I thought Dan was perfect. He's doesn't really have any personality until he's in costume.
I think Dan's problem was we really didn't get his story. It was all implied. We spend a solid chunk of this movie with Dan and Laurie and both of their histories are kind of explained away in implication. Dan's "all American boyness" comes off as hokey as a result.
I am going to give this analogy.
I teach, I grade essays. Now sometimes my students think that if they just throw as many facts in there as they can they will get a good grade. If they can just show that they know enough stuff they will be fine. But, when they do that they are in essence giving me a list of facts in sentence form that doesn't show any really connection or high understanding of the concepts.
That is what this movie is to me. They chose a certain fact-set to run with, they did that. But I feel they missed the point and forgot to emphasize the connections between these people and these stories.
i think basically all the criticisms from reviewers, people in this thread, etc
can sort of be boiled down to: "It's too much like the book."
I know that might sound stupid to some, but really it makes sense:
As 42 explained, the movie is about 30 minutes setting up the plot, 2:10 backstory, 15 minutes resolution. Which is basically the ratio preserved right out of the book. Watchmen the book does not use a conventional narrative structure, which I'm sure many people out in the world would and do count as a flaw. I know that while I like it, the fact that Alan Moore can't tell what to cut from his book isn't exactly a mark of talent as a writer.
I also know that a lot of the dialogue in Watchmen the book really only works as a comic. Moore knows how to build realistic characters, with realistic motivations and psychology, but his dialogue? David Simon he is not.
But that's OK in a comic book. It works fine, because we see a static panel and hear the words in our mind. Dostoevsky and Dickens and plenty of others have written dialogue that would sound weird as fuck coming out of someone's mouth in real life, but works to the end they're writing for.
The thing about the movie is that it preserves everything perfectly -- including all of the flaws.
Now, critiquing the movie as a movie, this is a bad thing. It is not good film-making. It results in a disjointed, hard-to-follow plot; a sense that the entire movie is just a series of vignettes. It results in stilted, even wooden-sounding dialogue at times. It results in weird pacing and a general feeling of incompleteness.
However, the question is -- if you make Watchmen into a movie, if you constrain it to the medium of film, and make it work as a movie, can you really preserve everything from the book? Of course not.
So instead of making Watchmen the movie -- the standalone, independent, dramatically-altered, movie-style retelling of the Watchmen story, which is less a story than a universe and a master's thesis in comic book form -- Zach Snyder quite obviously chose to make Watchmen the companion to the book.
It's not really aimed at people who haven't read the book. It's aimed at an audience that can fill in the blanks from the book, and for those people -- the people willing to use their own memories of the book to reconstruct it with the pictures on screen -- the movie recaptures and replays all the emotional impact and themes from the book.
So, as a companion to the book? As an accessory? It's fantastic.
As a movie? It's really not very good.
I chose to see it as the former, and loved it. Some chose to see it as the latter, and quite understandably did not.
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FortyTwostrongest man in the world The Land of Pleasant Living Registered Userregular
i think basically all the criticisms from reviewers, people in this thread, etc
can sort of be boiled down to: "It's too much like the book."
I know that might sound stupid to some, but really it makes sense:
As 42 explained, the movie is about 30 minutes setting up the plot, 2:10 backstory, 15 minutes resolution. Which is basically the ratio preserved right out of the book. Watchmen the book does not use a conventional narrative structure, which I'm sure many people out in the world would and do count as a flaw. I know that while I like it, the fact that Alan Moore can't tell what to cut from his book isn't exactly a mark of talent as a writer.
I also know that a lot of the dialogue in Watchmen the book really only works as a comic. Moore knows how to build realistic characters, with realistic motivations and psychology, but his dialogue? David Simon he is not.
But that's OK in a comic book. It works fine, because we see a static panel and hear the words in our mind. Dostoevsky and Dickens and plenty of others have written dialogue that would sound weird as fuck coming out of someone's mouth in real life, but works to the end they're writing for.
The thing about the movie is that it preserves everything perfectly -- including all of the flaws.
Now, critiquing the movie as a movie, this is a bad thing. It is not good film-making. It results in a disjointed, hard-to-follow plot; a sense that the entire movie is just a series of vignettes. It results in stilted, even wooden-sounding dialogue at times. It results in weird pacing and a general feeling of incompleteness.
