Watchmen film discussion (Spoilers!)

How would you rate Watchmen?

  • Total voters
    43
The line is "Nothing's hopeless. Not while there's life.", and it's Rorschach who says it, not Ozymandias. I still think they cut it out though. I remember waiting for Rorschach to say it when he visits the grave, because I love that line, but I guess I forgot.
 
Another thing - am I just not remembering it happening, or did they completely leave out Hollis Mason's death scene from the comic?
 
Iceshadow said:
I also noticed that IMDB has David Hayter listed as one of the screenplay writers, for those who don't know David Hayter voices Solid Snake in the Metal Gear Solid video games. I thought that was nutty.
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He wrote an early draft that took place during the War on Terror. They were going to go with that until Zack Snyder convinced the studio to keep the '80s setting.

iceshadow said:
my friends and i didn't read the comics and we had no trouble following the story at all.
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zomg u dident read teh comic everybody lets gang up on him!
 
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Planet-man said:
If being okay with taking the blame for killing people because it'll save the world, but still being upset at actually killing people doesn't make sense to you and seems inconsistent, why didn't you have the exact same problem with The Dark Knight?
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Fair point, but I think the "actual killing" part is different in The Dark Knight.

Also, Batman is a vigilante, and such behavior is at the very least understandable if not expected from him. He will do whatever needs to be done to protect the people, whereas Doctor Manhattan has to be convinced to even be interested in humans.

Question: has Alan Moore said anything negative about Dave Gibbons participating in the making of the movie? I know he has said in the past to have the studios give whatever royalties to the artist, but were there any negative feelings about "helping" making what he considers to be such an abomination? What about with David Lloyd and V for Vendetta?
 
E said:
Fair point, but I think the "actual killing" part is different in The Dark Knight.

Also, Batman is a vigilante, and such behavior is at the very least understandable if not expected from him. He will do whatever needs to be done to protect the people, whereas Doctor Manhattan has to be convinced to even be interested in humans.

Question: has Alan Moore said anything negative about Dave Gibbons participating in the making of the movie? I know he has said in the past to have the studios give whatever royalties to the artist, but were there any negative feelings about "helping" making what he considers to be such an abomination? What about with David Lloyd and V for Vendetta?
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As i understand it he doesn't have any hard feelings and he said it didn't really harm their friendship. So i guess he's cool with it.
 
Planet-man said:
The line is "Nothing's hopeless. Not while there's life.", and it's Rorschach who says it, not Ozymandias. I still think they cut it out though. I remember waiting for Rorschach to say it when he visits the grave, because I love that line, but I guess I forgot.
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Thanks. I think it was definitely cut out. Shame, because it's a great line.

E said:
Another thing - am I just not remembering it happening, or did they completely leave out Hollis Mason's death scene from the comic?
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Pretty sure that was left out. Probably something else that will be in the DVD cut.

Man, the more I think about this movie, the more I think about how forgettable some of it is. I can't remember if some things are in it or not.

E said:
Question: has Alan Moore said anything negative about Dave Gibbons participating in the making of the movie? I know he has said in the past to have the studios give whatever royalties to the artist, but were there any negative feelings about "helping" making what he considers to be such an abomination? What about with David Lloyd and V for Vendetta?
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I don't remember reading anything concerning this specifically but Moore is a nice guy and he probably lets them make up their own mind. I believe they're all still friends.
 
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E said:
Fair point, but I think the "actual killing" part is different in The Dark Knight.

Also, Batman is a vigilante, and such behavior is at the very least understandable if not expected from him. He will do whatever needs to be done to protect the people, whereas Doctor Manhattan has to be convinced to even be interested in humans.
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But then why would he even care if they blame him for something he knows he didn't do and will receive no consequences for?

In other news, ladies and gentlemen, I bring you retroactive hilarity.
 
Saw it yesterday afternoon....and thought it was excellent. I am actually surprised.... some movies, you walk out and you are, basically, done with them. That doesn't mean you didn't like them, that they weren't good, but you saw them, and now you are...well..DONE.

Some movies linger with you. You find your mind going back to them...being drawn back to them. For me, WATCHMEN was like that. And I AM surprised...I read the series back when it first came out, and many times since, so I was certainly well aware of the storyline, and familiar with the characters. But even so...I am impressed.

The portrayal of Rorschach was amazing. I thought the Nite Owl-Specter chemistry was great, adn the movie really captured the way that being a hero really was what brought Nite Owl alive. The opening montage giving backstory and history - really tremendous. I could go on and on - so MUCH worked for me.

I had a few quibbles, but just a few...

I think the Veidt-Manhattan dialogue at the end of the comic should have been used in the movie. All the elements are there (in the movie), but having Manhattan say to Ozy that "nothing ever ends" puts a different spin on it, you can see that on Ozy's face (in the comic). It strongly STRONGLY hints that maybe, just maybe... this foolproof master plan ain't so foolproof....

I think the framing of Manhattan works..sorta...but I still had some misgivings. Manhattan is seen as an American agent, an American weapon. Sure, America got hit hard too. But I think in many parts of the world, there would be powerful resentment towards America, if not outright anger, if the world got devastated by an American agent gone rogue.

