Watchmen
 

YouTube - Nuevo Trailer "los vigilantes"

Hopefully it isn't taken down too quickly.

So do you think it will suck? Or will it be a masterpiece? Or will it be OK?

Things that irked me: a little over-stylized, Ozymandias looks like the pussiest motherfucker in the world, and Rorschach doesn't sound like enough of a serial killing hobo to me.

I liked Dr. Manhattan though he lookin fresh

New, better link

It will be as good as a Watchmen movie could possibly be

So it'll be okay I guess

We shall see. I didn't care much for the comic but that was mostly the pacing that bugged me. Condensed down to movie length it has more potential. Ozymandias does look like shit though. Everyone else looks ok though I could have done with more Rorschach in the trailer.

This looks very promising. I really like the quality of movies DC is releasing recently. Hopefully Watchmen will be faithful to the comic, but will stand out on it's own as a movie. I think that's how comic book movie adaptations, especially for titles such at this, should be made.

Also, The Comedian is spot on.

I'm not hot stuff on graphic novels, but fuck; Watchmen is one of the most incredible things I've ever read. I'm not sure if this looks like it's going to do it justice. It looks great, but the comic's various narrative techniques don't really make the jump to film well...

I've got my Bullshit Bingo card ready for inane comments about this movie.

Me, I think it'll be fine. If you're ready to cut it some slack in terms of ADAPTING the source material for another medium, and another time. Though I doubt that Watchmen could possibly work taken out of the 80s.

removed

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

At least we've known for some time that it's set in the eighties. The guy playing Nixon is wearing a full face prosthetic for the role.

Owlman... a badass? LAUGH.

It looks damned good visually, not sure how the adaptation will pan out.

Poorly.

Calling it right now.

Dreams. Don't. Die.

(They just get movie adaptations and become nightmares)

This trailer could have been better than The Dark Knight itself.

I'm really looking forward to this.

Fox seeks to stop WB's Watchmen after court win

Seeing this made me a tad anxious. After being (for lack of a better term) blown away by the graphic novel, it took a while for me to accept the idea of a movie. The more I learned about the movie, however, the more I began looking forward to it... so having it stopped from ever being released AFTER they've already made it seems a bit ridiculous.

Fox could have stopped WB from making the movie at the beginning. Do you think this dick move by Fox is going to pan out, and stop the Watchmen from ever hitting the big screen?

Now I'm not as familiar with the movie business as some (Denicalis), but from what I know of huge corporations in the software industry, what Fox wants is this:

http://www.wealthgeneration.net/imag...ration.net.jpg

and doesn't give two shits either way about:

http://corky.net/dotan/log/images/watchmen_smiley.gif

So likely, WB will pay Fox the money and the movie will be released later.

Fox should get the rights to release it on Blu-ray. At least we'd get a DTS-HD MA track and a faithful transfer, not a 640kpbs piece of crap with NR up the ass.

Actually, the movie simply looks terrible. Plastic ass characters on blue fire for two hours. Pass.

WATCHMEN on Yahoo! Movies

new trailer out. not liking Rorschach's voice. not liking manhattan's voice. visually snyder seems to have pinned something down, but there's still something missing.

Rorschach's voice sounds like Bale on Dark Knight. I guess it works for Rorschach. And after seeing this trailer, I'm now VERY excited to see the movie. Squid or no squid.

I was more excited after seeing the first trailer. This one was ok, I'll have to give it another watch soon. Manhattan's voice is DEFINITELY different than what I imagined, but only a few words were said by him, and it wasnt his usual maze of choice words. Rorschach... I think it works for him when his mask is on. Was I the only one who read it and almost heard his voice change (to an emotionless, nerd-like voice) during the scenes when his mask was off?

Either way, I'm still excited to see the movie. I like everything I've seen so far, except for a few of the moments in the last trailer where it went to slow motion. I really hope that he changes that style from 300, and it isnt a constant.

