it to refer more to that Ozymandias' work would eventually erode back to the status quo than that this particular episode was far from over.

Ozymandias probably gets away with it. There is some slight uncertainty there but the interpretation that Ozymandias' is fucked makes no sense to me, I think someone is reading in a Hollywood ending where there isn't one. Maybe twenty years down the road somebody puts together the pieces and hunts him down, sure, but that's not the foregone or even likely conclusion.

If Manhattan meant that this particular episode had yet to play out he wouldn't have done what he did in the end.

Ozymandias doesn't give a FUCK about Rorscach getting back to town and blowing the whistle.  Some say because he knows what Jon is going to do.  But that's total fucking bollocks.  Everything proved that you can't predict Jon.  He's only predictable to himself.

He got away with it.  No-one would listen to the fucking frontiersman or a diary of a fucked up vigilante except those who would believe it anyway.

Nixon is fucking president for LIFE, for Christ sakes.

He got away with it.

It wouldn't matter if Ozymandias "got away with it" or not. Not only is the damage done, but even if found out, he proved that 1) humanity is better off without the Ubermensch to keep them from eating each other in the streets and 2) the only way to get humanity to move in a positive fashion is by manipulating their fear for their own salvation. He saw himself as Alexander leading humanity forward through his benevolent dictatorship. What company do you think would lead the reconstruction? How depenedent would Nixon be on Veidt for unfucking the country?

It wasn't about "getting away with it" so much as getting it done in the first place.

That's one way to look at it.  Doesn't really fly in the face of my view tho.

Yeah, not sure how anybody got the "could be burned at a stake" interpretation.  I thought the ending fully showed he got away with it.  All he wanted from Jon was just confirmation from the super being that he had done the right thing, pretty much for comfort.  Jon's response just left him upset because he didn't give him an answer and basically told him he was going live with the decision the rest of his life. 

On the Diary, I like to think it did get published, and becomes a popular conspiracy theory among crazy conspiracy people, but doesn't actually effect anything because it's god damn crazy.  Like the 9/11 government conspiracy.  Except only this time, ironically, it happens to be true!  But that's just my happy take on it in my head.

Also, as I recall, Nixon was stepping down after all this (well, not running again), so he wouldn't be involved.  Looks like President Robert Redford  :awesome_for_real:.

http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2008/08/watchmen-lawsui.html (http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2008/08/watchmen-lawsui.html)



Nothing nice can ever happen without someone trying to fuck it up. 

Fuck Sake.

Throw money at the problem, Hollywood.

Quickly.

It doesn't surprise me that Fox are involved in this.  I think they've got over 70% of the worlds lawyers working for them.  It's just a shame they don't seem to have a clue. Fox legal recently demanded that YouTube videos of a trailer for one of their films be pulled.  The videos were uploaded by someone being paid by Fox Marketing to promote the film on the internet. 

Fuckwits.

Well I went digging around for things to support my assertion and wound up disproving the last bit of that sentence.


So, does the journal get published or not?  And if it does, does it matter or not?  Each of us gets to answer that for ourselves.  In the world of the Watchmen no single person or event is completely in control.

I see the ketchup stain on the assistant editor's tee shirt on the last page. Once he reads the journal and knows the truth, he's like the Comedian at the begining of the story- a guy with a huge bit of information to divulge? As the story says, who do you go to with that kind of knowledge? The Comedian went to Moloch, an old villain who develops cancer- he was soon to die anyway. The assistant editor will go to the readers of the paper he works for. Moloch didn't do anything with the knowledge he had, but would the public?

I just find it hard to believe that the world peace would hold after the information is printed. Don't forget that Watchmen is our world, but with superheroes. If you lived in a world with Dr. Manhatten walking around in it, don't you think you could believe that the world's smartest man, Adrien Veidt, could hatch a plan to kill millions of people in order to stop WWlll? The people rose up against the Watchmen once before, they'd surely have the will to do it again.

I can see that many of you think I'm crazy now. Anyways, I like all the takes I've read here.

In the world we live in now, we'd read it, say 'meh' and turn over to American Gladiators.

Either that, or we'd be furiously masturbating about it in a Politics thread.

