Watchmen

[HaemishM]

I can almost guarantee you without some of those Matrix-esque battle scenes (especially in the trailer) the movie would have done worse. That style combined with superheros and a huge marketing push got asses in seats. A more down-to-earth style of battle combined with the rather confusing/ambiguous nature of the story would have tanked it.

[IainC]

Saturday Morning Watchmen 

[K9]

Saw this last night, enjoyed it. Much better than 300 or Sin City.

[DeathInABottle]

Did anyone else notice Ozymandias's lisp?

[Bandit]

3 Hours of Meh, a blue schlong thrown in to spice it up.  I admit I never read the graphic novel, and mostly won't pick it up after the movie.  It wasn't horrible, but not what I was hoping.  The Comedian had potential.

Saw this last night, enjoyed it. Much better than 300 or Sin City.

Your Man-Card has been officially revoked.

[Riggswolfe]

3 Hours of Meh, a blue schlong thrown in to spice it up.  I admit I never read the graphic novel, and mostly won't pick it up after the movie.  It wasn't horrible, but not what I was hoping.  The Comedian had potential.

Saw this last night, enjoyed it. Much better than 300 or Sin City.

Your Man-Card has been officially revoked.

Because he enjoyed a movie with a plot over a homoerotic extended battle scene masquerading as a movie?

[NowhereMan]

It's scientifically proven that testosterone makes you hate words and talking.

[K9]

Your Man-Card has been officially revoked.

300 is one of the worst movies ever made. I thoroughly enjoyed watching it, but that doesn't discount the fact that it is all-over awful.

[sidereal]

[stray]

I don't see how 300 is testosterone laden. Not to say it isn't bad, but that's possibly the gayest movie ever made. Both in source material and in the movie itself.

[Velorath]

Your Man-Card has been officially revoked.

300 is one of the worst movies ever made. I thoroughly enjoyed watching it, but that doesn't discount the fact that it is all-over awful.

Sounds like you have a pretty narrow definition of what makes a movie good or bad.

[stray]

Anyone seen that 300 spoof? Meet the Spartans..  It's actually kind of funny for the first 45 mins or so.

[Velorath]

Anyone seen that 300 spoof? Meet the Spartans..  It's actually kind of funny for the first 45 mins or so.

If you actually supported that movie with your money, we have a problem.

[stray]

Shit... It came on TV one night, and I ended up getting some laughs. I don't know who the hell that dude was, but that was a funny Leonidas impression. If anything, I wouldn't even say the first 45 mins are worth watching.. You could watch the Oracle scene and get all you can out of it.

[Bunk]

Just came back from seeing it on IMAX. Enjoyed it, not a perfect movie, but enjoyable.

One thing that stood out for me though, was that they actually filmed the fight scenes in a manner that you could clearly follow the action. None of that crappy Bourne/Batman shakey camera fighting.

Also, on the silly nitpick side - in the prison breakout scene, Silke Spectre's boots have no heels (I paid attention, having always wondered how comic heroines fight in stilleto heels). Next non fight scene she appears in, they do.

[Triforcer]

When did hating 300 get trendy?  Does this come from the "eep, they are implying Pedro might not be smart, therefore my politics won't let me like Napoleon Dynamite" school of movie reviewing? 

[WindupAtheist]

Tri, I am not one of those people who reflexively calls you a retard every time you post. But that was a retarded post.

[Khaldun]

Hating 300 comes from the "Wow, this movie is fucking ridiculously bad and wooden to the point of sucking donkey balls" school of thought. The "and by the way, the racial iconography is shit" camp is a very distant fifth or sixth in relevance on the list of things about 300 that are bad. The only thing good you can say is, "If you turn off the sound, the visual style is pretty cool at points".

[sidereal]

Tri, I am not one of those people who reflexively calls you a retard every time you post.

I'm starting to become one. 

I liked 300.  For what it was.  Which wasn't a whole lot.  It was a couple of hours of Manrage Eye Candy.  If I had another two hours, I'd find a book to read rather than watch it again.

[HaemishM]

Tri, I am not one of those people who reflexively calls you a retard every time you post. But that was a retarded post.

I completely agree with that you said.

[Margalis]

In 300 as soon as the main guy started fighting against that magical mutant were-tiger thing I was rolling my eyes. The visuals in the movie were so overblown compared to the plot and characterization, it was the ultimate fluff film. All gloss with zero substance. Some guys fight some other guys - that's the whole movie.

I'm not sure that thinking a bad move is bad is as much as a trend as it is good taste.

[gryeyes]

Yes, i was rather disappointed in the unrealistic nature of the movie also. Its almost as if it was a mythic tale told around a campfire or something.

[Khaldun]

I wish it were a mythic tale. Then it might have some grandeur as opposed to metric shittons of wooden wankfood.

This said, precisely because I was so surprised that 300 wasn't even fun cheese, I was shocked that Watchmen wasn't half bad. Yeah, yeah, the literalness, all that, but still, it was pretty well-done, it made sense, it wasn't embarassing, visually impressive beyond what 300 was. Snyder might actually be able to make a really great movie someday if he can sharpen his storytelling skills. What he should have known once he saw his final print is that the opening montage was a fantastic example of mastery *over* the intellectual property, of understanding it well enough to do it his own way; from that point on, though, he's too slavishly indebted to the original and has too hard a time grasping what it's all about to do it true justice in another medium.  That's ok: the original is strong enough that it carried the day. (Unlike 300, which is Frank Miller way way way past his storytelling prime.)

[Bandit]

3 Hours of Meh, a blue schlong thrown in to spice it up.  I admit I never read the graphic novel, and mostly won't pick it up after the movie.  It wasn't horrible, but not what I was hoping.  The Comedian had potential.

