The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent
vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums
here.
We now return to our regularly scheduled PA Forums. Please let me (Hahnsoo1) know if something isn't working. The Holiday Forum will remain up until January 10, 2025.
[Watchmen] All a Man Needs is Canned Beans and Sugar Cubes (SPOILERS)
Posts
That really comes down to extreme personal preference. You can't fault the director for making the best movie that could have been made given the source material and the fact that it's an adaptation, when you just don't like it because it simply can't capture the comics magic because of the format.
Actually it's more of a "We're 3-dimensional characters and just because we fight crime does not mean we are perfect and do not have motivations to lead fulfilling lives."
As for the WATCHMEN hate - really? Seriously now? Why make art now since in a few years it'll be referentially irrelevant (symbology wha? - Timeless metaphor who know?!).
And cmon folks - some people HAVEN'T read the book and spoiling the end or letting these fine folks figure it out by your not-to-subtle attempts at vagueries is really a disservice to someone who might actually go out and buy the book based on this.
No shit? Because this book was printed when it was relevant. Just because we're not in the middle of Cold War now does not remove this book of all political merit.
b) As low as my opinion of mankind is, it's still miles above Moore's apparently. His characters are not representative of humanity, they are the worst of it, to a ridiculious degree. The idea of having flawed characters is not to have them made up of nothing but flaws, and hardly anyone in Watchmen has any redeeming qualities at all.
Their reality and ours are quite different. They are all products of their environment.
c) That's not how physics works. (In regards to Manhatans bullshit living in all times thing. It quite simply goes far beyond the barrier of my suspension of disbelief).
You're reading a comic book about people with superpowers. Dr. Manhatten gets trapped in a machine that doesn't exist that does something impossible. And your having a problem with suspension of disbelief?
d) I really think a lot of the shit that happens is there for shock value rather than any deep attempt at drama and "realism".
I'd like examples of what you consider shock value. Rorschach is an extreme character that loses it after an extreme experience. Yeah, it's shocking, but I don't think Rorschach is meant to be this incredibly deep and dramatic character. He's the darker side of crimefighting.
e) Also, the Comedian is a complete jackass and none of the characters seem to realize this.
Everyone realizes this. It's said over and over in the book: The Comedian is a parody of society. He's the only person who really understands that superheroes are ridiculous and doesn't try to stand for justice and peace. He kills people indiscriminately and does as he pleases.
Two things about this.
You're not sure if you were born during Nixon's presidency or not? Really?
It was 1969 to 1974. Just so you know.
Second... yeah, we were able to get over the Cold War without superheroes.
We were also able to
I mean, how could the cold war have ended poorly if we had help like that?
(this is setting aside the primary reasoning mentioned in the story, that Doc Manhattan caused a power imbalance and terrified Russia, giving them a much greater incentive to attack once Doc leaves.)
I believe in the EW article they mention that the pirate substory is removed and will be made into a separate animated DVD.
And seriously, we're now worried about spoilers on 20+ year old material?
Yeah, but those people are bad and we shouldn't care about them.
Well it should be.
And "Rosebud" was the sled's name, not the film's title.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
As of right now, it has been slated for an R rating release. Snyder has pointed out on numerous occasions that this is an adult film for adult viewers.
Thank you, but I'm more than aware of that. I was just tossing out names. Hell there are some people who haven't seen CK so I inadvertently did them a solid.
First of all, my point about the relevancy is that Watchmen might be a decent satire of the Cold War but that's all it is. There isn't anything deeper to it once you strip that away. Which makes it not all that great, in my opinion.
Second, on the Comedian: over half the fucking cast has nothing better to do than make excuses for him. And the author appears to get in on that action as well. And this results in people saying stuff like this:
This is bullshit. There is no grander meaning to what the Comedian does, the guy is just a jackass and draping the shit he does in some venier of nihilism is insulting to nihilism, society, and humanity.
Oh, and that whole Comedian-raping-Silk-Spectre's-mum-but-she's-cool-with-it-so-it's-all-okay thing pretty much broke the cieling on the stupidest-things-ever-meter. It was actually more stupid than Thomas Covenant.
As for Dr. Manhatan, the character is just stupid. If he doesn't care about humanity anymore then he should really just actually leave rather than hanging around on Mars to have pointless philisophical whine-fests with people about how he's not going to do anything. If the book had been set now, he would have probably started a blog. Or a LJ. He is easily the poorest attempt at conceptualizing such a being that I've ever seen.
In the end, Watchmen comes off as going for either being really Objectivist or really Relativist and pretty stupid either way. Frankly it seems to me that it does about everything in it's power to make you hate it and in that I guess Moore succeeds brilliantly.
Isn't that the point? If the Comedian is a reflection of humanity at its most absurd, don't we do this for our brothers, neighbors, world leaders, people we give power to protect us EVERY DAY: Oh my son didn't do that and if he did he had a reason; oh well, if the cop put 100 bullets in that boy I'm SURE he deserved it; well, if you have nothing to hide, you shouldn't be worried about FISA.
As for The Comedian forcing himself on Silk Spectre and she still loving him, go down to a battered womans shelter and shellack those women for still loving the men who abused them and how stupid they are.
I can't recall Manhattan whining. I can recall him having pretty long internal monologues as he tries to reconcile the part of him that remembers his humanity, and the part that is above all that. What you see as philosophical whining, some see as an honest exploration of what happens when you give omniscience to something that has had the chance to be flawed. Or as I like to think of it, remember that Ducktales episode where the pirates try to steal that All-Knowing-Rock, and when they do steal it and become All-Knowing, they simply put the rock back because well, thats what enlightened people do, realize the pettiness of their actions.
Tales of the Dread Pirates or something?
Do we know if that's going to be in this?
What about Dr. Strangelove?
It is going to be a direct to DVD animated feature from what I hear.
It's "The Black Freighter" I believe.
Trailers don't typically show things like meaningful dialogue and exposition, and lacking those, even the spiffiest action and special effects will make Watchmen a huge disappointment for me.
Trailers are just eye-candy. It's great that the film will be pretty. Will it do the source material justice? Impossible to tell at this point.
To be fair, Watchmen is a literary deconstruction of the superhero genre.
Literary deconstruction is pretentious. I mean, Jesus, look at Poldy.
hah
Whatever Rorschach
It's obviously not a gun... But I have no idea what it is.
....
Is that better or worse than replacing guns with walkie-talkies?
A zatnikatel?
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I checked the trailer and, to me, he's holding a solid block of something (kind of hard to see details) with a thin antenna. Looks like a walkie talkie to me.
Hes yelling, "HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO KILL HIM WITH A 2 WAY RADIO, I NEED A GUN, THIS MAN IS A SUPER HERO!"
Something is only pretentious if it creates the impression of doing or intending to do something far more ambitious than it actually achieves. There's a lot of pretentious literary deconstruction (pretentious because it's either not literary or not actually deconstruction or just because it's plain bad) but there's no inherent reason why it needs to be.