However, the question is -- if you make Watchmen into a movie, if you constrain it to the medium of film, and make it work as a movie, can you really preserve everything from the book? Of course not.
So instead of making Watchmen the movie -- the standalone, independent, dramatically-altered, movie-style retelling of the Watchmen story, which is less a story than a universe and a master's thesis in comic book form -- Zach Snyder quite obviously chose to make Watchmen the companion to the book.
It's not really aimed at people who haven't read the book. It's aimed at an audience that can fill in the blanks from the book, and for those people -- the people willing to use their own memories of the book to reconstruct it with the pictures on screen -- the movie recaptures and replays all the emotional impact and themes from the book.
So, as a companion to the book? As an accessory? It's fantastic.
As a movie? It's really not very good.
I chose to see it as the former, and loved it. Some chose to see it as the latter, and quite understandably did not.
You know, I hate to quote Kevin Smith, but a long time ago I remember reading an interview with him and someone asked him about comic movies and such. And he said something along the lines of: "This is why I both would love to see a Watchmen movie, but don't. I would love to see these characters brought to life, but I don't trust anyone to do it."
That is what happened here. Your argument is fine, but I call bull on it because it IS a movie and should be judged AS a movie. There are certain things that work in print that do not work in film and this movie is a prime example of it.
Under a better director and editor I think this could have been great, but instead we got this. Call it a companion all you want, but in the end it is a film and it is not a good one.
I really don't think this movies issues could be solved by making it longer
12 part director's cut set with one blu-ray disc per issue with panel for panel re shots and the original ending restored and the between-chapter text segments read out loud by Alan Moore
When put into context with everything else that is happening, it isn't that jarring, it's just a little awkward, like a fat kid doing jumping jacks.
Things like
The prison fight
The fight against ozy
The fight against the knot-heads
Rorscach vs. the cops
Were all fantastically done.
the prison fight was really cheesy
also I don't approve of the added gore in the movie, it was completely unecessary
you are wrong.
I agree with Zombie: the over-the-top gore sometimes worked to underscore certain moments, but a lot of the time it was just distracting. I had that issue with a lot of it actually, overall I really liked it, but the amount of practically random graphical "wow" shit that was used seemed to obscure the point of the story rather than emphasize its important points- at least to my simple mind.
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FortyTwostrongest man in the world The Land of Pleasant Living Registered Userregular
When put into context with everything else that is happening, it isn't that jarring, it's just a little awkward, like a fat kid doing jumping jacks.
Things like
The prison fight
The fight against ozy
The fight against the knot-heads
Rorscach vs. the cops
Were all fantastically done.
the prison fight was really cheesy
also I don't approve of the added gore in the movie, it was completely unecessary
you are wrong.
I agree with Zombie: the over-the-top gore sometimes worked to underscore certain moments, but a lot of the time it was just distracting. I had that issue with a lot of it actually, overall I really liked it, but the amount of practically random graphical "wow" shit that was used seemed to obscure the point of the story rather than emphasize its important points- at least to my simple mind.
Most of the time it elicited laughter from the audience. The gore wasn't needed most of the time. it seemed shoe-horned into the story and was out of place.
The only time the gore bugged me was in the alley fight. And even then I thought it was alright when contrasted against the really stylized and "action movie" kind of fighting they do once they become superheroes again.
The only time the gore bugged me was in the alley fight. And even then I thought it was alright when contrasted against the really stylized and "action movie" kind of fighting they do once they become superheroes again.
but is it really in the Silk Specter's character to jam a screwdriver through someone's ear?
The gore was necessary. The violence in the comic was shocking at the time, and if they just stuck with what was in the comic the audience wouldn't have reacted at all.
The only time the gore bugged me was in the alley fight. And even then I thought it was alright when contrasted against the really stylized and "action movie" kind of fighting they do once they become superheroes again.
but is it really in the Silk Specter's character to jam a screwdriver through someone's ear?
it was a knife. how can you confuse a knife with a screwdriver?
also it was through his neck.
