harpo787

HEY! That's a spoiler! Wait, it is a spoiler, isn't it?

Suprmallet: "the first thing I thought of was, "I just blue myself."
--The first thing I thought was "Where are his jean-shorts? I thought he was a never-nude!"

harpo787

So you'd like it if Kevin Smith directed it? Laff...didn't he say something like that about a movie he was supposed to direct, like Superman or some such? It would just be a bunch of talking with all the action happening just off-screen.....

RichC2

That'd be fine by me, the action scenes were handled just fine but did seem a bit unnecessary.

fumanstan

I actually really dug the action scenes and thought Snyder did a good job with them and sprucing them up, although he quickly needs to move away from the slo-mo that he did here and 300 before it becomes tired.

Solid Snake

I dunno.. He was kicking major ass...

toddly6666

There's basically two types of choreographed fight scenes nowadays:

Snyder is in the Hong Kong choreographed style.
Greengrass is in the shaky cam, MTV-style, quick-cut awful style.

Those are the basic two, and I have to go with the Hong Kong style because it looks better and it's more memorable.

The fight scenes in the two new Batman films were sort of a combination of the two, mixing realism with some style, but in turn they just weren't memorable. Why make a fight scene not memorable? The 80s were filled with action movies of non-memorable parody-type fight scenes (the They Live fight scene is a classic example of the fight scene of the 80s).

Thank god Greengrass didn't direct Watchmen - it would have been awful, especially with his digital filmmaking.

I love Terry Gilliam, but I don't think he would do a good job either.

The only other directors that could have done justice to Watchmen is Fincher and Jeunet..

Patman

I'd like to see what Aronofsky could have done with a good-sized budget.

harpo787

And Spike Jonez! I have no idea why I just said that. Gondry? Laff...

Solid Snake

Spike Jonze might not be a good choice cuz if he's being shitted on for a children's book...I'd hate to see what WB would give him for Watchmen. I'm a Jonze fan too but...I don't think they'd give a huge film like this. I do think Jonze will do a fine job though on his current project.

Mopower

Fantastic movie although it was a little too heavy on the exploding people and hanging penises.

Hokeyboy

Imagine how bugfuck it would've been if those adjectives were reversed!

calhoun07

Hurmmm...Never Nude with Always Nude. Interesting.

LickTheABCs

I'm pretty sure I saw that movie when I was 12....

toddly6666

You know what other movie had a generally sucky story? BLADE RUNNER. And look how amazing and what a classic it is. The story may be important, but there are other aspects to a movie which make it a masterpiece. And I think that Watchmen is a masterpiece.

So, is Watchmen considered a science-fiction film? Is this film now going to be put in those "top 20" sci-fi film lists?

calhoun07

OK...got around to finally seeing this...

I gave it a solid four out of five stars. Ideally, this would have been a 6 hour movie to get everything in, but I think they did a fantastic job getting in what they did. Granted, there were some minor story lines we missed out on in the movie (such as more with the psychiatrist and how Rorschach pretty much broke his spirit and stuff like that...characters who were not integral to the over all story line.)

I can only mirror the positive things said so far about this movie, and I cannot wait until the full director's cut in the ultimate edition. I get the feeling there was a more to the Rorschach origin story that didn't get told, only teased about in a few flash back scenes...and I hope to see that among some other things.

But the glaring change from graphic novel to movie (which made me knock it down in the rating just a tad...probably would have give it 4.5 otherwise) was the fact that they made Laurie a non smoker.

It wasn't like it was an issue that made me not enjoy the movie, but every time there was a scene in the movie that mirrored the comics and in the comic she was doing something with her cigarettes that was integral to the scene, it's pretty jarring.

It is every bit as part of her character as Rorschach's journal writing or Dan fumbling with his glasses and cleaning them...it is just something that adds to the depth of the character. And in the comic, her smoking added a touch to certain key scenes:

***Like when her and Dan fight off the knotheads in the alleyway...it's nearly a sexual experience for them, and she lights a cigarette in the same way somebody does after having sex. This ties in later on in the comic with them in the Owl Ship and how it seems these two are so sexually dysfunctional that they can only get it on after they perform as superheroes. That connection is lost in the movie.

***Her first meeting with the Comedian and it seems he's hitting on her...he lights what we presume is her first cigarette. Her mom comes in and she's all embarrassed about being caught smoking. It just changes the dynamic of the scene.

***When she is in the owl ship, the ONLY reason she hits the button with the flame on it is because she wants a light for her cigarette. Yet in the movie there is no logical reason why she pushes that button.

There are other scenes in the comic book where her smoking is every bit a part of her character and the scenes she is in as Dan's impotence or Rorschach's psychotic delusions. The Comedian can chomp on cigars in the movie (which is fine...it's part of his character) but Laurie gets her cigarettes taken away? It just pisses me off. Of all the minor changes, this is one of the major minor changes that is completely unnecessary.

Another thing I liked about the graphic novel were the products that existed solely in that setting...the Nostalgia perfume (missing in this movie...Laurie wore that perfume as well and threw a bottle of it on Mars which broke Dr. Manhattan's crystal cathedral) and the cigarettes themselves in the graphic novel were unique. You mean to tell me a prop designer couldn't have replicated that design? Shoot, you don't even see the knotheads smoking those cigarettes, and they are gang members.

Another element missing was the kid that young Rorschach bites...in the comic the kid is smoking and Rorschach pulls the cigarette out of the kid's mouth and puts it out in his eye. A bad ass move, ever bit as bad ass as throwing scalding hot oil on the prisoner.

