The Campaign Builder's Guild

We all knew this was going to come up sooner or later, so I might as well take the initiative.  Please post in Spoilers.
 [spoiler]Overall, I actually really liked the movie.  There were definitely things I took issue with, but these were mostly pretty minor, and not enough for me to condemn the film.  
Issues:
1.)The sex scene in Archimedes was much too indulgent, and started to feel like a porno very quickly
2.)The gore was unnecessary, although before seeing the film I was led to believe there was more of it than there actually was.
3.) I felt the line "Existence is random.  Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long." was important to understanding Rorshcach's character, and was miffed that it was not included.  
4.) "Nothing ends.  Nothing ever ends." was more powerful when Jon said it to Ozy than Laurie saying it to Dan.

I liked:
1.) There were times when the movie definitely provoked strong emotional reactions, and I was definitely getting worked up near the end
2.) The cuts were for the most part very effective, removing unnecessary running around (e.g. Rorschach taking his face back in prison avoided having to go find the other one--Also, "It's your turn; what do you see?"  was pretty badass.)
3.) I felt it was well put together
4.) The flashbacks got in all the important information, while remaining brief enough to avoid bogging down the action.
5.) While I had heard people claim that the movie was too long, I did not feel like it became tediously so at any point.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]
Well I went to the midnight showing with a couple friends, one of said friends sister along with her husband and a couple of their friends (so we had a nice group). Got a poster of Doctor Manhattan and a clipped bit of film from the reel. So all together some nice stuff and a great time.

As to the movie itself I will say that I greatly enjoyed it. First off I have never read the graphic novel. I am not someone who prefers the medium (I tend to stick to more standardized novels and books). Nothing against the style, it's just not for me. So on that note I went into this with only a basic understanding of what it was about. I got invited to it and figured "sure, why not". So having said that, I found the philosophical standpoints behind watchmen to be quite fascinating and worthy of attention. On the pure entertainment side I think that the movie was above average in terms of layout and looks and the script was very well done. My issues with it are much the same as SH. The sex was very much overdone and the gore was a bit over the top. My favorite parts of the movie have to deal with the development and exploration of certain characters. Jon's slow drift away from humanity and how his powers affected him was, I feel, a profound part of the movie. On the other side the total awesomeness that was Rorschach was something that I very much enjoyed. My favorite line being "I'm not stuck in her with you. You're stuck in here with me!"

Anyhow I would give this movie an 8.5/10. Not perfect, but certainly a step above most others.
[/spoiler]

[spoiler]I agree with you on every count, Seraph, particularly with Jon and Ozy's conversation (or lack thereof).  The ending seemed just that little bit lacking without that scene, but that obviously wouldn't be an issue for someone who didn't see the movie.  As for the sex and violence, all I'll say is that you can tell the same guy directed 300.  I was satisfied by Rorschach's final words: the delivery was sublime and Jon's response had the perfect measure of indifference.

I also didn't mind them changing the ending.  I suspect they went "psychic aliens?" and decided to go for something a little more accessible to the audience.  I think they managed to integrate it into the plot very well, and it didn't change anything crucial.

It gets an 8/10 from me.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]
I'm torn... I think they got the script very very right, but the directing was terrible IMO.

The good:
1)It's a freaking Watchmen movie.
2)The decisions they made about what to cut were as tasteful as they could have been most of the way through. They focused on the central plot with all the superheroes. Yes, it loses something given that we don't see the world and the people they're trying to protect, but what're you gonna do?
3)Blaming Dr. Manhattan just works better than blaming interdimensional teleporting aliens.
4)"Your turn. What do you see?" Was pretty badass.

The bad...
1)The soundtrack. There were numerous really poor choices, I think.
2)The violence was overdone. Or rather, was poorly done. The scene where rorshack went at the guy with a meat cleaver? Was supposed to burn the house down and walked away. The scene where Nite Owl and Silk Specter get mugged out of costume and beat up doods? The bones breaking skin was unnecessary. So was stabbing a dude in the neck... extremely out of character. Dr. Manhattan exploding dudes in a nightclub was also unnecessary. He could and would have teleported them away. And the death of the Comedian didn't call for him getting his head put through a kitchen countertop (and then living... a huge part of watchmen was that these costumed vigilantes were normal people besides the masks and uh... alternate moralities). Oh, and last thing there for now... the buzzsaw and the cutting the dudes hands off while he was alive? Torch was cooler, and in the book they had the decency to slit his throat before cutting off his hands.
3)The sex scene was way overdone and took way too long... They didn't need to waste ten minutes on it. And the soundtrack choice was terrible.
4)Watch it again and count the pan shots that start with naked man ass.
5)While the premise of the change to the end was great, the way characters interacted was wrong sometimes. This goes especially for Nite Owl (Ima punch you for like ten minutes like that's going to do anything... and then be okay with it) and John (I'm leaving the universe now... but first Ima make out with your girlfriend... haha f*** you Nite Owl!)[/spoiler]

[spoiler]I thought it was pretty good, but maybe it would have meant more to me had I read the comic. Four out of five stars. My biggest gripe was it felt too slow at the beginning, with all the backstory (which would have been interesting to those that knew the chars from the comics)--by the time it gets going, half the people I went with were drifting off to sleep.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Wow!