 :why_so_serious:

Fixed

They got away with it in the short term. For the rest of his life, Veidt has to hope that no-one puts together what he did, because if they do his work is undone. With no third party threat, the USSR and USA are back in a nuclear stalemate and the world is on the brink again.

"Nothing ever ends". Veidt wanted some reassurance, but all he got was an indication he's got the rest of his life to think about what he's done and maybe be discovered. He may have done the right thing, but he's going to wear it until he dies.

Given how bananas the US went in the search for Osama bin Laden after 9/11, I can't think the US population would go "that guy killed 20 000 people - meh, let's watch Oprah".

Eh, Veidt's plan worked just as he intended but I think the meaning of Jon's parting words were a reminder to him that this isn't the end. His plan succeeded but that doesn't mean he gets the ending cutscene, roll credits. People are going to continue to have arguments, petty disputes and their terror of aliens overhwelming their fear of their fellow humans is only going to last so long. I think Jon's very aware of the fact that even though everything went just as he wanted that Veidt's plan to create paradise doesn't ever get to the point where you can sit back satisfied that you've accomplished it. In other words Veidt either gets to spend the rest of his life slowly engineering further situations to keep everyone's minds off killing each other or he has to sit back and watch as the world slides back into MAD once more.

Sure he would have. He's just a puppet who can see the strings (I only hate myself a little for remembering that line  :why_so_serious:)


I agree with the rest though.

From the article:


I'm so relieved to read this. I was afraid one of his "big secrets" would be excised/watered-down. 

Are you talking about the Rape or the war crimes ?  Or the shooting of his child ?

Or the murder of Hooded Justice?

Hell, there are so many bis secrets with that fucktard you don't know where to start.

This doesn't help if you didn'ike Sin City (EDIT: or Kevin Smith) but I get the sentiment.

It also doesn't help that Smith wrote a similarly glowing review after seeing an early screening of Revenge of the Sith (http://viewaskew.com/news/sith/).  I could say many things about that movie but "fucking awesome" wouldn't be one of them.

Kevin Smith is a fanboy.


The whole thing is like this. It's hilarious.

Similar to Knowles from AICN a good review from Kevin Smith is more of a red flag than an endorsement.

Very good point. I had totally forgotten all about that.

So, the Watchmen sucked. Awesome.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Gie it a chance, eh ?

We did the same shit with both Batman movies.

 :why_so_serious:

No we didn't. Or at least I didn't. The Batman movies were guaranteed to be awesome. or at least I thought so. And it was always based on who was playing everyone BESIDES Batman.

I think a good review from Kevin Smith is more indicative of Kevin Smith liking Watchmen than any actual judge of quality. Based on his reviews I think he's a fanboy, clearly he loved Star Wars and he loves Watchmen, the quality of the films doesn't really come into it. I don't think it's poor taste so much as his brain just disengages itself the moment something he likes comes on the screen.

Only on Star Wars stuff. Kevin Smith is like Sam Jackson - he'd play Luke Skywalker's slave just to be in a Star Wars movie. I wouldn't read anything into his review of Revenge of the Sith, because he is a Star Wars fanboy.

You thought Katie Holmes was a good casting choice?

Nah, just talkin' about his, y'know, his friend's daughter (last one, I swear  :awesome_for_real:)

IMO, humanizing someone so unrepentantly and relentlessly evil like the Comedian is one of the strongest parts of the story. 

I think you may have read that bit wrong....

:headscratch:

Which bit? the article, the "big secret", or my view of Blake's character?

I just took a look at Watchmen. Laurie's only 16 in 1964. The Minutemen photo was taken in 1940.

Never mind. I took it that you meant the Laurie relationship he was attempting was a 'bad thing', which it wasn't.  But I think it was ME that read YOU wrong.

In fairness, my head really, really fucking hurts today.  I hope it's not a toomer.

Don't worry.
(http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j79/JoeyTapes/KindergardenCop16.jpg)
It's not.

Hey, I'm not even talking to you.  The wife found out you got rid of the beard and asked straight out 'When's he coming back over to visit ?  I liked him.'

So I hope you're free on the fifth of Never.

