Watchmen II (Spoilers ahoy)

[Merentha]

[quote name='Werthead' post='1710869' date='Mar 6 2009, 14.03']

SPOILER: Watchmen Soundtrack

'Hallaleujah' for a sex scene? Really? I'll forgive them that for 'All Along the Watchtower' kicking in over a pull-back shot from Mars seguing into a shot of Antarctica.

[/quote]Agreed, though I really liked the second song mentioned. The last few lines of it actually are in the novel at the same place.

edit: Misread. You're agreeing with me.

I liked it, even though it was, occasionally, almost too faithful.

[Werthead]

[quote name='Merentha' post='1710914' date='Mar 6 2009, 19.32']Agreed, though I really liked the second song mentioned. The last few lines of it actually are in the novel at the same place.

edit: Misread. You're agreeing with me.

I liked it, even though it was, occasionally, almost too faithful.[/quote]

One thing that struck me as interesting, but other people might have found odd, is that by sticking so close to the book they had a 10-minute sequence where everything else screeched to a halt so they could have Dr. Manhattan's backstory in-depth. I imagine those unfamiliar with the book might have felt that didn't work so well with pacing.

The interview with Rorschach was really well done though, and an excellent example of how to use cinema to do something the book couldn't, with the intercutting between the question, the bloody images that Rorschach is reminded of and his mundane replies. This also means that all my friends who haven't read [i]Watchmen [/i]but seen [b]Spaced[/b] will now understand the references in the ink test scene a bit better ("Butterfly...WITH A BOMB!").

[Deluge]

I liked it. The soundtrack was a little jarring, and there were a few scenes that kinda dragged, but overall I thought they did a good job.

[Werthead]

I started to read [url="http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2009/03/the_watchmen_li.html"]this[/url] but I was blinded by a red mist a few paragraphs in. I woke up covered in someone else's blood and holding a knife :unsure:

I am concerned.

[The Man]

It disturbs me that people can be so fucking stupid.

I'll probably see this tomorrow.

[Xray the Enforcer]

Wert, that was one of the funniest fucking things I've ever read. Almost as good as Kirk Cameron and his evolution banana. :lol:

I mean, she missed the point by a mile and she can't write for shit, but damn, when was the last time that incompetence was so entertaining?

[BLU-RAY]

Wow. Lots of dumbass in that blog. I'll go see this this weekend sometime (don't have time today, unfortunately).

[Ouroboros]

Just trawled through that blog, now I need a shower.

[DanteGabriel]

Just got back from a daytime excursion to see it on IMAX (scheduled my team for a three hour "Offsite Superhero Research Meeting).

I loved it. It wasn't perfect, I've got quibbles here and there. But it was uncompromising in what needed to be uncompromising, the changes made to the book were, I thought, for the best. Didn't expect the soundtrack to be as moving as it was (though "Hallelujah" was pretty jarring to me too). I really liked the history montage with "The Times They Are A-Changin'". There are some scenes, like Rorschach's prison interviews, that I would have preferred extended. And they cut out my favorite line from that interview.

The guy who came with us who'd never read the book also enjoyed it. He thought it held together well.

But overall, excellent work from Snyder. He did it.

ETA: Oh my God I only made it halfway through that blog post.

Priceless:

[quote name='Debbie Schlussel is a fucking moron']A few lines of dialogue by the character "Rorschach" deriding "liberals and intellectuals" doesn't excuse the nearly three hours of poison here.[/quote]

See, if the movie had been less poisonous, deriding "liberals and intellectuals" would have scored a point for this woman's troglodytic scoring system.

[Eurytus]

That blog is simply mind boggling.

[Werthead]

Anyone else notice that at the end of the movie:

SPOILER: Watchmen

Snyder seemed to make a point of showing that the Twin Towers are among the few buildings still standing. I guess he felt that fictionally toppling them was unnecessary.

[DanteGabriel]

Oh dear lord I'm now reading through the comments on the blog. Anyone who tries to point out the author's mistaken assumptions gets yelled at by her IN ALL CAPS SO YOU KNOW SHE'S AS SERIOUS AS JESUS.

