I saw the watchmen and wish to post spoilsese

[bovine]

here's your damn thread, now stop cluttering up the other one with your spoiler filled posts.

[Lox]

I'll still have to disagree then. The scene is much shorter in the movie, but I didn't get a sense that he was still freaking out. He even had the "When you are" line. He takes out all of the cops and then smashes through the window.

[RentCavalier]

Ok, Watchman then.

I saw the movie at midnight last night, and we made sure to get pretty intoxicated for the premier, so maybe that affected things. First things first though:

Movie is good. It's entertaining, it's interesting, and it captures a lot of what the original comic sought to do. It sticks to Alan Moore's spirit, if not his technique, and the characters are beautifully brought to life. Set Pieces are outstanding--they really sought to bring to life the individual panels of the comic book. Basically, this IS Watchman...as a movie.

And that's the biggest flaw.

Watchman was long considered to be unfilmable. I mean, seriously? LOOK at Watchman. It is 90% talking! The majority of the story is one or two people having a conversation interlaced with flashbacks. The book is almost purely expositional--it doesn't really provide too many memorable action sequences to break that up. As a novel, where you can pick it up and put it down at will, this works fine. It doesn't NEED any big action scenes, and doesn't try to fit them in unneccessarily. The movie, however, wisely realizes that it needs to break up the monotony. So, every possible action scene is extended and padded out, oftentimes to sadistically entertaining excercises in gore. Zack Snyder does action well--every fight in the movie is sudden, visceral, and ungodly violent. He takes full advantage of having an R-rating.

Watchman is a really really REALLY fucking complex story, and I don't think I fully realized how intricate it was until I saw this movie and could notice everything they cut out. The ommissions are neccessary, but every one comes at a cost. Laurie Jupiter, the New Silk Spectre, suffers the most here--her character is basically stripped down (literally) to just being T&A. The love triangle between her, Jon and Dan is never really explored, and they annhilate her most memorable feature--that being her intense hatred for the Comedian.

In fact, she's sort of irrelevant in the movie. With the Comedian-hate cut out, she basically has no relationship with him besides a requisite stuffed in flashback. The whole emotional outburst at the end, where she shatters Jon's glass castle, seems strange and randomly placed in the movie. Her reaction is nonsensical, and not at all built up, as it was in the book. The end result is the same--it just doesn't make much sense.

Dr. Manhattan...I can't really complain. I mean, I didn't really think I needed to see THAT MUCH blue penis in a movie, but whatever. They did him mostly right. I could nit-pick and say that he's far less scientific in the movie. In the book he throws out shitloads of physics technobabble at the drop of a hat, but in the movie he keeps himself fairly normal. His attitude is more sympathetic and less stand-offish, though he is ultimately as big of a cosmic dickhead as he was in the comic, so no big changes there.

Ozymandias, on the other hand...

Motherfucker can't shut up. Every scene he is in is so god damn top-heavy it hurts. He actually is incapable of NOT delivering epic monologues. Every time he is on screen he basically inserts a chunk of that one gigantic speech he gives at the end of the book. I agree that having the entire "villain motivation" speech at the end of the movie would have slowed it down immeasurably, but this solution isn't much better. It basically just makes Veidt seem like a jack-ass who loves the sound of his own voice. Particularly when he's basically first introduced, he kind of just randomly throws down his life's story without any provocation. However, he was a little shit in the comics and he's a little shit in the movie...he's just a little more nonsensical now.

Nite Owl is perfect. God damned absolutely 100% I-Have-No-Complaints perfect. He sells the movie, applaud whenever he is on the god damned screen.

Rorsharch is just shy of perfect. I liked him, I loved him--channeled Batman too much. Sorry, but it's true. He steals every scene he's in, but it took me awhile to warm up to him in the movie, whereas in the book I was basically on his side from the first sentence.

They really simplified the old Minute Men for the movie. Hollis Mason doesn't, y'know...DIE...in the movie. I suppose his death is just too interconnected to the whole "squid" thing, but leaving it out is a bit of a shame. It's easily one of the saddest moments of the comic, and it's done in such a god-damned good way that the emotional impact is just gut-wrenching. I know why they cut it out, but...I can't fully say they should have.

Sally Jupiter is barely in the movie. There's nothing else to say except that, instead of being a decaying woman clinging to her glorious past, she's now kinda just an old slut. Meh.

And now the Giant Squid is replaced by some sort of "free energy" thing. Hm.

In all honesty, it's a clever notion. In the comic book, Dr. Manhattan actually contributes fuck-all to the final conclusion. He kills Rorsharch (somewhat needlessly) and that's about it. He arrives too late to stop the squid, and doesn't even really try to kill Veidt. At least the movie gives him final plot relevance--his existence alone is scary enough for Veidt to carry out his plan. So, it works...but...

Squid worked better. Why? Because of the METHOD of death. An entire city being rather quickly and harmlessly vaporized doesn't have NEARLY the emotional impact as streets and broken buildings clogged, literally, with blood-soaked corpses. I mean, we see it. We see all the dead bodies in the aftermath of the squid's arrival. We see side characters who we have come to greatly appreciate just...dead on the street. It's sad, it's disgusting, and it works. Disintigration just isn't as compelling.

So, what to conclude? I honestly don't know. I've been trying very hard to look at the movie from an alternative angle to the book, but that's kind of impossible because the movie is basically an exact copy, most of the time word-for-word, most of the time shot-for-shot. That's it's biggest flaw.

Simply put, Watchman doesn't WORK as a movie. It really doesn't. I've SEEN it as a movie and I say it doesn't work. The things they had to cut were indeed things they HAD to cut...but every cut they made just turned the story a little shallower. Watchman is the sum of dozens and dozens of interconnected parts, and take even one of those away causes the engine to function less smoothly.