 :awesome_for_real:

 :drill:

Finally read it.  Started hella slow, but was unable to put down once I got around halfway point.  Pretty damn good, meant a lot less to me because I always thought comics were pretty "meh" unless they were dark/adult/twisted so having someone pull DC superheroes towards that wasn't a big deal.  Instead it was just some really poignant moments, interspersed with a bunch of backstory clippings that seemed like a big crutch looking back on them and were annoying at times.  The characters were well developed though and the story interesting.  The pirate story was annoying as hell.  I kept skipping it for a page then going back and reading it out of obligation.  It was a kind of cool story in its own right but along with the backstory clippings I really had a hard time getting into the flow of the book.  If I hadn't heard it was the greatest thing evar so many times I probably would have put it down unfinished tbh.  But once good characters are given a chance to grow on me I have to see what happens to them, once I got that far it was money.

I still got a much bigger kick out of Transmet to be sure.

I think Moore's big weakness is that he doesn't trust comics to do the job.

Both League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Top 10 were full of non-comic text that to me detracted from the story. In a way it's kind of an admission that comics are not a good medium if you constantly have to go outside of it. And in his case going outside the medium often feels extraneous at best.

I'm struggling to think of any non-comic text in Top 10 outside the two-page intro in the TPB.  The text in League and Watchmen is completely optional reading, so I'm not sure how adding in bonus material is an admission that comics are not a good medium.

In conclusion, what the fuck are you talking about?

Alan Moore defense force activate!

If the text is supplemental and really irrelevant to the story it should be removed. If it matters it should be included in the actual comic.

It's like packaging a movie with a little book that includes backstory on the characters, or how old video games would include the plot description in the instruction manual.

I'm not opposed to author introductions and things like that, I'm talking about story-related text. It's a comic do it as a comic. Saying it's optional is a copout. So is reading the actual comic, nobody puts a gun to your head and forces you to do it. Reading Alan Moore comics is entirely optional to start with.

I'm trying to come up with a response to your post, but I can't for the life of me figure out what your actual objection to supplemental material is.  It's extra material, like illustrations in a novel, extras on a DVD, or whatever.  You'll note that any inclusion of text in Moore's comics take place either at the beginning or end of the TPB, or where the end of an individual issue would be (where a letter column would usually be).  It's never just dropped into the middle of a chapter as something necessary to understanding the story.   Your argument seems to be that more material is somehow inherently bad and casts a negative light on the medium somehow.

The Watchmen text is in the middle.

League had so much extraneous crap in it (the second TPB in particular) that I started to feel like the actual comic (which sucked balls) was an excuse to include the horrible text story. It seemed really self-indulgent to me to include a whole bunch of boring text at the end of a terrible story. How about we spend less time writing about the adventures of scantily clad females and more time on the actual thing that I paid for?

The text at the start of Top 10 was totally extraneous, like an opening narration that explains the whole story.

I don't mind the stuff like playbills and fun things like that, thbut big walls of text I can do without. "Big crutch" is a great term for it.

The text is at the end of each chapter.  In other words, when Watchmen was originally released as a 12 issue series, the text was a supplementary feature at the end of each issue.

Edit: LOEG is similar, although it has a couple less pages of story than Watchmen, and more supplemental material.  Both of them have more pages of story than a standard comic though.  Unlike Watchmen, when LOEG was collected into TPB form, all the supplemental text was placed at the back of the collection.

I always thought the extra stuff was cool. That supplementary material is a great tool for opening up the reader to a wider world outside of the central characters and even reinforces them.

With League, I had the feeling that Moore was actually trying to push readers away from a nothing-but-comics mentallity with that stuff in order to get people to read the original classics. It didn't feel pretentious at all. In some ways it reminded me of my older Marvel comics which had adds for gag gifts or Mr. Atlas training guides, only the adds were meant to be 100 years old.

That said, I didn't immediately read the supplements at the end of each issue, but on the days I was going through my back issues to find something to re-read, I ended up finding those and liking them. I'm a geek for things I want more of though. Last week I watched all of Freaks and Geeks and then Undeclared because I am unable to function for long periods of time without Apatow productions in my life. So, Moore's supplements serve me well.

edit: Last year, I gave my cousin a Watchmen TPB to read on his flight to grad school in London. I asked him what he thought of the extra stuff and he told me he skipped it all. I guess it's the kind of thing for a person who is collecting a full run of Spider-Man and just has to have the What if...?! issue with Aunt May gaining The Power Cosmic.

