Watchmen

[murdoc]

I'm pretty sure Hollis' death was filmed, but cut due to time contstraints (and will probably make it's way into the dvd releases).

40 minutes is being added into the DVD/Blu-Ray versions. Time to buy a catheter.

Or a remote with a pause button.

[NiX]

Or a remote with a pause button.

Nonsense! Must not move. Must not pause. There is only watching and the soft sound of liquid in a bag.

[Brogarn]

One of the reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes used the terms "self indulgent" and "pretentious" and I couldn't agree more. What a horrible piece of crap movie this was. I never read the comic books, but that shouldn't matter. This was a movie presented to the general public, of which I am one and it was just god awful bad.

To the person above who went off on the typical rant of America's Puritanical roots, you're missing the point. The sex itself didn't bother me, it was the fact that it felt so out of place and blatant. That was a failure on the director's part. I just didn't feel what was supposed to be the significance of it. It just happened. The violence, too, was an issue. It was just so over the top and, to reuse a term, self indulgent.

[Oban]

The music did not match the scenes at all.  The songs themselves were good, but they just never fit with the gravity of the action being portrayed.

Blech.

[Merusk]

My wife and I laughed during the sex scene because it was so awful, corny and overblown.   The wife squirmed during the violent scenes and I found myself thinking, "Yeah, that's comic violence and triggers the 12 year old in me, but not much else."

The best part of the movie for me was hearing all the guys in the back rows groan loudly every time you saw Mr. Manhattan's cock.  Then louder still when you saw Night Owl's ass.  Get over it guys, you never  hear women groaning uncomfortably when you see females.

[Riggswolfe]

I saw it and liked it though I almost throttled someone when I was walking out of the theater. A parent was leaving ahead of me with their 6-7 year old girl in tow. Yeah, they brought a kid to this movie? Are you kidding me?

On the movie itself, Rorschach was perfect. And I actually liked Nite Owl and Silk Spectre better in the movie than I did in the graphic novel. They felt more "alive". In the novel it always felt like Rorshach was the main character and they were just side characters but it felt more like an ensemble in the movie somehow.

[kaid]

I enjoyed the movie but one thing disturbed me greatly and it was not even the movie. It was the 10 or so really little kids that were brought in with their parents. I am talking 6 to 10 years old. I can just hear their parents thinking eh its a super hero movie how bad can it be. Ya good luck explaining that movie to your kids dipshits.

Kaid

[Hindenburg]

You gents honestly believe that this movie is capable of harming TEH CHILREN? Come on now, they were watching Predator back in the day, and Alien the day before that, and finding those movies COMPLETELY AWESOME at a tender age. Stop pretending to be supersensitive PC pricks.

[Riggswolfe]

You gents honestly believe that this movie is capable of harming TEH CHILREN? Come on now, they were watching Predator back in the day, and Alien the day before that, and finding those movies COMPLETELY AWESOME at a tender age. Stop pretending to be supersensitive PC pricks.

I'm not a supersensitive PC prick. I'm a parent. Some R-rated movies can probably be ok with a child, some can't. Let's not forget that a major plotpoint is a child being chopped into pieces and fed to a dog. A child the age of the kid I saw and the ones that kaid saw. There is a difference between PC and knowing when someone is being irresponsible as a parent. Heck, my 10 year old still hasn't seen the Dark Knight. Though in her case it's because I know good and well that two face would give her nightmares.

[Hindenburg]

Let's not forget that a major plotpoint is a child being chopped into pieces and fed to a dog. A child the age of the kid I saw and the ones that kaid saw.

Was gonna reply to that with "So?", but then the coin dropped and I realized that, well, your perspective is completely alien to my own, to the point where any attempt at debate would simply degenerate into someone eventually uttering "you don't understand because you're not a parent" which is pretty much paternal godwin, so, yeah. I'll recognize that being a parent is srs bzns and stop right here.

Alas

it's because I know good and well that two face would give her nightmares.

Are you implying that you don't let her see TDK simply because your don't wanna have your sleep perturbed? 

[HaemishM]

I'm pretty liberal about what I'd let a kid watch, and I wouldn't want a kid seeing Watchmen until at least the teen years. It's just heavy stuff, beyond the violence and the sex. It's things not only would a kid not "get" but which would probably disturb them in unnecessary ways.

[Big Gulp]

The movie felt a bit pointless to me. Why do a movie when you're just copying the comic to film and why should I pay $10 to see something that is ecxactly the same as the book I already own?

The fans will like it because it's 'just like in the book' but for me that is the biggest flaw of a very good production.

Yep.  Same reason I didn't like 300 or Sin City.  Okay, truthfully I just hate Frank Miller and think he's a hack.

What you said is true, though.  Too many of these comic movie guys are way too slavish to the book.  It's a different medium, you have to change how the material is presented.

