The Watchmen

[Red Hawk]

So someone can praise a movie from the previews and comic version but anyone who pans it is a freaking Nazi.

That makes sensce.

 

[Stout]

So someone can praise a movie from the previews and comic version but anyone who pans it is a freaking Nazi.

That makes sensce.

No, but someone who expresses pleasure that a legal system would censor any medium they didn't like is exhibiting some of the symptoms a society like Nazi Germany showed.

 

[Renz]

No, but someone who expresses pleasure that a legal system would censor any medium they didn't like is exhibiting some of the symptoms a society like Nazi Germany showed.

Jeez, talk about reaching. It's a legal issue about money. It has nothing to do with censorship or Nazi Germany.

 

[Chaplin]

Jeez, talk about reaching. It's a legal issue about money. It has nothing to do with censorship or Nazi Germany.

Sure, that's the reality of it. But Red Hawk's original post about this has nothing to do with "legal issues".

 

[Stout]

Jeez, talk about reaching. It's a legal issue about money. It has nothing to do with censorship or Nazi Germany.

Red Hawk seems to think it's a great thing that legal issues kept a bad film (his opinion) from getting made. I'm equating Red Hawk to having Nazi-style idealism, not saying the legal opinion was censorship. If I knew Red Hawk personally and didn't like him, it'd be cool with me if he was arrested and thrown into prison for no good reason, because I didn't like him. That's the rationale he posted with.

 

[SunsTzu]

http://www.thecelebritycafe.com/features/23581.html

Luckily the legal action seemed to have no effect on the release of the movie. I'm not sure I understand why people are so against this film they feel it shouldn't be shown at theatres. There are plenty of movies that don't appeal to me but I don't go to places and argue with people who they do appeal to. Nor would I celebrate if the movies were prevented from being shown.

This is really the only movie I've wanted to see since Dark Knight came out.

 

[Matt L]

I have never read the comic. can anyone explain why it is so appealing or even what the story is about?

Do you think that you would have to have read the comic to understand the movie?

 

[Chaplin]

Great movie, much better than I thought it would be. I think this film literally used the graphic novel as storyboards, it was that close to it. Acting was just ok across the board except for Jackie Earl Haley, i.e. Rorshach, who was just magnificent. If this movie had been released later in the year, I'd say he'd have a good chance at a Best Supporting nomination.

 

[Jersey Girl]

I have never read the comic. can anyone explain why it is so appealing or even what the story is about?

Do you think that you would have to have read the comic to understand the movie?

Saw it tonight. You do not need to read the comic to understand the story (at least I didn't).

I enjoyed it.

 

[Chris_Sanders]

Great movie, much better than I thought it would be. I think this film literally used the graphic novel as storyboards, it was that close to it. Acting was just ok across the board except for Jackie Earl Haley, i.e. Rorshach, who was just magnificent. If this movie had been released later in the year, I'd say he'd have a good chance at a Best Supporting nomination.

This echoes my thoughts exactly. Exceeded expectation and Jackie Earl Haley was awesome.

 

[Louis]

Didn't like it much. The story took way too long to unfold. At over 2 hours longs this movie dragged on.

I hated the story about the blue guy.

I liked Rorshach but the rest wasn't too great IMO. I could totally watch a movie based just on that character.

For those who may take the kiddies there is a lot of boobies and the bluest weiner on earth makes it appearance a few times.

Mattyboy, no need to read the comic to understand the movie. It's pretty simple and the everlong opening credits pretty much give you the heads up on what these guys are, as does the constant flashbacks that develop the characters.

 

[Ryanwb]

I love the comeback of Jackie Earl Haley's career, especially after his performance in Little Children which blew me away

 

[Gaddabout]

Kelly Leak as a super hero. It truly is the end of the world.

 

[Dr. Jones]

First...... I really wanted to like this movie....

Maybe I needed to know more of the story going in.....

Dude.... I think this might be one of the most pointless comic movies I have seen. And WAY too long.

Spoiler

1st. I just can't believe the story.... Not all the make believe of the comic world, but the love triangle. How am I to believe that the hottest chick in the film falls for the freak of nature.
2. There really was WAY too much character development. And the back story for some of this was really not needed.
3. The end was crap.
4. All of the hero's were so flawed I couldn't even believe in them. Or want to be on their side.
5. Who in the hell believes that the blue guy would come to that stupid conclusion at the end? Killing Rorshack, and allowing the guy killing people to be made the good guy? Way too much double talk and hypocritical thinking from the guy who is supposedly GOD.
6. How can anyone understand the whole Mars scene? The logic that the chick was a miracle? For being so smart he was really an idiot.