The only time the gore bugged me was in the alley fight. And even then I thought it was alright when contrasted against the really stylized and "action movie" kind of fighting they do once they become superheroes again.
but is it really in the Silk Specter's character to jam a screwdriver through someone's ear?
I thought that the first time I saw it, but the second time I was thinking about it a bit more, and if someone was trying to murder you I don't know if murdering them first would be completely out of the question.
You know, I hate to quote Kevin Smith, but a long time ago I remember reading an interview with him and someone asked him about comic movies and such. And he said something along the lines of: "This is why I both would love to see a Watchmen movie, but don't. I would love to see these characters brought to life, but I don't trust anyone to do it."
That is what happened here. Your argument is fine, but I call bull on it because it IS a movie and should be judged AS a movie. There are certain things that work in print that do not work in film and this movie is a prime example of it.
Under a better director and editor I think this could have been great, but instead we got this.
But you say yourself that there are certain things that work in print and not in film. Basically the entirety of Watchmen is exactly that.
Alan Moore cannot kill his darlings. He doesn't know what to cut and what to leave in. It's like he didn't have an editor. Not even a good one, just any at all. It kind of fits with his whole attitude about "the author is always right," but it's honestly not a hallmark of brilliant writing and it really doesn't work in a movie.
However, a lot of the stuff we all like from the book can only really come through in that sort of sprawling, meandering style. I genuinely believe that while someone could make a great move with the title Watchmen and most of the characters from the book, it wouldn't bear much relation to Watchmen the book. It would not really be the same story.
Snyder pretty obviously, even just from reports of how the filming and rewrites and storyboarding was done, made the decision to say "fuck how it works as movie -- this source material is too good and too well-loved to have a movie that tacks on its title without communicating what the book did."
So he made a movie that communicates all the same things the book did -- but really only to people who've read the book. But then again, those are the people that know and appreciate the source material in the first place.
Call it a companion all you want, but in the end it is a film and it is not a good one.
you can absolutely criticize his decision to make Watchmen the way he did, and I can absolutely understand why someone would view it as a film, either by choice or even just because it's hard not to for some people.
However, I didn't view it as a movie. Therefore, you can say "in the end it is film" all you want but you're still wrong because I didn't interpret it that way. It is what the viewer makes it, brosef.
The only time the gore bugged me was in the alley fight. And even then I thought it was alright when contrasted against the really stylized and "action movie" kind of fighting they do once they become superheroes again.
but is it really in the Silk Specter's character to jam a screwdriver through someone's ear?
I thought that the first time I saw it, but the second time I was thinking about it a bit more, and if someone was trying to murder you I don't know if murdering them first would be completely out of the question.
The only time the gore bugged me was in the alley fight. And even then I thought it was alright when contrasted against the really stylized and "action movie" kind of fighting they do once they become superheroes again.
but is it really in the Silk Specter's character to jam a screwdriver through someone's ear?
I thought that the first time I saw it, but the second time I was thinking about it a bit more, and if someone was trying to murder you I don't know if murdering them first would be completely out of the question.
They're way too happy about doing it, though
and then they go and fuck in archie
kinda sociopathic
it IS kinda sociopathic
that's the point.
we are talking about two seemingly normal individuals who are unable to be truly happy unless they are wearing silly costumes in caked in the blood of people who they see as morally wrong.
Yeah, but one of the great things about the comic was that these "superheroes" were really just normal, if not slightly dysfunctional, people. They could be identified with.
By making them into sociopaths who get off on killing, Snyder made relating to them a hell of a lot harder.
for the most part it seems like the people who wanted this to not be good came out thinking it was bad and the people who wanted it to be good came out thinking it was good
Yeah, but one of the great things about the comic was that these "superheroes" were really just normal, if not slightly dysfunctional, people. They could be identified with.
By making them into sociopaths who get off on killing, Snyder made relating to them a hell of a lot harder.
I wanted it to be good and I thought it was good, but I firmly believe that my enjoyment was rooted in having read the novel beforehand. When I look at it from the perspective of someone who hasn't read Watchmen, the pacing is fucked up and the music is terrible and the movie takes forever to get going and it's just not that great, structurally.
Yeah, but one of the great things about the comic was that these "superheroes" were really just normal, if not slightly dysfunctional, people. They could be identified with.