I've got to admit that your complaint about extra material feels a bit like someone complaining about including a director's commentary. "If talking about what this is meant to mean and what's going on in this scene and difficulties the actor had with how to react can't be done as part of the movie it seems like they're admitting there's some problem with movies as a medium." It's not information you need to understand and appreciate the story but can add some depth and colour to world in general if you want to get into it.

But as I already said author commentary is different. That's not supposed to be part of the fictional world, it breaks the 4th wall on purpose.

It would be a "Big crutch" if it were essential reading to understand the story, rather than bonus material which adds backstory. 

Going with just text with maybe a couple B&W illustrations here and there allows the writer to add in pages of extra material without adding to the workload of the artist (comic art is an order of magnitude more time intensive than the writing).

You still haven't really made clear what you find so objectionable about it, and it's starting to come off like a Geldon argument.

I made it clear, you just don't agree, and because you are apparently some sort of Alan Moore superfan the fact that someone has a differing opinion is not something you can swallow. Hoax made his case well that the supplemental stuff also interrupts the narrative flow.

I admit that the idea that extraneous material can bloat something and reduce it's quality is an amazingly novel idea I just invented on the spot.

The problem with "well you can choose not to read it" is that you can say that about anything. The bible is a great detective novel if you choose not to read 90% of the words. It's not like the "supplemental" material comes in some separate package. Without reading it how do you even know that it's supplemental and not integral?

You're starting to become a parody of yourself.

To be clear though, the scenario that sparked this slapfight was as follows.  Everyone here, my good rl friend, comic book store employee guy who I've known since I was a super small kid and the bookstore people near my current apt all told me to read the book.  Nobody mentioned I might want to skip the walls of text that end each chapter.  So I didn't think, oh that text would have been at the end of the comic, instead I felt like I better read it.  So I did.  It was long.  It wasn't very well done.  It was ok in the early chapters that weren't interesting comic-wise.  But once the story got going it was a chore.  In a chapter with heavy pirate-story fucking up the flow it was enough to really make the book less readable in a bad way.  I'm sorry that I wasn't smart enough to know it was ok to skip.  It was there.  I felt I should read it.  Some of it was good, I'm not saying it was all crap.  Just it fucked up the comic book format, because I was reading more comic book right after being thrown out into black and white text format for 5 pages.  Yes, that is only because it was a TPB.  So my bad I guess?

They put the supplemental text in between the chapters in the TPB?

Bad editing. I'm not sure I've read all of that text even now, 22 years later, and I was buying that series monthly. That kind of stuff should be collected and put at the back of the book. Hoax has a valid point, but it isn't agianst the writer so much as the editor who decided to set it up that way.

Dave Sim had a real bad habit of slipping into long walls of text in Cerebus. It wasn't that the text wasn't good, it was that it hurt the flow of the story, even when it WAS the story.

The first time I read Watchmen I skipped the extra stuff; I got about halfway into the first bit and said "oh, this is obviously supplemental material that went at the end of each comic issue but is not integral to the story.  I don't think I want to read it now."  And then I skipped the rest of them so I could get to the main story faster.

Kudos to those of you that felt as I did but slogged through it anyway.

(Note: on subsequent reads I've read the supplemental stuff and liked it.  I just wasn't in the mood for the reduced pacing while I was still itching to find out how everything wrapped up.)

I've got no problem with Hoax's opinion because for him it's really a problem with how the TPB collects the material (well, that and the fact that he just didn't care for the Black Freighter).  I can understand that at least.  Perhaps they should have put the material at the back so people piciking up the book for the first time wouldn't think it was integral to the plot.

Your opinion though is that it shouldn't be there at all because this is a comic, and stuff that isn't comics has no place in it.  You can try to piggyback onto Hoax's argument now but your original point was that "Moore's big weakness is that he doesn't trust comics to do the job.", and "it's kind of an admission that comics are not a good medium if you constantly have to go outside of it".

