Who Watched the Watchmen?

Steerpike · March 12, 2009, 03:26:45 PM

[spoiler] [blockquote=beejazz]Ditto what Seraphine said. Also honestly, if they wanted to make it "remotely arousing" there were a couple of don'ts there too. The soundtrack was terrible. The pan shot that starts with the entire screen full of jiggling naked flabby man ass. A couple other things.[/blockquote]This may be one of those things I'm just always going to disagree on. The sex scene definitely wasn't perfect filmically. Certainly Dan isn't supposed to be physically perfect; I found this refreshing - so many sex scenes in movies involve two perfectly sculpted people.

I liked also that instead of going the usual route and emphasizing the woman's body to the exclusion of the man's (something that main-stream pornography does all the time) they portrayed it as something involving two people rather than as an excuse to have a cookie-cutter beautiful woman gyrate. Most sex scenes seem to be targeted pretty firmly at men: to have a sex scene that was more egalitarian - including the usually forbidden "man-ass," for example - and moreoever to have it depicted not as a sublime act of perfect, ethereal lovemaking between god-like, statuesque sex-objects but as a messy, ernest, even clumsy thing engaged in by less-than-perfect human beings that still manages to be erotic was, I think, a brave and comendable choice. I found the sex honest and much closer to actual sex than most depictions of sex, either in mainstream films or in porn.

It's not like my favorite scene in the movie or anything - far far from it - but since it's been a major target of criticism I thought I'd jump in with my particular point of view. Obviously many will disagree with me and find it unpleasant or unnecessary; I just personally didn't. But then again I'm a big fan of A Song of Ice and Fire which contains several scenes of "onscreen" incest and dwarf sex, along with a great number of other sex scenes, the vast majority of which I think are vital to the books...[/spoiler]

Epic Meepo · March 12, 2009, 03:38:14 PM

Read the comic, read the spoilers above, but haven't seen the movie yet...
[spoiler]So, in the movie, New York gets nuked, but not Cthulhu-nuked?

And the four-dimensional being who sees past and future events existing eternally isn't the one who delivers the line about nothing ever ending?

That's... odd.[/spoiler]

Scholar · March 13, 2009, 07:32:34 AM

[spoiler]finally got to see it yesterday. i really liked it (though, sadly, it doesn't beat Dark Knight as No 1 comic-related movie), here's some thoughts:

things that were great:
- the intro. loved it.
- the flashbacks in general were very good, especially manhattan's.
- intro/outro music
- da dada DA da dada DA da (the manhattan-in-vietnam-with-ride-of-the-valkyries-scene)
- all the details, like the "obsolete models" sign outside mason's garage, the comedian's combination of hustler and a gun and the subtle inclusion of kovacs in the first half of the movie (although i thought it wasn't him standing outside the cemetary, it was moloch.), ozymandias' statue with the quote on it (i love that poem).
- rohrschach's death scene

things that were meh:
- the ending. not the no-squid business, but the fact that the others know manhattan killed rohrschach. it's supposed to be AMBIGUOUS, and it goes against nite-owl's character to just accept it in the end. also: why can they just return to their normal lives? they staged a PRISON BREAK!. :(
- some parts of the soundtrack, 99 luftballons and that godawful version of Halleluja, especially.

from what i read on the net and also here on the board, one of the major complaints was the amount of gore and nudity. like steerpike, i thought it was a nice change to actually depict the character's as less-than physically perfect. it was, well, honest. (also, being a slightly overweight nerdy guy with glasses, i totally identify with nite-owl.^^)
While the gore was quite jarring at times, i thought the director did that on pupose, especially to contrast manhattan's almost angelic appearance with the people-bursting-like-dropped-melons schtick. (also, using a powersaw instead of a blowtorch actually makes sense: it's easier to handle, lighter and actually cuts through steel pretty fast. ;) )
really looking forward to the dvd and watching it in english.[/spoiler]

Llum · March 13, 2009, 12:16:59 PM

[spoiler]I seen it last night. I think the music fit the film perfectly, every song. I seem to be in a minority here. The one thing that bugged me was the stupid amount of slow-mo used at the beginning, like good god.

I'm not a fan of most of the changes they did from the graphic novel, I find it didn't fit as much. I also noticed they explain a lot of stuff that isn't explained in the graphic novel, which is odd..

The fight scenes were well done, even if they made the people out to be more super-hero-ish then they really are (I mean, really only Adrian and Jon can be considered supers).

The changed ending is probably what bugged me the most. It was still good, but I found that the stuff they changed made it a good deal less then how it is in the graphic novel. Squid-aside, blaming Job felt like a cop-out to me.