I feel like I'm getting a very "It was good, but..." sort of feel around here.  I wasn't going to post, but I feel the need.

I absolutely adored the movie.  I've read the book, I loved the book, and I say the movie did the book justice.  Because of that, I also feel like a lot of people who have not read the book don't enjoy the movie as much.  The enormous amount of initial character development is even larger in the book, but it's so necessary to make the book what it is (and not to mention good), yet a lot of movie-goers did not care for it in the movie.  I think that's sad.

There were some things I missed.  The riot scene with the original Nite Owl, since I think that's a crucial moment.  And I agree with others when they say that the Nothing Ends line should have been Johns.  But I'll get over that quickly enough.

I dunno, I enjoyed it.  I didn't have a problem with the gore, and the sex scene was a little long, but whatever.  I think of it as intermission. ^_^[/spoiler]

[spoiler] [blockquote=beejazz]Dr. Manhattan exploding dudes in a nightclub was also unnecessary. He could and would have teleported them away[/blockquote]I haven't seen the movie yet so I can't comment fully, but Dr. Manhattan is depicted in the comic as exploding a criminal's head in a nightclub.  I think the insinuation in the comic was that the government wanted to use Jon to deliver a message to the underworld, which under their interpretation required suitably gory spectacle.  Not to say that the movie did it properly - again, haven't seen it yet - but it's in the source material, and presented in a way that made some kind of sense and was justified, at least to me.[/spoiler]

I don't need to say this in spoilers. I love it, saw it twice; first at midnight, then Friday night. Friday night I had some chick behind me giving her commentary, like "what's this movie about", and "I thought they were supposed to be magical" ... ruined my second viewing.

[spoiler]
I thought it was ok.  4/5 for sure.  A good remake of an 80's film.

I kinda wish the heroes seemed more moral, but that's not what we want to see in super heroes, so yeah.

I seriously don't see how nuking 5 American cities and 1 Russian city solves anything, but maybe it's because I'm a simpleton.  I wish they stuck with the cooler comic book ending.
[/spoiler]

M.

[spoiler=My Thoughts]I was greatly disappointed, honestly.  I expected something extraordinary, but instead I got a film about anti-heroes of the quality that any self-respecting filmmaker should strive for, even if it isn't met all the time.

I think this was probably because I accidentally spoilered myself to the end of the movie on Wikipedia when rumors of the movie first came out.  I knew the characters, I knew the twists, all from a sterile encyclopedic account.  It kinda totally ruined it for me.

The sex was gratuitous, as was the gore.  To be expected.  What I didn't see coming was the whole part backstory of Dr. Manhattan and his relationship with the physicist, then the Silk Spectre II.  I actually teared up during his cold recounting of his actions.  It was really beautiful.

Oh, and the obligatory RORSCHACH HAVE MY BABIIIIIEEESSSS OMG!!!!!!1!!!!1111ELEVENTY-ONE!!!1[/spoiler]

Quote from: Kapn Xeviat"I thought they were supposed to be magical"

Was the "they" just in the movie, or was it in the comic, too? If it was in the comic, I'm curious what she was talking about, because it was fairly clear that nothing was magical in the comic...

Great movie. Met all of my expectations.

As I just said in the Tavern, in the graphic novel, Moore took heavy advantage of the medium. The most obvious example of this is in the chapter [spoiler=Fearful Symmetry]where the panel layout-- something that can only be done in a comic-- is, page for page, symmetrical. Of course, this is most obvious on the middle two pages, which is the splash of Adrienne stopping the attempt on his life.[/spoiler]

He also took advantage of the fact that the medium is a printed visual medium; the fact that it's a printed medium let him do things he couldn't do in films, such as allowing the viewer/reader to take it in at their own pace (as opposed to being forced to taking it in at a pace of 24 frames a second), and allowing immediate self-reference (ie, flipping back to re-read a certain scene). He combined these with things that could only be done in visual mediums, such as including stray background information. The best [spoiler=example of this combo] is Kovacks. In the foreground, you have Rorschach, a vigilante of questionable sanity, and in the background, you have Kovacks, a newsstand customer of questionable sanity. Because Kovacks is consistently in the background, you're never really allowed to give him a second thought. At least not until the dramatic reveal that Kovacks is Rorschach. At this point, the reader is allowed-- only through the means of a printed medium-- to go back in the story, self-reference it, and realize that, yes, that is the newsstand guy![/spoiler]

There's probably quite a few examples of these techniques, and probably even a few more techniques, but I think these are the most obvious examples. The first technique is impossible outside of comics, and while M. Night Shyamalan has proven the second technique to be possible in film, it's still not to the same degree.

Fortunately, I'll be able to forgive the movie for not doing things that can only be done in comics.

Halfling, the girl in question apparently didn't read the book. She's absolutely the least nerdy member of our extended group.

She is also dead certain there will be a sequel, even though the book is 20+ years old.

[spoiler]Thats a weird example, as soon as I seen Kovacs I knew he was Rochart[/spoiler]