As for your point about how all reading is optional, quit being intentionally fucking retarded.  I'm sure you understand that people are saying that you can avoid reading the supplemental material and still have a full understanding of the actual story, as opposed to your stupid fucking Bible comparison where you don't read 90% of the words.

Oh, and I'm an Ellis superfan.

This reminds me a bit of that book thread where that one guy insisted on reading the book in a way he didn't like, and then criticized the book because he didn't like the way he read it.

 :why_so_serious:

I still don't see how I could know that the material was supplemental without having read it first. It's only supplemental in retrospect.


Reading a book straight through from front to back is how I normally do it.  :awesome_for_real:


I believe that when you have more text in non-comic form than you have in comic form that's a tacit admission that you are more interested in writing plain text than a comic book. In League 2 I would say this is clearly the case, given how voluminous the supplemental material is compared to the main material. It's a text adventure with a comic tacked on.

Edit: Last post on this topic. Sometimes people have different opinions. Imagine.

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/39720/scans/set/capinhas-watch2_1.jpg
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/39720/scans/set/capinhas-watch3_1.jpg
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/39720/scans/set/capinhas-watch4_1.jpg
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/39720/scans/set/capinhas-watch_1.jpg

I see what you did there.

Actually, the guy I'm referring to in the other thread wasn't you.  But you were in there ripping on him.  Which is why I  :why_so_serious:.

That sounds like a fun argument to have been part of.  Was I there ?


Now would be a bad time to say that it actually WAS me, of course...

I was ripping on him mostly because he was being needlessly confrontational and taking his Politics hate out on people in that thread.

It still amuses me.  And no, I think you were lucky enough to be absent that day, IW.

Back to the topic at hand: anyone heard anything about the Fox lawsuit?  Are they going to kill this movie?  Please say it ain't so.

WB has invested too much money in filming Watchmen to not just pay Fox out if it comes down to it.  They went through something similar when they did the Dukes of Hazzard movie.

Someone paid money to ensure the release of that... movie?  I hope is wan't more than pocket change.

LOEG: Black Dossier had large, large chunks of different reading material that often interrupted the flow of the story.

Of course, it ends with a giant voyage to the meta-narrative of storytelling, which also ruined a perfectly good comic.

That was more or less the point, in that the narrative was mostly just there as a frame for all the background information (or at least that's generally how it was marketed before release).  Supposedly it also serves as a bridge from vol. 2 to the still upcoming vol. 3.  Can't say I've picked Black Dossier up though, as I'm not a big enough fan of LOEG to want to put out money for a book full of backstory.  If it were something similar, but for Top 10 I probably would buy it and enjoy it.

Some of the LOEG material presented is  :drill: - I loved the German and French versions of the LOEG team who were just so much nastier than the British.

But a lot of it is extraneous. It just goes back to the point above that sometimes it appears that Moore doesn't believe comics can deliver when he keeps going off to other media in order to get his point across.

That's like saying if a novelist decides to make a movie, he doesn't believe books can deliver.  Different forms of media have different strengths and weakness.  If someone wants to play around with different forms of media, where's the sense in saying "no, you're a comic writer, you can't do that."?

Black Dossier was meant to be extraneous.  It was "here's a bunch of random stuff I came up with for hardcore LOEG fans to flesh out the world a bit more".  Again, that's why I never even entertained the idea of buying it.  Hell, the thing was supposed to include a vinyl single of Alan Moore singing.  Complaining about that is like complaining The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, or the Planet Hulk: Gladiator Guidebook, don't tell stories and rely on blocks of text.

It's a shame due to the stuff included that the book had to be shrinkwrapped, because people who are buying it without knowing the contents and expecting a single narrative are obviously going to be disappointed.

No, it's like a novelist dropping a movie in the middle of his book for people to watch so they can find out how some sub-plot was resolved. Or a movie going, "If you want to understand this character, please watch this interpretive dance session before we continue".

Also, nowhere did I see anything saying the Black Dossier was some sort of side material - I'm not saying it wasn't said, but I was watching out for it to see when it was released and never saw a "this is canon, but it's not really important" signal.