I just got back from seeing this, and Megalith's comment pretty much hits the nail on the head. The film starts off very promising, bright colors, good direction, and then degresses over the next two and a half hours into a moddled, grey-tinged mess of a film that I couldn't give a shit about. They exaggerated the action and dumbed down the interesting bits and tried to make everything look gloomy and in the process completely missed the point of all of the original artwork. So, really, it's exactly what everyone who read the comic figured this would probably be. I've heard talk of how they filmed extra bits that are in the comic that aren't in the theatrical version that will make the DVD, but that doesn't matter. The story edit they have works fine, the real problem is the art direction on this, and that's not something you can fix with deleted scenes. A let-down for me, but my friends who haven't read the comic had a kinder opinion.

In before I-already-knew-this-and-that's-why-I-chose-to-not-ever-see-this-movie.

I don't know...the director has already planned 2 director's cuts already. He just doesn't seem to know HOW he wants to adapt a comic. I don't think it'll be a horrible film, but if you take a comic book, put it on to film and try to tell it like a comic book without taking the time and care to really adapt it, it'll never be more than mediocre I think.

That said, should be a good popcorn flick though.

Just got back from it (saw it on the IMAX screen), and I really enjoyed it. Great eye candy treat for anyone who's read the graphic novel (some really graphic violence, especially when Dr. Manhattan's killing). The music selection was really good, such as the "Ride of the Valkyries" for when Dr. Manhattan was taking out the vietcong, and "Hallelujah" for Nite Owl and Silk Spectre's love scene (haha, both scenes gave me a good chuckle). The only thing I didn't like was My Chemical Romance's cover of "Desolation Row" for the credits, that was just all noise, they should have stuck with the original.

Something that really struck me was how Jackie Haley's Walter Kovacs looked so much like his comic/novel counterpart, it was dead on IMO, like straight from the pages. The only thing that bugged me was how he kept with the Batman voice after being unmasked. I was kinda expecting him to play down the voice a little when he was Kovacs. But then we're told/reminded, that Kovacs was no more when he found the dead little girl, which I guess kinda explains why his voice stayed consistently that way.

Regarding the endingThey trimmed/altered/omitted quite a few things, such as that whole little side story with the pschiatrist (him becoming more and more obsessed with Kovac's), as well as the thing with the newstand vendor and the kid with the comic (but I've read that the plan is to re-edit this part, along with the Black Frieghter segment, back into the movie for the DVD release). The killing of Hollis Mason was removed as well (hopefully it's added back too). I can understand why they did it, but would have been nice to included it as well.

Now I wanna read the novel again, to see what changes were made.

To be honest, I never had the opportunity to read the novel. :/ I'd love to, though. Especially now that I've seen the movie.

Despite not having read the book, I have to say I really enjoyed the movie. I loved the scenes in the prison with Rorschach:

Saw this at a midnight showing, and generally agree with this segment of your comment, if not the overall feeling about the film. Compared to what could have been done to this film, I was pleasantly surprised by how tightly they stuck to the framing, artwork, and pacing of the film. The vast majority of sequences happened in exactly the same manner as they did in the book, which I thought was a positive. Perhaps my expectations were actually too low, but I was braced for a standard Hollywood treatment, where they think they know better than Moore and completely rewrite the book. In my opinion, it was akin to Lord of the Rings. They made an effort to be true to the book, and I appreciate that the effort was there, even if their perception of the book colored the final result with greys.

The exaggeration of the action was a bit much, although it wouldn't have been nearly so jarring if the gal playing Silk Spectre hadn't kept posing in every scene. Going through a doorway? Pose. Judo chop. Pose.

Still, in the end I think Pang's old comment was about right. It was as good as a movie adaptation could be expected to be.

Edit:
Didn't see this before, but this was the one thing that I thought was sub-par about the whole experience. Personally, it just felt like they were trying too hard with the music to tell you what emotion you were supposed to be feeling. Ride of the Valkyries in Apocalypse Now had a well integrated story point with a callback to Wagner. In this, it was just parody and a marker for "Audience, this is Vietnam."