And the violence...still on fence. I think the violence was actually much MORE graphic than the comic book. Is that good, bad, or indifferent? Not sure. But I think that some who would enjoy much of the rest of the movie are going to be put off by, say, the meat cleaver scene, or the prison door scene. Which made it surprising when the NYC devstation scene was actually a lot cleaner, a lot less graphic, than the comic....

But overall - a really rich, risky, surprisingly powerful movie. I really enjoyed it.

How will it do box office wise? Hard to say. I saw it with someone who likes superheroes, but who had never read the comic...and they weren't expecting what they got. Is that a bad thing, per se? No...but it does shape the viewing experience. Watchmen is a lot darker, and a lot more "philosophical" than many will expect. It has action, yes, but it is not a conventional "superhero" movie leading to the big fisticuff filled conclusion. That might thow some folks off. But we will see!

ShadowPrime
 
Yeah, what doesn't make sense about using Manhatten in the end is that the entire movie builds him up as a purely American force, so there's no way the rest of the world would buy that it wasn't an American attack.

But then, Veidt's whole plan even in the book is a ridiculous stretch that goes against all human nature.

I wanted to like this movie, but I just didn't. I don't dislike it as an adaptation of Watchmen (except for its overstylization), I just think it's a poor movie.



And I think Alan Moore is happy that his friends are making money off these movies. Like when it was reported he was upset Steve Moore didn't do the novelisation. Plus he gives the artists all the money. He doesn't own the rights, so the movie's going to happen no matter what, someone who worked on it might as well make money from it. I think that's a pretty healthy attitude.
 
One thing I find odd is that some of the criticisms of the movie would be criticisms of the source material (comic book) as well. Which is fine, but BEFORE the movie was released, almost all the focus was on whether the movie would "accurately" capture the essence of the comic book series. I honestly can't imagine a much better job of that, in a movie (maybe a miniseries!). In fact, I think it is AMAZING how MUCH of the comic book they managed to capture, suggest (all the flashbacks, tie ins, backstory, etc).

Shadowprime
 
I liked it. Haley, Morgan, and Wilson were perfect in their roles, Haley in particular. His voice was perfect, exactly what I had in my head, and he managed to be just as effective outside of the mask as he was in it.

I loved how much of the graphic novel they managed to fit in, and a lot of the stuff they left out was stuff I didn't like in the first place anyway (the ridiculous and over-used "Tales of the Black Freighter" gimmick being a prime example). Visually, the film was stunning, and really captured the gritty, grimy texture of the g.n.

I also preferred the ending of the film. I always felt (I say "always" like I didn't read the graphic novel for the first time a few months ago, but oh well) like the squid was a shoe-horned in plot device that only really served as yet another bit of commentary on the world of super-hero comics, and Moore's casual use of psychics as an explanation of how the entire crux of the ending was created was tacky and unnecessary.

The big problem was that it was that odd paradox of a film that only comes around once in a while that's both overlong and incredibly rushed. Moore had something on the order of 400 pages to build a world and to tell a story; Snyder has a little over two and half hours. Needless to say, not everything really worked, and it ended up sagging in the middle at the same time as it was cramming several issues worth of story in a few minutes of screentime. It was odd, and really took me out of it. Also, the old-person makeup was ridiculously bad; it looked like the prosthetics on their faces were gonna crack and fall off any minute.

Also, it's slavish devotion to the comic book meant that it had some of the same problems it did (an underdeveloped relationship between Rorschach and Nite Owl, Doc Manhattan's sudden and inexplicable switch around in opinion on Mars, a disappointingly underdeveloped denouement, etc.), and also ensured that it really didn't have much of an identity of its own.

Still, it was entertaining enough, and posed some of the same tough moral questions that the graphic novel did; all in all, it had its strengths and it had its weaknesses, just like any other film, and indeed even the work it was based on. I'd give it somewhere between three and half and four stars out of five.

EDIT: Oh, and was the Dr. Strangelove-esque War Room in the g.n.? I thought it was an interesting touch, though it didn't help that it made me start thinking about a far superior film that probably dealt better with nuclear holocaust than Watchmen did in the first place anyway.
 
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ShadowPrime said:
One thing I find odd is that some of the criticisms of the movie would be criticisms of the source material (comic book) as well. Which is fine, but BEFORE the movie was released, almost all the focus was on whether the movie would "accurately" capture the essence of the comic book series. I honestly can't imagine a much better job of that, in a movie (maybe a miniseries!). In fact, I think it is AMAZING how MUCH of the comic book they managed to capture, suggest (all the flashbacks, tie ins, backstory, etc).

Shadowprime
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Exactly. I mean it was the book almost to perfection. They changed very little and I don't understand how people think that it "didn't translate well". Bull****. It was like 97% just like the book with few changes, a more comprehendible ending (Manhattan not Squid), music, and fight scenes that were shown (Which needed to in order to appease the ga). I'm confused by how some of you aren't seeing this.
 
A very smart friend of mine who loves superhero movies but hasn't read the book just told me he thought it was the greatest superhero movie he'd ever seen and is immeadiately buying the book.

I can't wait to hear what Gothamite, Mole and DSF think, though I don't think it's out in Ireland and the UK yet.
 
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