The point is that Moore appears to be attempting to make his comics more meaningful but using non-comic media, which to some people defeats the purpose. Gaiman generally doesn't resort to using non-comic media in order to tell a story in comic book form and he's done things that are just as deep as Moore's. Now, if Gaiman wants to turn his tales into books or into movies, he generally does just that.

Note: I'm fully aware that, with no Watchman info to speak of, we are now just passing time in this thread.

Studio War Involving ‘Watchmen’ Heats Up
By MICHAEL CIEPLY
LOS ANGELES — The legal brawl over “Watchmen” is about to get rougher.

Lawyers for Warner Brothers, which has already shot a movie of this graphic novel about the seamier side of superhero life, and lawyers for 20th Century Fox, which claims it owns the rights to the material, laid plans for a frenzied fight in a joint report submitted to the federal court here on Friday.

Fox has said it will seek an injunction blocking Warner’s planned release of the film next March. Warner has argued that Fox should not be allowed to stop the movie, after standing by while Warner and its partners on the film, Paramount Pictures and Legendary Pictures, spent more than $100 million on the production, directed by Zack Snyder (“300”).

In a summary of its position in Friday’s report, Warner said Fox “sat silently” as one of the producers of “Watchmen,” Lawrence Gordon, took the project “to studio after studio with Fox’s express knowledge.”

Fox, which filed a lawsuit in February, has claimed in its own filings that Mr. Gordon did not keep the studio apprised of his plans, as required by a 1994 agreement. That deal granted Mr. Gordon rights to “Watchmen” in “turnaround” — an industry term for arrangements under which producers can move a project from one studio to another under certain conditions.

In Warner’s version of events, Mr. Gordon, who is not named as a defendant in the Fox suit, actually offered the project to Fox in 2005, shortly before bringing it to Warner after years of trying to make the movie with Paramount. “Fox simply rejected it,” Warner said in the Friday filing.

On Friday Warner said Fox had gone so far as to grant it rights to the title “Watchmen,” which Fox had earlier registered with the Motion Picture Association of America.

Fox, moreover, was paid $320,000 by one of Mr. Gordon’s companies for rights to “Watchmen” as early as 1991, Warner lawyers said in the report. Fox has said that agreement was superseded by a later deal, under which Mr. Gordon was supposed to deliver a much larger buyout price that has never been paid.

The report also outlined conflicting requests for a trial date: as early as next June, if Fox has its way, or April, if Warner prevails.

Friday’s filing makes it clear that not only Mr. Gordon, but also Paramount, Legendary and even Universal Pictures can expect to be drawn into the fray. Universal had tried to make a version of the film in 2001, before Paramount took over. And though Paramount dropped its plans for the movie, it became involved as a partner when Warner teamed up with the director Mr. Snyder in the wake of the box office success of “300.”

Cocks.

Wonder what Fox expects to get out of this.  I really hope Warner has their legal paperwork together.

Fox just hates humanity.  They have a long history of killing projects (even their own) for no apparent reason other than to spread misery.

Normally ina fight between TimeWarner and Fox I'd be breaking out the popcorn and wishing they'd both lose. With the Watchmen movie at stake hower it's more :sad_panda: than  :popcorn:

Gaggle of douchetards.

I think the movie leg of Fox has just gone retarded.  They just need to admit they let go a hot property and deal with it.  Although, if Dark Knight hadn't of raked in so much cash, I doubt this wouldn't have been as huge a deal.

Note:  I think Fox is pretty much retarded all around, but they still manage to create and cancel some of the best shows on TV.

When your stable of Summer '08 releases consists of Meet Dave, Space Chimps, Babylon A.D., X-Files 2, The Happening, and the Rocker, you have to go looking elsewhere for money to pay the bills with.

Fixed for appropriate emphasis.

Update from Schild's new writing gig site. (http://www.giantrealm.com/film-tv/snyders-watchmen-could-be-pushed-back-to-2010)

tl;dr:

The court date for this kerfuffle will probably be in 2009. The movie itself may be pushed back to 2010.

 :mob:

Muthafuggas

Watchmen Heads To Trial Before Theaters (http://io9.com/5044792/watchmen-heads-to-trial-before-theaters)

Kick ass judge.  :drill:

We knew it was coming eventually.  Alan Moore speaks briefly about the Watchmen movie and comic book movies in general (http://icv2.com/articles/news/13346.html).