Just saw it, and was fairly entertained.

There was. It was composed by Tyler Bates.

They probably could have done a lot more if they hadn't shot 2/3rds of the movie with high speed cameras.

In any case, I was really satisfied with Jon's plot save for the ending.

It's a great movie. Fans of the comics should forget about the comics and approach this adaptation as a movie. It's quite pointless comparing the two since they're different mediums. And the lack of the giant squid at the ending was fine, they were able to relay the same symbolism of the giant squid with what they did in the movie.

Also, Silk Specter <3. Hottest costume, or HOTTEST costume?

Overall, I enjoyed the experience. At least, as much as I can enjoy such a story.

Yeah. That's also how it works in the graphic novel. After the girl's death, he always talks in a different, noticeably rougher, word balloon.

I think my disappointment with Rorschach was that the mask wasn't explained. It was essentially a passing remark in the novel and could definitely have been one here. I imagine some viewers may have "How does his mask do that?" stuck in their heads whenever he appears on-screen.

This seems to be a general broad opinion that those who saw the movie without reading the book would enjoy it and those who did, didn't like it as much.

So here's my question, I recently bought the book a few days ago and seeing the negative responses from the readers who saw the movie, I ask whether if I should just watch the movie first or enjoy the book first?

I think that either way, the movie will eventually be disappointing. I don't think anyone (besides Sprout) is saying that this is a bad movie. It isn't a bad movie. It's just not as good as it could have been. Being just short of excellent is usually more disappointing than being awful. If something is awful, you can dismiss it outright, easy peasy. That's not what this is. A lot of it is great, but there are moments that make you think "they just utterly fucked that bit up". It's not as good as it could easily have been considering the amount of effort put into it, and that's the ultimate letdown.

As far as an adaptation of Watchmen could go, this is the best I imagine we could have hoped for. I liked it well enough, but it just seemed like it lost something in the transition.

As far as an adaptation of watchmen could go, the best we could have hoped for was Gilliam's interpretation: "Can't be done." And if you have to fucking hack apart this graphic novel, do it in a mini-series.

Watchmen was an abortion on screen. Almost fucking unwatchable. It looked like every other movie in the genre and was boring as fuck. I think you have to be brain dead to glean anything beyond "Yeah, rorschach was pretty bad ass a few times" from it.

Rubbish, and not even especially pretty rubbish.

I am deeply amused by the beard brigade's insistence that the movie's very existence offends them! combined with their apparent decision to collectively go and see it ASAP (so they can explain how bad it is).

Or maybe it could be that after having seen it, we reached a conclusion that hey, maybe Moore was right about this. Maybe Gilliam had the right idea, given the fact that this movie didn't work at all.

Wow. Agreeing with someone when they're right. What a novel thing. Get over yourself, Pang. A lot of us who didn't like it went to see it hoping it wouldn't suck (except LeHah, I'm guessing) and were disappointed to find that it did. If you like shitty films, good on you. Enjoy yourself. But don't get your panties twisted when someone points out a bad film is bad.

I actually expected to like it more than I turned out to. Like I said, it just seemed like it was missing something. A soul, maybe. Not something I'd pay to see again.

Look if it's a bad movie or whatever fine

I'm just schadenfreuding over the all the omg soul raep some people are exhibiting.

I mean, I haven't even seen it but I am fairly sure the movie does not leap out of the screen and brutally rape you

which would make the hysterics semi-appropriate

V Zip doesn't like it : must be good

Didnt like it at all, much like 300 it was full of fluff with no real stuffing. 300 the comic was the same so that movie worked, but Watchmen is complex with different pararell things going on.. and not seeing some of it just broke it.

http://araesmojo.001webs.com/CaptainHyperbole.jpg

I can understand not liking it, believing it was bad, and thinking that it did not live up to the book. Reasonable opinions. But, "You're retarded because you saw anything besides "Rorschach is cool' " is just stupid.

