Watchmen Casting Announced

[Tannhauser]

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

[UnSub]

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.

[palmer_eldritch]

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?

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.

[Velorath]

The first Watchmen video journal is up.  Mostly just a look at constructing some of the sets for those interested in that sort of thing.

[Azazel]

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

[Velorath]

Tales of the Black Freighter now to be released as its own dvd 5 days after Watchmen opens in theaters

Warner Bros. has decided to release the Tales of the Black Freighter anime (see “Tales of the Black Freighter Anime”) as a separate DVD only five days after the premiere of the Watchmen movie, according to the New York Times.  Originally planned solely as an extra for the DVD of the movie, Tales of the Black Freighter will now serve not only as a separate SKU, but also as a marketing tool for the theatrical release of the Watchmen film.  The Tales… DVD will also include Under the Hood, a documentary-style film on the characters’ backstories. 

This sets up for an eventual special edition of the Watchmen DVD, in which the Tales of the Black Freighter will be edited into the movie.  Direct Zack Snyder told the Times that the Watchmen movie was already pushing three hours, too long for a theatrical release that includes the Black Freighter storyline.

Also...

[schild]

That makes me wish Raul Julia was still alive.

[HaemishM]

That pictures is made of win.

[UnSub]

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.

[Simond]

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.

[stray]

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.

[gimpyone]

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)

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.

[stray]

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.

[crawford]

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. 

[stray]

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.

[crawford]

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.

[HaemishM]

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:

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.

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.

[Hutch]

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.

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.

[crawford]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[stray]

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.

[Margalis]

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.

[Samwise]

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.

"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.

[Phildo]

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.

[Samwise]

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.

[UnSub]

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.

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.

[Margalis]

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.

[stu]

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.

[Teleku]

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

[stu]

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.

[stray]

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.

[Ironwood]

I've never read V.

The movie was crap.

Just throwing that out there.

[crawford]

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.

[stray]

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

[HaemishM]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Hutch]

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.

"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 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.