TBird41
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Post by TBird41 on Mar 5, 2009 11:03:19 GMT -5
This is silly. You'd think the Washington Post would want to have someone review this movie who didn't, you know, hate the source material. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/04/AR2009030403970.htmlIf anything, I find this review encouraging, if only because this guy acknowledges (over and over again) that the movie is true to the graphic novel....a graphic novel which he clearly doesn't like. Oh well. It's not like any review was going to affect me when it comes to this movie anyway. I'm probably going to ignore this thread for a while because I don't think I can see the movie until next week sometime. Really Boz? You, of all people, expect the Washington Post to find an objective reporter? ;D
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Mar 5, 2009 11:51:30 GMT -5
"The novel was cultlike in its appeal, a little illicit, always alluding to its own profundity, hinting at secrets, drawing you deeper into its self-consciously metaphysical world.
This was catnip for the fanboys, who can be as snobbish about their comics as wine lovers or opera geeks are about their fetishes. And it attracted critics eager to find genius in the dark corners of American pop culture. Time magazine declared it one of the 100 Best English-language Novels since 1923, in the same league with Faulkner, Orwell and Hemingway. The academically inclined found it a brilliant deconstruction of the superhero myth, multivalent, polysemic, densely imbricated and all that jazz.
Which was pure hooey. "Watchmen" was fun, but also incredibly pretentious -- a word that hardly applies anymore to high culture, but sure comes in handy when dealing with pop culture's more desperate efforts to be taken seriously. "
Ouch.
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kchoya
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Post by kchoya on Mar 5, 2009 11:54:42 GMT -5
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SFHoya99
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Post by SFHoya99 on Mar 5, 2009 13:18:23 GMT -5
Rereading the book now, I'm interested to see how the adaptation went. I had forgotten how much of the book is sideplot and flashbacks, and how unimportant the plotline is for most of the book. It's 90% character development until the end.
Which makes a movie difficult. If the first reviewer is right (aside from his incredibly weird criticism of it as pretentious), and it's a more literal adaptation, it's going to be a disaster. Good adapatations get the feel and the theme without going plot point by plot point.
As an aside, the original writer has some weird ideas about adaptations. Tolkien wasn't a great writer, but the LOTR adaptions are phenomenal, actually covering up some of the story's weaknesses, and aside from the way too long ending, almost perfect.
He's right about Harry Potter -- only Cuaron bothered to not hit every plotpoint like a checklist, and so that one's the best.
But the Godfather? I swear, Coppola changed about two things. You almost had a literal translation. It only works because the book reads like a screenplay.
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SFHoya99
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Post by SFHoya99 on Mar 5, 2009 14:25:14 GMT -5
SD UT rips the movie badly: SDUTWhile the Chronicle loves it: SFGateNeither one is particularly trustworthy, but the latter review seems to be for reasons that might not be the right ones for folks on this thread.
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Bando
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Post by Bando on Mar 5, 2009 15:05:19 GMT -5
For everyone's amusement: Watchmen if it was a Saturday morning cartoon ( Link)
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Boz
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Post by Boz on Mar 5, 2009 16:13:30 GMT -5
For everyone's amusement: Watchmen if it was a Saturday morning cartoon ( Link) That was hilarious.
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Bando
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Post by Bando on Mar 5, 2009 16:21:35 GMT -5
For everyone's amusement: Watchmen if it was a Saturday morning cartoon ( Link) That was hilarious. I love the "If only I could get a kiss!" In the comic, the Comedian's next response would be "Oh well, guess it's raping time!"
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Post by HoyaSinceBirth on Mar 6, 2009 3:24:19 GMT -5
Went to midnight showing. I thought it was really good. I think they did a good job of making it enjoyable to both fans of the novel and people who have never read it. One person I went with hadn't read the book and said it was a bit hard to follow at first because it just throws you into that world, but that as it went along he was able to follow and really enjoyed it.