[Geki]

Let's not forget that a major plotpoint is a child being chopped into pieces and fed to a dog. A child the age of the kid I saw and the ones that kaid saw.

Was gonna reply to that with "So?", but then the coin dropped and I realized that, well, your perspective is completely alien to my own, to the point where any attempt at debate would simply degenerate into someone eventually uttering "you don't understand because you're not a parent" which is pretty much paternal godwin, so, yeah. I'll recognize that being a parent is srs bzns and stop right here.

Alas

it's because I know good and well that two face would give her nightmares.

Are you implying that you don't let her see TDK simply because your don't wanna have your sleep perturbed? 

Here's a great example.  Some idiot brought their 5-7 year old daughter to the showing that my wife and I attended.  During the scene with Rorschach dispensing 'punishment' to the child killer there was dead silence (due to the scene's nature).  The little girl quite literally asked her dad, loudly enough for everyone in the theater to hear, "Daddy, why'd he do that?".

Yeah, it was awesome.  Nobody thinks it's gonna 'screw a kid up' but it's sure as hell not appropriate.

*edited my inflammation

[Samwise]

It's a different medium, you have to change how the material is presented.

I think with the success of 300 and now what looks like Watchmen (haven't seen the numbers yet, but I had a hard time even getting a ticket for a goddamn matinee showing, so I think it's going to be profitable), it's actually been pretty nicely demonstrated that you don't need to reinvent everything for the sake of reinventing everything just because it's a different medium.  For a long time conventional wisdom has held that movies are so different from any other medium that whenever you adapt things for the screen you have to change things drastically to make a movie that will rake in the box office cash instead of just appealing to the comic nerds.  Either that was wrong or there are a lot more comic nerds out there than I would have thought.

Comics and movies are both very visual formats, and a lot of the visual composition work done to make a comic tell a story effectively can actually be translated right to the screen in some cases.  Shit, one of the early stages of most movies is coming up with a 'storyboard' that's basically the movie in comic form, so you can figure out how you're going to compose the important shots and how they're all going to flow together -- why do that all over for every scene when someone with a lot of talent for that sort of thing has already done it and you might be able to use his work?  IMO Snyder deserves props for being one of the first directors to both recognize this and to make it work well.

[Big Gulp]

Comics and movies are both very visual formats, and a lot of the visual composition work done to make a comic tell a story effectively can actually be translated right to the screen in some cases.  Shit, one of the early stages of most movies is coming up with a 'storyboard' that's basically the movie in comic form -- why do that all over when someone with a lot of talent for that sort of thing has already done it?  IMO Snyder deserves props for being one of the first directors to both recognize this and to make it work well.

Oh, I'm not saying people won't pay to watch it, they will.  People will also pay to watch Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans.  People are fucking idiots.

[Riggswolfe]

Was gonna reply to that with "So?", but then the coin dropped and I realized that, well, your perspective is completely alien to my own, to the point where any attempt at debate would simply degenerate into someone eventually uttering "you don't understand because you're not a parent" which is pretty much paternal godwin, so, yeah. I'll recognize that being a parent is srs bzns and stop right here.

Actually, it doesn't take being a parent to know when it's a bad idea to let a young child see a movie. It takes common sense.

Are you implying that you don't let her see TDK simply because your don't wanna have your sleep perturbed? 

Ok. You have got to be just trolling with your responses. There is no way a rational person can be serious with, well, anything you've said.

[ashrik]

All of these things mentioned would have been awesome to see as a kid.

Ok. You have got to be just trolling with your responses. There is no way a rational person can be serious with, well, anything you've said.

Maybe more smiley faces would get the point across easier??

[Hindenburg]

Actually, it doesn't take being a parent to know when it's a bad idea to let a young child see a movie. It takes common sense.

Like I said and repeat, completely alien. Do not insist on going down that road, for I'll match your "common sense" with "lots of people did it", raise it with Big Gulp's comment about lots of peeps watching Meet the Spartans and Distaster movie, and we'll get to the end result, which proves that, hey, common sense is completely subjective, which is why it's a shitty argument and should never be used as a jab when the person you're arguing with already said that they conceded the point, albeit for a different reason. Drop the argument. The point was conceded. This way lies madness.

Ok. You have got to be just trolling with your responses. There is no way a rational person can be serious with, well, anything you've said.

I hoped that the smiley at the end of that sentence  would be a red flag to that. Perhaps if I said that you're getting annoyed because someone called you on your massive selfishness? 

[Merusk]

It's a different medium, you have to change how the material is presented.

I think with the success of 300 and now what looks like Watchmen (haven't seen the numbers yet, but I had a hard time even getting a ticket for a goddamn matinee showing, so I think it's going to be profitable),

~55.5mil.  Lower than 300(70mil), but the suits in charge are explaining the difference away as "It's a 3h movie, you can only get one or maybe two showings per screen in an evening."  Which seems sensible enough.