Saw this last night, enjoyed it. Much better than 300 or Sin City.

Your Man-Card has been officially revoked.

Because he enjoyed a movie with a plot over a homoerotic extended battle scene masquerading as a movie?

Maybe it brought out your homoerotic nature...after watching it myself, I felt like doing something manly like chewing glass or punching a bull in the face. It was much more interesting and action-packed than the 3-hour snoozefest called Watchmen.  The box-office apparently agrees....but time will tell on that front.

[Ironwood]

Yes, i was rather disappointed in the unrealistic nature of the movie also. Its almost as if it was a mythic tale told around a campfire or something.

God, I was just about to post about what a retard you were and then what you actually just said and what you were doing hit me like a Thunderbolt.

Well played, Sir, Well played.  Serious Kudos.

 

[Riggswolfe]

[Because he enjoyed a movie with a plot over a homoerotic extended battle scene masquerading as a movie?

Maybe it brought out your homoerotic nature...after watching it myself, I felt like doing something manly like chewing glass or punching a bull in the face. It was much more interesting and action-packed than the 3-hour snoozefest called Watchmen.  The box-office apparently agrees....but time will tell on that front.

Overcompensating much? Let's put it this way. Spartans wore armor. They didn't go into battle shirtless with a cape on, looking freshly oiled down.

[Hindenburg]

To be fair, you started the homoghey stuff, so it's not a card available to you.

Calling his mother a whore is always a fan favourite.

[Triforcer]

The soldiers in 300 could have been naked and oiling each other up while kneeling in front of each other, and as long as the penis didn't actually enter the mouth the movie would still be less gay than Return of the King.

It was a fun romp and better than most of the popcorn action flicks.  That was enough for me. 

[sidereal]

It was a fun romp

Well, I think that answers that.

[Special J]

Finally got around to seeing Watchmen and left satisfied. There were some misses but I think it was about as good as an adaption as I was going to get. 

My friend hadn't read it and while he enjoyed it, wasn't blown away.  He did know that it wasn't really a 'super-hero movie' though. Whether anyone but Dr. Manhattan had any powers didn't really matter to him.

[Ashamanchill]

It's sad because the comic of 300 was spectacular and held so much promise.  They chcuked all that was golden about it to have some cheezy battle scenes.  But then that happens with all movie adaptions. 
As for the Watchmen, meh.  The movie was predictible, but a decent popcorn experience.

[gryeyes]

The biggest departure from the comic 300 was the wife/sparta subplot. The entire comic is bromantic bonding and battle scenes.

[Ragnoros]

Fucking, post, eaten... Anyway. Saw the movie as a non-reader of the comic.

What I enjoyed most, and the main thing I took away, was the humanizing of the "superheros". Like when Nite Owl snapped at Rorschach and their resulting dopey, but very human, reconciliation. Also, not getting the whole "THESE GUYS ARE ALL TOTAL PSYCHOPATHS!" angle, I simply assumed that Nite Owl was an older guy and "getting it up" took a bit longer then he might like. i.e. flawed world, with flawed heroes.

As for the overall plot, Hoax summed it up best I believe.

without reading the book you'd be hard pressed to see what the fuss is about.  Instead it comes off as a very pretty stylistic half telling of a scatterbrained story.

The movie simply moved too quickly and erratically for me to piece things together before the big reveal. Oh hai, Ozymandias is the villian, big surprise. After the movie was over I thought about further analysis into it's deeper meanings, and said fuck it, it's a movie.

Fight scenes were over the top, but well done. In contrast, I watched The Quantum of Solace on DVD the night after and the erratic, ADD like cutting every half second during every fight or chase scene pissed me off to no end.

Enjoyed the movie as a whole, even if I missed out on the moral of the story. 4/5
/review

On the whole human vs superhuman debate. When I saw The Comedian punch through the wall I assumed for the rest of the movie that he, and likely the rest of the ensemble, had limited, above human abilities, further confirmed when it was mentioned by one of the characters that Ozymandias could catch a bullet or defeat all of them at once, i.e. he was a speedster. And when you say "catch a bullet" I take it to mean like, oh look, someone shot at me/my friend and having heard the shot I will now intercept the bullet, not, oh look, I happen to have prepositioned (just put fucking Kevlar on your palms) my hand between the gun and myself.
In the movie it looked like he saw that he was about to be shot and moved his hand to block the bullet, likely BEFORE it was fired. Which, is a believable action for a quick thinker who knows his hands are (if he's not stupid) Kevlar plated, and that he is about to be shot. But not what I would call "catching a bullet".
Also, to complete the nerdfest, you would think Ozymandias would put some armor plating in his crazy outfit in either case. Making the whole thing mostly moot.

tl;dr The movie made them appear to have limited superpowers and offered nothing to refute that impression.

[grebo]

I thought that this movie was making a grand statement about the nature of heroes.

Ozy was an evil shmuck, but he saved humanity from annihilation.  Does that make him a hero?  John was an all powerful future seeing demigod, but for all his well meaningness he could barely get out of his own way.  Does that make him a hero?  Rorshack was a .... psycho, but perhaps the most deserving of the hero label.  The other 2, I don't remember their names, but maybe that was the point...Owl Bear and Silk Scarf or something?  Are they heroes because they were there and tried like heck to do something or other?

And also the movie made a statement about humanity in general, that we will always turn against that which we don't understand or cannot master.

On another note, having just watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the swinging cod did not bother me much at all.  The sex scene however, was way awkward.

[Abagadro]

Owl Bear

Rawr!