Go see the movie, if you haven't already, and see for yourself. I think Zack Snyder deserved my money for this, and he deserves yours. For every complaint I levy, the thing is a damned labor of love. He LOVES Watchman. He holds every shot with such reverence and devotion that you just can't HATE it. You really can't. This is the best possible attempt I think we'll ever get for Watchman. Maybe if the movie was four hours long, they could fit in everything. Maybe the Director's Cut has more. I don't know.

It is worth a viewing though.

[SineSwiper]

What can I say here?

Try to compare Watchmen movie and book is like trying to compare Lord of the Rings movies and books. Or Harry Potter. Overall, it's a lot of information to cram into one movie. Is the book better? Yes and no.

People who have read the book will miss the 15% of so that was cut out. But, the movie is still a fucking masterpiece. To be able to cram in as much as was put in there is amazing. The movie intro did a good job of immediately setting the tone and providing some good history.

But, there again is a problem with pacing. The first 45 minutes of the movie is slow, but then again, so is the book. However, once they got to the second half of the movie, the pacing was sped up enough that sections go missing.

I miss the conversations with the psych and his wife, or the newspaper bits, and the lesbian couple. All of those characters were still useful, because when they died with the city, you realize that they are gone forever, and you feel like all of their conflicts and reunions were for nothing. Also, the bit with Nite Owl and the bar (finding out that the old Nite Owl was beat to death), was the one scene where he felt the same way as Rorschach, with the same savagery.

Overall, it's still a fantastic movie. I would like to know how people who haven't read the book feel about the movie.

[Lox]

Overall, it's still a fantastic movie. I would like to know how people who haven't read the book feel about the movie.

Yes, I am with you on that. I know plenty of people from work who will be seeing it over the weekend and haven't read it. I'm dying to hear their thoughts.

Your review was pretty much how I felt with it.

[Oracle]

I never read the book.

I liked the movie... although it dragged at times, and I expected more action. The action that was in it was good, though.

[Tessian]

I finally watched the movie tonight (in IMAX, woo) and it was quite fantastic. I see why they changed the ending and unfortunately I can't disagree with it... you can't really pull out the Black Freighter story and keep the original ending I guess.

I believe this movie was as damn close to the book as I've ever seen an adaptation done. You could say they almost went too close to the book, but it works for this and is quite a feat. The beginning definitely dragged, but as Sine mentioned the book does that too. The parts they pulled out weren't crucial, and the movie would have been too long and felt even more dragged otherwise, so I don't think it was a bad decision to make.

One thing that bothered me a bit, and I dunno if this was because of the book too, but some of the fighting especially at the end was a bit too over the top. Ozy is kicking the shit out of them, throwing them into statues with enough impact to paralyze a man, and they get up as if they only got kicked in the shins. I know why it was done, but it took away from the movie, because really-- was it necessary to give all the "normal" superheroes super strength? Half the point of the story is "what if there WERE masked vigilantes in real life?" so to give them superhero powers like that detracted from it, in my mind.

[Mental]

Snyder could have used about twenty minutes' worth of cuts of various fight scenes and the more gratuitiously lengthy sex scenes, I feel. I did feel like I was sitting through large portions of the movie.

Rorschach in prison, though...that makes up for all of it. I cheered at the "I'm not locked in here with you, you're locked in here with me" line.

[Tessian]

I'm not complaining about the length... only the style of fighting in general. Them, like the scenes with Dr Manhattan's junk in full view, spoiled some of the scenes and drama of the whole story. At times it seemed they wanted to point out "Hey, this is the guy who did 300!" as if that's a good thing. 300 was good on its own, but it was SUPPOSED to be over the top action and unbelievable battles... Watchmen is NOT.

And yeah, the whole part of Rorschach in prison was amazing. Parts of this movie were almost too graphic for me, like having the fat guy's arms sawed off.

[Shellie]

Yeah I could barely contain myself during the prison scene.. Im pretty sure I was grinning from ear to ear during that whole part. lol

[SineSwiper]

I finally watched the movie tonight (in IMAX, woo) and it was quite fantastic. I see why they changed the ending and unfortunately I can't disagree with it... you can't really pull out the Black Freighter story and keep the original ending I guess.

Huh? The BF story had nothing to do with the ending, or at least not that directly. The reason why they changed the ending was because the ending in the comic was truthfully kinda hooky. Don't get me wrong, the actions and reasons and after effects of the ending itself was outstanding, and that was still reflected in the movie.

But, the method to produce that ending, the squid, sounds like something out of a 1950's sci-fi movie. I was kinda disappointed at first, when I read the comic, but knowing the outcome made up for it.

I'm not complaining about the length... only the style of fighting in general. Them, like the scenes with Dr Manhattan's junk in full view, spoiled some of the scenes and drama of the whole story. At times it seemed they wanted to point out "Hey, this is the guy who did 300!" as if that's a good thing. 300 was good on its own, but it was SUPPOSED to be over the top action and unbelievable battles... Watchmen is NOT.

I tend to agree, especially when I first saw the slow mo preview. However, I think he did a good job of muting that style in this movie. Keep in mind that the fight with the three of them was pretty intense in the comic, too. Oz was really well trained, even if he didn't have any superpowers.

And the penis shots were enough to laugh at a little, but they were making a point: Dr. M's penis was in the comic, so it shall remain in the movie. The guy walks around naked, so at some point, they're going to have to show his junk a few times. Eventually, shit like this isn't going to bother us.

And yeah, the whole part of Rorschach in prison was amazing. Parts of this movie were almost too graphic for me, like having the fat guy's arms sawed off.

You complain too much.