When the movie was over, I really didn't know who was good, who was bad, or why I wasted 3 hours watching it. Maybe it's just me but I thought it was pointless.

Now the trailers were GREAT. Terminator, Star Trek, and the new Depp movie look really good.

 

[Pariah]

When the movie was over, I really didn't know who was good [or] who was bad,

That's the point.

"Who watches the Watchmen?"

 

[Dr. Jones]

That's the point.

"Who watches the Watchmen?"

That was in reference to the fact that someone was killing them off.... Which in the end... Was complete bullcrap.

No one needs to watch them. Or it for that matter.

I bet the box office goes down quickly a few weeks from now. Good initial bump based on tons of PR but the product will not entice repeat viewers.

 

[Pariah]

That was in reference to the fact that someone was killing them off.

No, it wasn't. It's graffitti'd everywhere throughout the city if you look. It's a representation of the public's dissatisfaction with absolute power.

At least, that's what Alan Moore thinks. But what does he know?

 

[Dr. Jones]

lol.... Yeah.

This was way too artsy fartsy for me..... What absolute power did they have?

 

[Pariah]

lol.... Yeah.

This was way too artsy fartsy for me..... What absolute power did they have?

They were outlawed by Nixon (a president that did away with term limits) because they were unchecked and uncontrolled. No one questioned them.

From Wikipedia:

The initial premise for the series was to examine what superheroes would be like "in a credible, real world". As the story became more complex, Moore said Watchmen became about "power and about the idea of the superman manifest within society."[36] The title of the series refers to the phrase "Who watches the watchmen?", although Moore said in a 1986 interview with Amazing Heroes he did not know where the phrase originated.[37] After reading the interview, author Harlan Ellison informed Moore that the phrase is a translation of the question "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?", posed by the Roman satirist Juvenal; Moore commented in 1987, "In the context of Watchmen, that fits. 'They're watching out for us, who's watching out for them?'"[3] The writer stated in the introduction to the Graphitti hardcover of Watchmen that while writing the series he was able to purge himself of his nostalgia for superheroes, and instead he found an interest in real human beings.[1]
Bradford Wright described Watchmen as "Moore's obituary for the concept of heroes in general and superheroes in particular."[17] Putting the story in a contemporary sociological context, Wright wrote that the characters of Watchmen were Moore's "admonition to those who trusted in 'heroes' and leaders to guard the world's fate." He added that to place faith in such icons was to give up personal responsibility to "the Reagans, Thatchers, and other 'Watchmen' of the world who supposed to 'rescue' us and perhaps lay waste to the planet in the process".[38] Moore specifically stated in 1986 that he was writing Watchmen to be "not anti-Americanism, [but] anti-Reaganism," specifically believing that "at the moment a certain part of Reagan's America isn't scared. They think they're invulnerable."[3] While Moore wanted to write about "power politics" and the "worrying" times he lived in, he stated the reason that the story was set in an alternate reality was because he was worried that readers would "switch off" if he attacked a leader they admired.[4] Moore stated in 1986 that he "was consciously trying to do something that would make people feel uneasy."[3]
Citing Watchmen as the point where the comic book medium "came of age", Iain Thomson wrote in his essay "Deconstructing the Hero" that the story accomplished this by "developing its heroes precisely in order to deconstruct the very idea of the hero and so encouraging us to reflect upon its significance from the many different angles of the shards left lying on the ground".[39] Thomson stated that the heroes in Watchmen almost all share a nihilistic outlook, and that Moore presents this outlook "as the simple, unvarnished truth" to "deconstruct the would-be hero's ultimate motivation, namely, to provide a secular salvation and so attain a mortal immortality".[40] He wrote that the story "develops its heroes precisely in order to ask us if we would not in fact be better off without heroes".[41] Thomson added that the story's deconstruction of the hero concept "suggests that perhaps the time for heroes has passed", which he feels distinguishes "this postmodern work" from the deconstructions of the hero in the existentialism movement.[42] Richard Reynolds states that without any supervillains in the story, the superheroes of Watchmen are forced to confront "more intangible social and moral concerns", adding that this removes the superhero concept from the normal narrative expectations of the genre.[43] Reynolds concludes that the series' ironic self awareness of the genre "all mark out Watchmen either as the last key superhero text, or the first in a new maturity of the genre".[44]
Geoff Klock eschewed the term "deconstruction" in favor of describing Watchmen as a "revisionary superhero narrative." He considers Watchmen and Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns to be "the first instances ... of [a] new kind of comic book ... a first phase of development, the transition of the superhero from fantasy to literature."[45] He elaborates by noting that "Alan Moore's realism ... performs a kenosis towards comic book history ... [which] does not ennoble and empower his characters ... Rather, it sends a wave of disruption back through superhero history ... devalue[ing] one of the basic superhero conventions by placing his masked crime fighters in a realistic world ..."[46] First and foremost, "Moore's exploration of the [often sexual] motives for costumed crimefighting sheds a disturbing light on past superhero stories, and forces the reader to reevaluate - to revision - every superhero in terms of Moore's kenosis - his emptying out of the tradition."[47] Klock relates the title to the quote by Juvenal to highlight the problem of controlling those who hold power and quoted repeatedly within the work itself.[48] The deconstructive nature of Watchmen is, Klock notes, played out on the page also as, "[l]ike Alan Moore's kenosis, [Veidt] must destroy, then reconstruct, in order to build 'a unity which would survive him.'"[49]
Moore has expressed dismay that "[T]he gritty, deconstructivist postmodern superhero comic, as exemplified by Watchmen... became a genre". He said in 2003, "[T]o some degree there has been, in the 15 years since Watchmen, an awful lot of the comics field devoted to these grim, pessimistic, nasty, violent stories which kind of use Watchmen to validate what are, in effect, often just some very nasty stories that don't have a lot to recommend them."[50] Gibbons said that while readers "were left with the idea that it was a grim and gritty kind of thing", he said in his view the series was "a wonderful celebration of superheroes as much as anything else."[51]