Don't won't to leave any spoilers. I really loved the music in the movie. I had a great time. I thoroughly recommend it.
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kchoya
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Post by kchoya on Mar 6, 2009 12:50:47 GMT -5
For everyone's amusement: Watchmen if it was a Saturday morning cartoon ( Link) Slate goes down a similar road (Woody Allen in all blue?). www.slate.com/id/2212953/
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Mar 7, 2009 1:32:31 GMT -5
I saw it, having never even seen the book. I thought it was decent, but not that great. A bit too many stereotypical action movie fights, a plot that had plenty of twists and turns but not a ton of quality, and a sex scene that was so ridiculous that half the theater was laughing at it (although the scene ended in hilarious fashion). But it was easy enough to follow, and it had some great lines.
My friend is a fan of the graphic novel, and he said it was about as faithful to the novel as possible in a 2.5 hour movie. His verdict was also decent, but not great. If anything it may have been too faithful to the source - sometimes things that work in a graphic novel don't work in a live action movie.
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Post by strummer8526 on Mar 7, 2009 21:26:19 GMT -5
Having never read the book and only knowing very vaguely some background of the characters, I really enjoyed it a lot. I don't know the source material, but there was nothing that came off as out of place b/c of some over-loyalty to the comic. I considered it just really solid and entertaining.
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Post by HoyaSinceBirth on Mar 8, 2009 14:53:40 GMT -5
yeah everyone laughed at the sex scene. I really didn't terribly mind the new ending. It was still in keeping with the ending of the novel. Like i didn't like it but i understand how much more they would've had to include in order to use original ending so to accommodate the time crunch i'm ok with it.
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Post by strummer8526 on Mar 8, 2009 15:29:33 GMT -5
yeah everyone laughed at the sex scene. I really didn't terribly mind the new ending. It was still in keeping with the ending of the novel. Like i didn't like it but i understand how much more they would've had to include in order to use original ending so to accommodate the time crunch i'm ok with it. My g/f read the book and after the movie told me about the original ending. I must say that, unless she described it wrong, it would have been incomprehensible to someone who didn't read the book. I'm not even sure how it was comprehensible in the book context.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Mar 8, 2009 21:28:01 GMT -5
yeah everyone laughed at the sex scene. I really didn't terribly mind the new ending. It was still in keeping with the ending of the novel. Like i didn't like it but i understand how much more they would've had to include in order to use original ending so to accommodate the time crunch i'm ok with it. My g/f read the book and after the movie told me about the original ending. I must say that, unless she described it wrong, it would have been incomprehensible to someone who didn't read the book. I'm not even sure how it was comprehensible in the book context. Yeah, my friend who loves the novel said it basically would have been impossible for them to work the novel's ending into the film.
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Bando
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Post by Bando on Mar 9, 2009 9:48:41 GMT -5
I saw this on Friday, and thought this was a great movie. My quick thoughts:
- the sex scene was Cinemaxtastic. The audience I was with was laughing through it.
- no offense to Alan Moore, but the movie ending work a whole lot better than the book's.
- if you know nothing about Watchmen, you'll be completely lost for the first hour.
- I actually thought Malin Ackerman did a really good job. I was afraid she was going to be terrible.
- Did they really need to make Dr. Manhattan's Edited so big? It wasn't so John Holmesian in the book.
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TC
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Post by TC on Mar 9, 2009 17:46:22 GMT -5
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jgalt
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Post by jgalt on Mar 10, 2009 0:51:53 GMT -5
Saw it tonight. I havent read the book. Thought it was really bad. Not because i didnt understand it (i caught on to the setting/time/back story pretty quickly), it was just not edited. It was like they made the movie then were like Oh! we should also do this, and just tagged it on the end. I realize they are following the book and that the book probably doesnt feel this way but they could have worked on it.