By making them into sociopaths who get off on killing, Snyder made relating to them a hell of a lot harder.
I disagree.
I think that they were also only normal on the surface in the comic, with deeper and darker secrets underneath.
I mean, Dan can't get hard unless he dresses up as an Owl? That's not a normal person; that's a Furry.
I wanted it to be good and I thought it was good, but I firmly believe that my enjoyment was rooted in having read the novel beforehand. When I look at it from the perspective of someone who hasn't read Watchmen, the pacing is fucked up and the music is terrible and the movie takes forever to get going and it's just not that great, structurally.
Posts
oh, once I heard him saying a quote from the journal, I was relieved of all concerns about the delivery of Rorschach lines
you are wrong.
thanks for the heads up, chief
PSN: Robo_Wizard1
I think Dan's problem was we really didn't get his story. It was all implied. We spend a solid chunk of this movie with Dan and Laurie and both of their histories are kind of explained away in implication. Dan's "all American boyness" comes off as hokey as a result.
I am going to give this analogy.
I teach, I grade essays. Now sometimes my students think that if they just throw as many facts in there as they can they will get a good grade. If they can just show that they know enough stuff they will be fine. But, when they do that they are in essence giving me a list of facts in sentence form that doesn't show any really connection or high understanding of the concepts.
That is what this movie is to me. They chose a certain fact-set to run with, they did that. But I feel they missed the point and forgot to emphasize the connections between these people and these stories.
Fortytwo's blog about fatherhood, life, and everything.
can sort of be boiled down to: "It's too much like the book."
I know that might sound stupid to some, but really it makes sense:
As 42 explained, the movie is about 30 minutes setting up the plot, 2:10 backstory, 15 minutes resolution. Which is basically the ratio preserved right out of the book. Watchmen the book does not use a conventional narrative structure, which I'm sure many people out in the world would and do count as a flaw. I know that while I like it, the fact that Alan Moore can't tell what to cut from his book isn't exactly a mark of talent as a writer.
I also know that a lot of the dialogue in Watchmen the book really only works as a comic. Moore knows how to build realistic characters, with realistic motivations and psychology, but his dialogue? David Simon he is not.
But that's OK in a comic book. It works fine, because we see a static panel and hear the words in our mind. Dostoevsky and Dickens and plenty of others have written dialogue that would sound weird as fuck coming out of someone's mouth in real life, but works to the end they're writing for.
The thing about the movie is that it preserves everything perfectly -- including all of the flaws.
Now, critiquing the movie as a movie, this is a bad thing. It is not good film-making. It results in a disjointed, hard-to-follow plot; a sense that the entire movie is just a series of vignettes. It results in stilted, even wooden-sounding dialogue at times. It results in weird pacing and a general feeling of incompleteness.
However, the question is -- if you make Watchmen into a movie, if you constrain it to the medium of film, and make it work as a movie, can you really preserve everything from the book? Of course not.
So instead of making Watchmen the movie -- the standalone, independent, dramatically-altered, movie-style retelling of the Watchmen story, which is less a story than a universe and a master's thesis in comic book form -- Zach Snyder quite obviously chose to make Watchmen the companion to the book.
It's not really aimed at people who haven't read the book. It's aimed at an audience that can fill in the blanks from the book, and for those people -- the people willing to use their own memories of the book to reconstruct it with the pictures on screen -- the movie recaptures and replays all the emotional impact and themes from the book.
So, as a companion to the book? As an accessory? It's fantastic.
As a movie? It's really not very good.
I chose to see it as the former, and loved it. Some chose to see it as the latter, and quite understandably did not.
And?
Fortytwo's blog about fatherhood, life, and everything.
This is a good rundown of what splits opinions of the movie
PSN: Robo_Wizard1
You know, I hate to quote Kevin Smith, but a long time ago I remember reading an interview with him and someone asked him about comic movies and such. And he said something along the lines of: "This is why I both would love to see a Watchmen movie, but don't. I would love to see these characters brought to life, but I don't trust anyone to do it."
That is what happened here. Your argument is fine, but I call bull on it because it IS a movie and should be judged AS a movie. There are certain things that work in print that do not work in film and this movie is a prime example of it.