[HaemishM]

I honestly expect word of mouth to kill 2nd and 3rd week returns on this movie, because of the ending if nothing else. Mouthbreathers just aren't going to like the ending. I'd be surprised if it makes 100 mil.

[Velorath]

I probably would have been allowed to watch this between 7-10 yrs. old.  A lot of the story would have been over my head as it was when I read the comic around that age, but I wouldn't have been disturbed by it (or no more so than I was from all the horror movies I watched), and I wouldn't have made any noise in the theater.

[Broughden]

The movie felt a bit pointless to me. Why do a movie when you're just copying the comic to film and why should I pay $10 to see something that is ecxactly the same as the book I already own?

The fans will like it because it's 'just like in the book' but for me that is the biggest flaw of a very good production.

Yep.  Same reason I didn't like 300 or Sin City.  Okay, truthfully I just hate Frank Miller and think he's a hack.

What you said is true, though.  Too many of these comic movie guys are way too slavish to the book.  It's a different medium, you have to change how the material is presented.

I agree on Sin City. I thought it SUCKED donkey balls.
300 I thought was win. I just wish they had used more of Stephen Pressfield's Gates of Fire for the script though.

[Riggswolfe]

I agree on Sin City. I thought it SUCKED donkey balls.
300 I thought was win. I just wish they had used more of Stephen Pressfield's Gates of Fire for the script though.

I'm the exact opposite. I loved Sin City but wasn't all that impressed by 300. 300 didn't have characters, it had pectorals and it got old fast for me. Sin City was over the top but I can still remember the names of multiple characters.

[Grimwell]

Mouthbreathers just aren't going to like the ending. I'd be surprised if it makes 100 mil.

Hmmm, I'd think "Terrorism! Our cities got nuked by radiation man!" would resonate easily with normal folks. Much more than squid beings from other dimensions.

I could be wrong, but blowing up major cities has been a theme in film since ID4 in the 90's and I thought it was very palatable for normal folks.

[Samwise]

I think the moral ambiguity is more what Haemish was talking about.  As Ozy points out, by the end the heroes haven't really accomplished anything.  One of the central conflicts of the movie (the looming threat of nuclear war destroying the world) has been resolved, for now, but only because the "bad guy" won.  There aren't any really clear heroes or villains; all of the main characters want to do the right thing, but none of them fully agree on what it is or how to do it.

[SurfD]

There aren't any really clear heroes or villains; all of the main characters want to do the right thing, but none of them fully agree on what it is or how to do it.

And there in lies the greatness of it.  There is no perfect solution in an Imperfect world.  The best thing you can hope for is to give humanity something bigger then itself to worry about so it doesn't kill itself off.  Salvation is a lie, and ignorance is bliss.

Until of course, that journo publishes the contents of the Journal and then everything goes to hell again.

[UnSub]

I honestly expect word of mouth to kill 2nd and 3rd week returns on this movie, because of the ending if nothing else. Mouthbreathers just aren't going to like the ending. I'd be surprised if it makes 100 mil.

The ending won't kill the film. "The Dark Knight" hardly has the most tidy ending, but that didn't harm box office returns.

What will kill returns is:

1) It's long.

2) It's dense.

3) Apparently the sex scene and penises turn off the gore hounds while the girlfriends don't like the cleaver-to-the-head bits.

I'm not one for "all movie goers (except me) r teh rtard" (mostly). "Watchmen" isn't a friendly film to the casual viewer. It will, however, clean up in DVD sales.

[MrHat]

I liked it quite a bit, but the film seemed...off?

Maybe disjointed is the right word.  It didn't flow like a film should.

[Soln]

I liked it quite a bit, but the film seemed...off?

Maybe disjointed is the right word.  It didn't flow like a film should.

agreed -- I didn't like it /shrug

[LK]

I liked how the ending exemplified why comics are the way they are. "Everyone's holding hands out there, the world's at peace... there ain't nothing to write about!"

Comics... hell, any story... is only interesting if there is conflict.

[DraconianOne]

It didn't flow like a film should.

How should a film flow?

[cmlancas]

Like any Christopher Nolan movie, clearly.

Because all movies flow the same way! 

[Nevermore]

Heh.

[Riggswolfe]

I think the moral ambiguity is more what Haemish was talking about.  As Ozy points out, by the end the heroes haven't really accomplished anything.  One of the central conflicts of the movie (the looming threat of nuclear war destroying the world) has been resolved, for now, but only because the "bad guy" won.  There aren't any really clear heroes or villains; all of the main characters want to do the right thing, but none of them fully agree on what it is or how to do it.

Ironically, the only clear "hero" is Rorshach and he's the sociopath of the group.

[DraconianOne]

Heh.

Following is even more linearly challenged.