I think that this movie really suffered from trying to stay true to the book. There is a reason why every movie made from a book leaves out huge portions and what seem to be important details when you read it: some things work in a book that just dont work on film. Editing out a lot of the back story (especially the voice over part for Dr. Manhattan) would have helped on the time and made it feel less cumbersome.
Also, the sex scenes and just the whole love story seamed so pointless to me and didnt really advance the plot (in my opinion). This is mostly because i didnt have any emotional attachment to any of the characters (this was probably not a problem for any of you who read the book). The only character i liked and wanted to watch a film about was Rorschach. He was the only one with a very interesting psyche and the only one that I thought had the full set of character traits needed for a film (i guess what i am saying is that the other characters were one sided and flat).
For those that read the book: how are these superheroes (or are they not supposed to be?). it seemed like Owl II and Silk Specter II were just good at fighting, but didnt really have any powers (or special character trait like Rorschach's anger or Batman's moral fortitude). Am I just missing this because i didnt read it? Finally how did Ozymandias get to be so fast?
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rosslynhoya
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Post by rosslynhoya on Mar 10, 2009 8:32:46 GMT -5
For those that read the book: how are these superheroes (or are they not supposed to be?). it seemed like Owl II and Silk Specter II were just good at fighting, but didnt really have any powers (or special character trait like Rorschach's anger or Batman's moral fortitude). Am I just missing this because i didnt read it? Finally how did Ozymandias get to be so fast? From the flashbacks and the real-time reminiscing, it's supposed to be made clear that both generations were just people dressed up in silly costumes. They had no special powers, which is why one lives over an auto-repair store, one's in an asylum, and one was gunned down when his cape got stuck in a revolving door. They were masked crimefighters, or "masks" in Batman-esque fashion ... and they were all put out of business by the arrival of the first "real" superman, Dr. Manhattan. As I was leaving the theater, I commented to a couple friends that no one new to the story will have any idea why Ozymandias had seemingly super-human strength and speed. In the book, Adrian's spent decades practicing a vigorous exercise regimen to become the epitome of mental and physical perfection. There is but a fleeting allusion to this in his corporate headquarters but, again, you really had to know what it was referencing to have picked up on it. Oh, and genetic engineering (e.g., the fantastic cat creature that accompanies him at Karnak) might also have played a role. My other observation is that anyone who enjoyed this movie enough to go back and read the book will be dumbfounded by Alan Moore's original ending. I didn't mind the book's, but the movie's ending is many times more coherent if not much more satisfying.
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hoyatables
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Post by hoyatables on Mar 10, 2009 8:39:53 GMT -5
For those that read the book: how are these superheroes (or are they not supposed to be?). it seemed like Owl II and Silk Specter II were just good at fighting, but didnt really have any powers (or special character trait like Rorschach's anger or Batman's moral fortitude). Am I just missing this because i didnt read it? Finally how did Ozymandias get to be so fast? Comics generally have two types of superheroes -- those who develop special talents on their own (e.g. Batman, Green Arrow, Nightwing) and those who have special powers that are bestowed by some other means (e.g. Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash). Alan Moore based the characters in Watchmen on a line of comics characters that were bought by DC in the mid 80s but had actually existed for some time prior, and many of those heroes were essentially the former type. That's why the bulk of the heroes are simply crime fighters with a gimmick -- that was the template that Moore had to work with. More broadly, there's a general distinction between the "Golden Age" and "Silver Age" of superheroes. For the most part, many Golden Age secondary characters were just crimefighters with a gimmick. The Sandman had a gas gun and gas mask. The Atom simply had super strength. Hourman took steroids, but was otherwise a normal joe. The Silver Age, by contrast, had a lot of heroes with true superpowers -- super speed, power rings, and the like. Alan Moore plays with this in Watchmen -- you see a real distinction between the 1940s era Minutemen, who are just a bunch of crimefighters with gimmicks, and the 1960s era Watchmen, which have Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias.
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