I just think it's political correctness run amok. It was such a glaring change in the movie that it bothered me throughout. And I learned online we only have Alan Horn, president of WB, to blame. Apparently only bad people can smoke. Laurie is supposedly too good to have cigarettes on her lips. And it was such an issue with Alan Horn that Zach Snyder said if he wanted to leave the cigarettes in the movie, it wouldn't have been made.

http://io9.com/5156140/warner-bros-f...go-cold-turkey

The only other issue I had with the movie was I really did feel Adrian Veidt was miscast. Maybe it's because I read this in the comics when it first came out, back in the day when Dave Gibbons was also working on the Dr. Who comics and he also drew the 5th Doctor's stories, so there was a similarity in Dave's depiction of Adrian and the 5th Doctor. So I always imagined Peter Davidson playing Adrian Veidt.





Granted, Peter Davidson is simply too old to play the character, but Adrian is very well built and looks like a superhero. Matthew Goode reminds me more of David Hyde Pierce than a muscular superhero, and that was not a positive thing for me.

Solid Snake

Somethings I noticed in Intro Credits to this thing....

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nFAM9wGRajk&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nFAM9wGRajk&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

darkside

I loved the movie and I'm a lifelong fan of the book. People that I have talked to that haven't read it seemed to be the ones less impressed with it or that felt lost during the story. I personally felt he got in enough of the back story to bring everything together and not extend the movie any longer than it already was. I liked this movie more than even Dark Knight last year and I liked that one a lot.

calhoun07

Definitely better than TDK. TDK was great Batman, but I think this movie was better overall.

PopcornTreeCt

I liked that it had a very Forrest Gump feel showing the superheroes interacting and re-writing history. Especially, the superhero girl kissing the other girl in Times Square.

toddly6666

question about the end of the movie:

.

Seantn

SIUmark

I have never read the graphic novel. I didn't know anything about it. I saw it Sun night and I really enjoyed it. I might see it again. As others have said, the time really flew by. After seeing the movie, I might buy the graphic novel just to see what is different.

Giantrobo

I went a second time with a friend Sunday evening and I still LOVE this movie.

My friend, who didn't know much about Watchmen other than what she's seen in the ads, liked it a lot. We went for a bite to eat after the show and we had a great discussion about what happened in the film, the original comic series, Alan Moore, specific characters, and much more related to Watchmen.

It was cool having the Watchmen talk with an enthusiastic non-comic reader.

RKillgore

Now I'm wondering why America would go through the effort of the Apollo program, when Dr. Manhattan could teleport himself or anything else to the moon in an instant.

TheySentYou

my little review:

Watchmen (2009) - 8.5/10

Zack Snyder is Hollywood's freshest puppet. What on Earth will this guy do without precious nerd-praise source material? Three films deep into his resume, we're looking at an enjoyable reinterpretation of Romero's 'Dawn of the Dead', a mundane, frat-boy friendly, yet visually stunning rendering of Frank MIller's '300', and now Alan Moore's "unfilmable" graphic novel 'Watchmen'. 'Watchmen' completely scores top-notch for visual entertainment alone - films like this are a reason I even pay money to a shit-ass major-market movie theater... solely for the experience. The film was taken a step further than simply breathing life into a graphic novel - it unleashed a fascinating world beyond. Of course, keep in mind that an enormous Hollywood budget can make anything convincing. 'Watchmen' sucks you into a near-apocalyptic New York, where crime, rioting, decaying foreign affairs, nuclear scares, and all-around corruption are on the rise. A team of superheroes spanning from the 1940s carry a difficult torch to a rotting social climate while more and more citizens become skeptical of their role as "protectors". 'The Comedian" is a perpetual fuck-up - especially in a moral sense. He's self-righteous, he objectifies women and sexually offends them, and apparently when he's pissed enough, he'll gun down a pregnant Vietnamese girl with very little remorse. He is almost single-handedly the reason for this league of heroes to question their roles as... "heroes". 'Rorschach' is a masked man with a troubled past, attempting to put away the filth of the corrupt community, with obvious trust issues and an irrationally violent temper. "Dr. Manhattan" is a glowing, superhuman result of a science experiment gone completely wrong, who constantly speaks in non-linear scientific language, and is prone to being sexually unfaithful to women. Then there's "Silk Spectre", "Nite Owl", and "Ozymandias" - all of which begin with very little character flaw aside from troubled past, love trouble, and self-absorption. The film further succeeds with razor-sharp storytelling - beginning with Rorschach's personal journal into the death of "The Comedian", then centering in on the sorrowful pasts of each struggling vigilante-slash-hero - brilliant, to say the least. However, one pivotal character is not so well explained - Ozymandias. This may have been directly from the graphic novel - which I didn't bother reading, because I have better things to do - like type up long, mundane reviews and expect others to read it. Anyway, back to the point - the story would've benefitted in connectivity with more of a story behind Ozymandias, and even the Nite Owl, while we're at it. Perhaps they were cutting close on time constraints, since it's already almost a 3-hour feature film. Plus, I hear there's 25 extra minutes in the eventual director's cut. One other undesirable factor to this film is the atrocious soundtrack - I believe there's Jimi Hendrix, Simon & Garfunkel, and a bad 'Hallelujah' cover which made a sex scene involving two really attractive people rather unwatchable - and horribly random, at that. All in all, though, 'Watchmen' lives up to my expectations and I cannot wait to own this one and re-watch it. It intelligently questions and challenges the humanity in the super-human/hero. Between this, 'The Dark Knight', 'Iron Man', and the promising Wolverine installment, I can safely say that comic book films have attained so much more integrity and deserved appeal.