I have mixed feelings. I feel that a lot of the graphic novel was lost through the continuous nature of film. I liked the feeling of being in a different chapter that explores a different theme, and I don't think that comes through very much in the film. I also didn't think the stylized action was very appropriate. It kind of worked in the opening since the "mask killer" is supposed to be just a bit better than just a normal guy, but other scenes (like the alley scene or the prison fight) left kind of a bad taste, what with Nite Owl and Spectre smirking at each other every few seconds. Also, I don't see how someone who didn't read the comic could understand anything at all - Bubastis is sort of just thrown in, Dr. Manhattan is for some reason making huge structures out of Mars dirt - I just feel like the comic drags you into its world more easily because of how gradual everything is explained. Also the movie was so long. Also I guess I don't have mixed feelings about it, I just didn't like it very much.

edit: Also, Nixon's nose.

I never read the book. Enough of a story was left for me to follow, and very deeply enjoy, within those two hours. I got to drink in a taste of an entire, entertaining alternate timeline. And it was much better than anything else I could have gone to see right now. Mission accomplished I'd say. Better to approximate and tribute something amazing, then to give me a fat cop crashing his Segway 17 times or the third "I'm a virgin!" movie of the month.

If the book is THAT MUCH MORE awesomesauce, I guess I'll read it.

(I found 300 book and 300 movie dully 1-D).

Worse than The Dark Knight, if that's even possible, which isn't, also I won't admit a movie being WORSE than it, lest people could get the idea that TDK had any redeeming qualities whatsoever.

Also: lol blue schlong. :rolleyes:

or maybe Zack snyder is worthless

Quadruple blue glowing schlong.

I found it enjoyable enough for a comic book movie. It's not life-changing but it's good enough that I don't regret spending the $10 for admission, which is sadly becoming a much less frequent occurrence lately.

"Enjoyable enough for a comic book movie" - you see what's wrong here?
"Most celebrated graphic novel of all times" - "Enjoyable enough for a comic book movie"

See it yet?

Where do I sign the "Alan Moore's rabid raging fanboi Fatwa on Zack Snyder"?

So wait...Someone finds -some- enjoyment out of a movie, regardless of what it is, and they are instantly a fanboy for the director?

That's a bit harsh, considering that the above quote is coming from a blatant fanboy of the graphic novel. Makes you sound like those rabid FF7 fans that would verbally rip apart anyone that found Advent Children 'Enjoyable enough for a video game movie'.

But then again, I could have misread the above. But still, it sounds fucking retarded.

Not everything is translatable between mediums, and just because a translation takes place doesn't guarantee the translated item will bear the quality of its origin (I don't think I really need to cite examples here, there have been plenty of them). So calling the Watchmen film a failure because it didn't achieve the same level of qualilty as its source is both foolish and more than a little naive.

In fact, one might argue that for an "unfilmable" graphic novel a film that's enjoyable at all is a massive achievement.

The problem with adapting something like Watchmen is that it relies so much on Moore's supporting cast to drive home the central themes of the work. The movie doesn't ever really drive home how ridiculous the entire notion of superherodom actually is. Despite all of their personal disorders none of the characters ever come off as anything other than cool kung fu dudes. Ozymandias skirts the line of super genius manchild but his ultimate tinge of self-doubt is supplanted onto Nite Owl.

The problem with the movie is that they tried to make too many plot elements more plausible when the lynchpin holding the story together is how utterly implausible the entire thing is.

I mean, the biggest example of how this came through is how Rorschach comes off as such a cool badass. Rorschach was actually a paranoid serial killer with the moral reasoning of a child.

Additional Spam:
The worst cgi in the movie was Bubastis, don't be such a baby.

The very inclusion of Bubastis was nothing more than fan service, since the new ending throws away the genetic engineering concepts in the book.

And yes, his CG is absolutely awful.