[The Pita]

I just came home from seeing the movie in Imax
Robert Downey Jr. was excellent in his role as a different actor playing the Comedian.
Jackie Earle Haley (The hardest name to pronounce with a straight face) was absolutely brilliant as Rorschach.
Any scene with one of those two actors is a great scene.
The rest of this post contains movie spoilers.
Patrick Wilson and Billy Crudup were both good, but not brilliant. Malin Ackerman had good parts, but mostly she was out of her element. And Matthew Goode was every bit as horrifying as the reviews say. His accent seeps in to every word of his, and he is an unlikable snot most of the movie anyhoo. Watching the living snot get beat out of him by Manhattan and Nite Owl was possibly one of the best moments in cinema history.
The absolutely worst part was the Spectre-Owl sex scene after the fire, which starts and then you hear a mutilated version of the song "Hallelujah". I was cracking up for the entire duration of the scene, which is somewhat gratuitiously long.
I also kep flinching in this movie because it left very little to the imagination, be it Manhattan's giant dong or people being broken, quite literally, into many pieces. This is done almost only in Nite Owl fights.


No spoilers from here on
Other than those negative points, I thought the movie was great, and very worthwhile to the GN readers, although those who haven't read the GN will be pissed off by many things (Unexplained Bubastis, which is even worse because apparently Bubastis has horns. I got annoyed by it and I had read the GN three times)
One of the better parts?
The meeting between Rorschach and Big Figure was possibly my favorite scene in the movie, even outshadowing what was my favorite scene in the book (Rorschach's psychology session and the effect it had on the doctor).

[Sheep the Evicted]

My thoughts;

I think im one of few people in the whole world who liked it more than the comic.

Berserk, Malazan, ASoIaF and perhaps the First Law are all examples of literature, which are on occasion, just as disturbing as Watchmen, if not more so, and by the time i read Watchmen I was pretty much immune to novelty shock value.

But watching this from "costumed heroes" on the big screen shocked me as much as anything i have ever seen. I kept on saying "they went through with that ? Really ? Cool!"

Also the fight scenes. I was worried when i heard that there was a lot of slow mo and i was thinking that it would turn out like 300 and the Matrix - all super humans tearing up lesser mortals. I was right.

But for some reason i didnt care; all the fights felt kinetic and brutal - and i know that word gets used a lot but it really was - and like a little fanboi all i could think was "Awesome!"

Also as much as i would love to have seen the squid this ending did make a lot more sense - the lines "so long as they think Manhattan is still watching us" put it all into perspective for me.

Also I have heard the acting mentioned a lot so here is my take; acting from Kovacs was phenomenal from the Comedian great from Nightowl good from Ozy decent and from SS sub-standard. Nice balance eh ? :P

In the end i thought it was a great movie.

Minor Gripes;

They did the prison cell-sink electrocution thing so much better in the comic.

Maybe it was only because some else mentioned it elsewhere but alot of the music jarred me - i really enjoyed all along the Watchtower though i could probably agree it didn't fit that well into the movie.

More than Minor Gripe; had time to think and one thing that bothered me was that Veidt was very clearly superhuman. He caught bullets FFS. At least in the books they made it seems like the results of many years of genetic experimentation and genetic development.

Here they made him seem like a superhero.

[Horza]

Yeah, the Night Owl-Spectre sex scene was up there with the [i]Matrix II[/i] dance party sex scene and [i]Munich[/i]'s fucking bizarro 1972 Hostage Shooting flashback while [i]en flagrante[/i] in the Bad Sex in Movies stakes.

[GoN]

I liked the sex scene. And the music it was set to. :smoking:

Oh and,

[quote]then you hear a mutilated version of the song "Hallelujah"[/quote]

Hey, Leonard Cohen wrote that song, son. He can sing it anyway he wants. :P

[Sheep the Evicted]

Great. Im in perfect agreement that Hallellujah was awful. In fact it was comically bad and it just kept going on and on and on.

[Durckad]

[quote name='Sheep the Evicted' post='1711301' date='Mar 6 2009, 19.14']More than Minor Gripe; had time to think and one thing that bothered me was that Veidt was very clearly superhuman. He caught bullets FFS. At least in the books they made it seems like the results of many years of genetic experimentation and genetic development.

Here they made him seem like a superhero.[/quote]
Caveat: Haven't seen the movie yet.

In the GN, that whole 'bullet-catching' scene was pretty out there, even for someone who created a giant, telepathic squid. I remember reading that scene and going 'Seriously? Oh come on!'

:)

[GoN]

I guess I just regarded the sex scene a little more tongue in cheek. I always found Watchmen, at times, to be a parody of super heroes as much as deconstruction of them. Nite Owl might very well be singing Hallelujah for overcoming his impotence earlier ;) Combined with the ultimate in fuck me boots and the fire blast, I certainly laughed at the scene, but I kinda felt like it was meant to be that way. Regarding it seriously, I would be much more critical :)

[Paddy]

How come no one's mentioned Manhattan's big blue cock yet?