Under a better director and editor I think this could have been great, but instead we got this. Call it a companion all you want, but in the end it is a film and it is not a good one.
Fortytwo's blog about fatherhood, life, and everything.
I didn't really have any issues with it
I thought the reveal at the end with Manhattan instead of the space squid was better; probably prefer this than what actually happens in the comic
I'm easy to please though, I liked the fight scenes in general, especially considering how long it took to get to them
the sex scene with Dan and Laurie inside the ship seemed a bit long
also there was more blue dong than I expected, I guess I have to give them props for not pulling their punches in that regard
12 part director's cut set with one blu-ray disc per issue with panel for panel re shots and the original ending restored and the between-chapter text segments read out loud by Alan Moore
I agree with Zombie: the over-the-top gore sometimes worked to underscore certain moments, but a lot of the time it was just distracting. I had that issue with a lot of it actually, overall I really liked it, but the amount of practically random graphical "wow" shit that was used seemed to obscure the point of the story rather than emphasize its important points- at least to my simple mind.
Most of the time it elicited laughter from the audience. The gore wasn't needed most of the time. it seemed shoe-horned into the story and was out of place.
Fortytwo's blog about fatherhood, life, and everything.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
but is it really in the Silk Specter's character to jam a screwdriver through someone's ear?
Fortytwo's blog about fatherhood, life, and everything.
he could have just atomized them or something, but no
chunky salsa is what we get
it was a knife. how can you confuse a knife with a screwdriver?
also it was through his neck.
I thought that the first time I saw it, but the second time I was thinking about it a bit more, and if someone was trying to murder you I don't know if murdering them first would be completely out of the question.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
But you say yourself that there are certain things that work in print and not in film. Basically the entirety of Watchmen is exactly that.
Alan Moore cannot kill his darlings. He doesn't know what to cut and what to leave in. It's like he didn't have an editor. Not even a good one, just any at all. It kind of fits with his whole attitude about "the author is always right," but it's honestly not a hallmark of brilliant writing and it really doesn't work in a movie.
However, a lot of the stuff we all like from the book can only really come through in that sort of sprawling, meandering style. I genuinely believe that while someone could make a great move with the title Watchmen and most of the characters from the book, it wouldn't bear much relation to Watchmen the book. It would not really be the same story.
Snyder pretty obviously, even just from reports of how the filming and rewrites and storyboarding was done, made the decision to say "fuck how it works as movie -- this source material is too good and too well-loved to have a movie that tacks on its title without communicating what the book did."
So he made a movie that communicates all the same things the book did -- but really only to people who've read the book. But then again, those are the people that know and appreciate the source material in the first place.
you can absolutely criticize his decision to make Watchmen the way he did, and I can absolutely understand why someone would view it as a film, either by choice or even just because it's hard not to for some people.
However, I didn't view it as a movie. Therefore, you can say "in the end it is film" all you want but you're still wrong because I didn't interpret it that way. It is what the viewer makes it, brosef.
They're way too happy about doing it, though
and then they go and fuck in archie
kinda sociopathic
Open the book to
but that's what it is, duder
it IS kinda sociopathic
that's the point.
we are talking about two seemingly normal individuals who are unable to be truly happy unless they are wearing silly costumes in caked in the blood of people who they see as morally wrong.
Yeah, but one of the great things about the comic was that these "superheroes" were really just normal, if not slightly dysfunctional, people. They could be identified with.
By making them into sociopaths who get off on killing, Snyder made relating to them a hell of a lot harder.
To you, yes.
I mean, literally, denotatively, it is movie
but since when has literalism been the only way we talk about art?
but they don't go fuck in archie after that scene
I disagree.
I think that they were also only normal on the surface in the comic, with deeper and darker secrets underneath.
I mean, Dan can't get hard unless he dresses up as an Owl? That's not a normal person; that's a Furry.
i feel the same way. But fuck those people
one, as movie, which is not very good
the other, as companion piece to the book, which is very good
I'm saying people like fortytwo and kazhim are just as right as people who loved it
depending on your frame of reference, this movie was anything from fantastic to dogshit
unlike most movies though, I'd say any of those frames of reference are actually legitimate lenses to view the movie through