Which is silly, because the fans apparently have an active hostility to the very notion of being serviced.

(Bubastis was already silly-looking as all hell in the books let's not lie)

How is his moral reasoning childish?

Well uh without getting too much into it uh how about the multiple occasions where he summarily executes people

I mean, Kovacs is an understandable character, even a sympathetic one. But he's not a good guy and he's certainly not admirable.

Let's give you an example you might be more willing to bend the idea towards:

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l8...e-movie-07.jpg

Oh I thought we were talking about his scene at the end.

Rorschach doesn't compromise as a product of his worldview. He's not literally a mental child but his reactionary nature and black & white worldview all indicate simple moral reasoning that many people grow out of into adulthood. On Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development he'd be stuck in Stage 4.

Rorschach works on his gut, and his character is supposed to appeal to our instincts. It's natural for us to react to Ozymandias's master plan with revulsion and to instinctively feel like everybody should know.

The movie makes Rorschach seem principled instead of paranoid and simple, so the moral uncertainty that the ending should make us feel is killed because there's little to indicate that Rorschach could very well be wrong.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I heard somewhere that you liked Live Free Green Screen with it's Gerry Anderson hover plane amongst other travesties of pathetic special effects.

I mean, I've not seen Watchmen yet so it's possible that the cg really was as bad as Die Hard or many of the other films to have come out lately with shitty graphics (Indiana Jones and the Narnia films being some of the worst offenders) but is one character worth of bad special effects really that much of a big deal these days? You can't expect Weta to make every film can you.

Do you think Rorschach was wrong? I don't know if his being simple and paranoid has much to do with it. The ends didn't justify the means for him; he viewed the compromise as a total hypocrisy.

Rorschach is right for the wrong reasons in my opinion, but that's a part of the uncertainty that's supposed to make you think about the implications. The movie just sort of accepts that Rorschach is right, though, and even throws in Nite Owl spergin out over Kovacs gettin blowed up for no good reason because I guess we're supposed to feel bad about it? *shrug*

I watched it a second time today, and going into it with this mindset helped me see past some of the hollywood to understand what was driving the less-obvious characters. It's subtle, but I think it's there that the characters have their own ego hangups that cause them to become superheroes. It's just that in the movie, it's more of a "read as much into it as you want to" deal, whereas the graphic novel makes you hit every point to get from A to G.

In general, I think it's acceptable to like the movie for different reasons than the graphic novel. People too close to the source material are still looking for fidelity and overlooking the redemptive parts. (I.E. friendship between partners and the moral anguish at having to give one up for the sake of principles. A punch to the face accomplishes the same feat in this movie as more extraneous sex would have.)

My big problem with the film is its adaptive qualities. For something that attempts such a faithful adaptation, they change so many of the little things for no readily apparent reason that it shifts the tone of the entire theme, and The Watchmen is built on the little things.

It's fun to watch, though, so I'm not gonna say that people just shouldn't see it or that they can't see it without reading the comics.

I read in an interview that Rorschach was inspired by Batman. I think Moore described him as a "murdering socipath." It's so interesting that he is the character people are immediately drawn to.

I would say, however, that the most human character is the new Nite Owl, ED and all.

Rorschach was inspired by Objectivist superhero The Question.

This is something I'm hearing more and more as time passes about this movie. The novel was amazing because of this and the vast majority of people I know who have seen it have complained about this more than anything. I know it's the biggest reason that I don't want see it but then again...

... Vemp said in his blog's radio cast "You have to judge this movie as a movie" and I guess, in the end, it makes sense. Two different mediums = two different end products. One is better than the other. I'll stick with the better one.

YouTube Video

YouTube Video

From wiki-article: "In an interview for the BBC's Comics Britannia, Moore stated that Rorschach was created as a way of exploring how an archetypical Batman-type character—a driven, vengeance-fueled vigilante—would be like in the real world. He concluded that the short answer was "a nutcase.""

How about it, we are both right!