Wait, he's never actually watched any of the films based on his stuff?  His seething rage is all based on a hypothetical?

I guess in the case of LXG that's a good thing, since his head would probably have exploded.

There is no way a $100 million film doesn't see the light of day somehow. Just have to be patient.

New teaser shown during Scream Awards, with a mix of new and old footage (http://www.collider.com/entertainment/news/article.asp/aid/9587/tcid/1).  Link also shows the new poster.

Fuck yeah.  :awesome_for_real:

Good poster.. I'd want to see it, even if I didn't want to see it. ;)

There was a "secret" screening in Portland last Thursday, and of course I didn't have a chance in hell of scoring tickets.  But a friend of a friend had nothing but good things to say, although the effects did not look finished.  My friend wouldn't describe the ending to me, but would only say that he thought it was a cop out, for what that's worth, but he's a comic snob who doesn't think the movie can exist without completely fucking it all up.

If this film doesn't live up to the trailers, it will break my heart.

Fantastic poster too.

Brief comments from Snyder about the changes to the ending (http://www.newsarama.com/film/081110-watchmen-synder-ending.html).  Possible spoilers for the movie.

Yahoo Movies is debuting a new trailer tomorrow at 5PM PT.

New trailer is up now (http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/watchmen.html?showVideo=1).

Couple of nitpicks; Dr. Manhattan still needs some special effects work done on any scene where it shows him talking, and Rorschach sounds a little too much like Batman in The Dark Knight.

Gonna be hard not to make him sound like Batman, after Dark Knight was such a hit. I didn't mind the effects on Dr. Manhattan during the speaking scenes. They might have given away too much with the Comedian's death scenes at the beginning.

Rorschach is a pipsqueak trying to sound really tough.  Doing the Dark Knight raspy voice makes sense.

From the trailer, it sounds like "Watchmen" refers to the main characters as a group like the JLA.  :uhrr:

Rorschach says someone's killing off "costumed heroes" instead of masks.

It sounds like Ozy's taking over Captain Metropolis' role in terms of creating a new team.


Admittedly these are small changes, but they are annoying. Look, it's not like the comic had no weaknesses, but IMO these weren't one of them.

Turning them into the JLA and putting Ozy and the Comedian in direct conflict (ok, pure speculation on my part) diminishes the story.

Ozy did lead a JLA type outfit... for all the 10 minutes it lasted.

If you're referring to the Crimebusters, that was Metropolis' idea. If you're referring to something else, I don't remember it at all. :oh_i_see:

DOH, you're right, it was the Capt. I was thinking of Ozy looking at the map after Comedian torched it like he had set up the idea.

I know that the Watchmen title was given to the collective group of masks by the rioters. Maybe they just adopted it a little more literally than the book did.

Eh, seems like a marketting/exec decision.  "Watchmen, ok.  What, they're not called The Watchmen? I'm confused. Perhaps they should call themselves the Watchmen."

They're never called "Watchmen" at any point (to the best of my memory, friend is borrowing).  There's the graffiti, where "who watches the watchmen" is scrawled.  I don't remember if it's in English or Latin.

I can live with it, but it'll grate on me.

Anyone know what the music is on the trailer? The first one had Smashing Pumpking but this I don't recognize...

All they'd need to do is change any reference to the Minutemen to the Watchmen.  That doesn't seem TOO grating to me.

First song is Philip Glass, from Koyaanisqatsi iirc
Second song is Muse, Take a Bow.

Wasn't feeling the trailer. I'm afraid my original comments about it turning into a more typical super-hero fest complete with matrix-style slo-mo scenes may turn out right.

Also ending changes sound strange and Snyder's comments don't make much sense.

That's how I felt. If this had been the first trailer released  (and I read that quote) I would have been  :mob:  instead of  :awesome_for_real: Now I'm sort of on the fence, but hoping it will still be good.

Looks like the lawsuit's caused the release date to be pushed back another 2 weeks.

Edit: Actually, it might not be.  The trial has been pushed back, but every other site reporting this still says that the release date hasn't changed (yet).  http://www.aceshowbiz.com/news/view/00020655.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/25/business/media/25fox.html?_r=1

That new trailer is a mish mash messy fuckup.