 

[Dr. Jones]

Gotcha... Thanks.


By the way.... This movie has been out almost a week and the response has been far less than I thought it would be.

Anyone else have a take?

 

[Pariah]

Anyone else have a take?

I posted in anoher thread that the movie was going to dissappoint for a few reasons. The first is I think the source material (the comics) are overrated as a story. The second is that it's too long and the last, but not least of which, is that the characters are unknown to most, they're not iconic.

I think fanboys who already worship Alan Moore's Watchmen will go see it multiple times and proclaim it the best thing since Batman's bread slicer, but the general public will think it was just okay at best.

 

[SuperSpck]

I worry that while the story still has relevance it suffers from a lack of emotional connection to the average movie goer. When the story was written super-heroes were still sort of bright and shiny and could be depended on to "do the right thing". The moral contrast in Watchmen stood out because of it's differences and felt more "real" than most comics.
As a society we're much darker today and our entertainment reflects that. So the movie doesn't stand out. It's a solid, but unremarkable story by today's standard, but like Pariah said, lacks the recognizable hero that will enthrall the average go-er.
It's R rating also will keep profits down (but it needed the rating to not suck out loud).

 

[Stout]

I thought it was fantastic. No, most people won't get into it, and yes, it is too artsy for most.

Spoiler

One man is so torn by not being a super hero any more that he is impotent until he returns to it. Another man is the smartest and toughest in the world, yet is in the end undone by a sociopath. One man is almost a God, yet his power is bypassed by manipulation of his emotions. The roughest, crudest of them, the Comedian is torn apart emotionally by the biggest joke of them all. And on it goes. Awesome, awesome film.

 

[Ouchie-Z-Clown]

i liked it. thought it was visually entertaining. really liked how it began. felt it drew me into the parallel universe. also liked the fact that it wasn't your typical superheroes fight bad guys storyline for a comic movie. didn't like that i didn't know much about the superheros, their powers, or how they got them. it just seemed like all of them were super strong and dr. manhatten could do whatever he wanted. they set up nite owl's gizmos and then did nothing with them. that stuff left me wanting.

cheese thought it was average. thought it was too long.

other friend who is a moviephile thought it was in the worst 5 movies he'd ever seen.

 

[Pariah]

i liked it. ...

cheese thought it was average. ...

other friend who is a moviephile thought it was in the worst 5 movies he'd ever seen.

There's a consensus for you.