Sure, I'm still excited about the film, but that trailer was awful.

Either that judge is retarded or your law is. You can sit on a license like that for over 20 years without doing anything to use it and your claim still is valid?

If your rights to it haven't expired, yes.

Trust me when I saw it's our copyright laws. They are retarded beyond words.

Hey, if the Copyright laws aren't there to defend the rights of International Megacorps whose entire business model is centered around a half dozen or so 90 year old "cultural icons" then what ARE they there for?

Clearly you just hate America.

New trailer, at least new to me…

NBS Nightly News with Ted Philips, March 11th 1970
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd5cInmK6LQ

I linked it a week ago here (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=15066.msg582064#msg582064). It's from the viral advertising site that appeared some time ago - New Frontiersman (http://www.thenewfrontiersman.net/).

Whelp, I finally picked up and read Watchmen.  That was really, really, really well-written.

Something concerns me, though: the movie trailers show what looks like something very close to the book, and while that is going to be unbelievably  :awesome_for_real: if that is the case, it's also going to mean a lot of people, probably critics too, are going to hate the movie because of it's bleakness, especially with any ending where the whole of mankind is shown as fundamentally broken due to tribalism and can only sustain itself through lies, or where the two most interesting protagonists also have the saddest outcomes with one being killed to protect said lies, and the other self-banished from his home due to having no emotional connect left to preserve.

What an awesome book, what a hopefully-awesome movie, but I'm sure I'll hate ever trying to explain to people wanting another dark knight or Iron Man why Watchmen is so awesome and that they need to shut the fuck up with their belly-aching.

Also, I can't help but think the legal-bullshit shenanigans Fox pulled was planned all along once Warner started planning the movie so that they wouldn't have to actually pay for the production, since it's a real possibility that Watchmen will not do that well at the box-office.  It would be a very Fox-thing to do, and I actually get angry thinking about it.

Fuck them in their tiny earholes. People who do not like Watchmen for that reason are mouth-breathing twats who need to keep their muffin hatches shut and are unable to process art.

Oh, I agree.  I just know it'll be frustrating for a well-done adaptation to not get what's due.  I hate people.

But when those people are the majority...

No one ever said the majority wasn't mouth-breathing cunts.

It seems like we've had a much stronger trend of late toward movies that don't have warm fuzzy happy endings, or even satisfying conclusions.  I don't think that in itself would be sufficient for people (especially critics, who usually want to avoid seeming mainstream or unhip) to hate it.

A potential problem I see is, if the movie is generally faithful to the comic, how people are going to react to seeing a mini episode of Lost in the middle of the movie? Actually, better make that "several mini-episodes". I love the comic, but as much as bash Hollywood for deviating from the original source this is one time I think an exception should be made.

Already covered -- the Black Freighter stuff is going to be an extra on the DVD, but will not be part of the main movie.

I meant the origin/background stories, specifically of Rorschach, Dr. Manhattan, the Comedian, and the Silk Spectre. Those elements are very important to the overall story (and IMO the very best bits of the comic), but I don't think telling those stories in flashback form will translate well on film.

Pika? Flashbacks work just fine in film if done right. Pulp Fiction and Memento are just two good examples.

Also Slumdog Millionaire.  That entire movie was flashback.

I've seen Pulp Fiction, but not the other two, so perhaps my fear is unfounded. I don't think PF is a good example though, because it can be viewed as a series of  short stories in one movie, whereas Watchmen as one overarching narrative (based on what I've heard of Memento, it also has one narrative, but I would assume that the flashbacks fit the story of a man who has short term memory loss). I think those character stories will play havoc with the overall pacing, but just tossing them would be the greater crime.

If it follows the Watchmen story anywhere close to the source material, the flashbacks will not be a problem.

MTV has an exclusive trailer for Tales of the Black Freighter (http://www.mtv.com/videos/movie-trailers/341388/watchmen-tales-of-the-black-freighter.jhtml#id=1605027).

As a Canadian, MTV can shove their "US Only" restriction somewhere dark and unpleasant.

watched it. Very good. They changed bits and pieces of the story but overall the same ending is achieved.