Roscharts death-scene was amazing, except the part where Nightowl screams :P
[/spoiler]

Seraph · March 13, 2009, 04:54:29 PM

Quote from: Llum[spoiler]I seen it last night. I think the music fit the film perfectly, every song. I seem to be in a minority here. The one thing that bugged me was the stupid amount of slow-mo used at the beginning, like good god.

I'm not a fan of most of the changes they did from the graphic novel, I find it didn't fit as much. I also noticed they explain a lot of stuff that isn't explained in the graphic novel, which is odd..

The fight scenes were well done, even if they made the people out to be more super-hero-ish then they really are (I mean, really only Adrian and Jon can be considered supers).

The changed ending is probably what bugged me the most. It was still good, but I found that the stuff they changed made it a good deal less then how it is in the graphic novel. Squid-aside, blaming Job felt like a cop-out to me.

Roscharts death-scene was amazing, except the part where Nightowl screams :P
[/spoiler]

[spoiler]There's a lot of disagreement out there about the Squid vs. Blaming Jon. I don't mind the change. It doesn't thrill me, it doesn't bother me.

I really liked Rorschach's death scene. I loved seeing that last ink-blot in the snow (technically a gore-blot I suppose, but whatever). I didn't even mind Nite Owl's scream. I mean, he did care about Rorschach, and acting-wise, "No" is a pretty corny line to begin with, and I thought the delivery thereof was actually about as good as that line can be delivered. I bit bestial almost, which made it feel surprisingly honest.[/spoiler]

Matt Larkin (author) · March 13, 2009, 06:28:55 PM

Never read the comic, but I agree with SH on the above post.

Cheomesh · March 14, 2009, 02:52:48 AM

[spoiler]What really bothers me is that the producers thought destroying a bunch of US cities and one Russian city would make everything lolok again. You have a world full of angry, hurt people who just lost a lot of loved ones, not to mention the economy is now *fucked*. Do you really think giving them NO ONE to blame is going to solve anything? You can't *blame* Jon because he's off the planet. They don't know that and will destroy everything to get vengeance. That has to be the most ignorant ending to a movie since The Day the Earth Stood Still. Ugh. [/spoiler]

M.

Ra-Tiel · March 14, 2009, 06:14:56 AM

Quote from: Cheomesh[spoiler]What really bothers me is that the producers thought destroying a bunch of US cities and one Russian city would make everything lolok again. You have a world full of angry, hurt people who just lost a lot of loved ones, not to mention the economy is now *fucked*. Do you really think giving them NO ONE to blame is going to solve anything? You can't *blame* Jon because he's off the planet. They don't know that and will destroy everything to get vengeance. That has to be the most ignorant ending to a movie since The Day the Earth Stood Still. Ugh. [/spoiler]

M.

[spoiler]
I think it's not only New York and Moscow that get nuked... I seem to remember Paris, Hong Kong, and Berlin also on Adrien's "hit list" and displayed on the screens in the Kurnak control room.

Further, the people know about Manhatten's powers (that he can appear at multiple places in the same time, that he can teleport supposedly infinite distances in the blink of an eye, and that he can see the past and the future simultaneously, among others). Therefore I think the nations want to "get along" with each other out of fear that Manhatten is constantly watching them and prepared to zap in and bomb them back to the stone age again if they restart the Cold War.
[/spoiler]

Epic Meepo · March 14, 2009, 02:28:10 PM

Quote from: Ra-Tiel[spoiler]I think the nations want to "get along" with each other out of fear that Manhatten is constantly watching them and prepared to zap in and bomb them back to the stone age again if they restart the Cold War.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]That makes much less sense than the ending of the comic. If the world is living in fear of Dr. Manhattan, the world is just going to develop weapons to counteract Dr. Manhattan. Or worse, they might start trying to create a new, more-controllable Dr. Manhattan. Either way, once Dr. Manhattan is neutralized, the world goes back to its normal state of warfare.

In the comic, the world is left living in fear of an unknown enemy from an unknown dimension, so even if they develop weapons to kill creatures like the one appearing in New York, they don't know how many more exist and what powers they have. They are facing an unlimited number of mutual enemies instead of just one individual, and are left with the impression that Dr. Manhattan was unable to stop even one such creature.[/spoiler]

Nomadic · March 14, 2009, 03:32:29 PM

[spoiler]
It made sense to me. Here you have this person who can control the very matter of the universe, he could nuke your country, vaporize the inhabitants. And just before he left the world was privvy to him at a press conference getting very angry and then just vanishing. Then a short while later it appears that he has bombed a bunch of major cities in anger. That sort of thing can bring enemies together. It's a uniting force against a greater danger. As long as everyone thinks the doctor did it they have a common enemy. It may or may not be a better ending than the graphic novel but it is a plausible one.
[/spoiler]

Ra-Tiel · March 14, 2009, 04:06:20 PM

Quote from: Epic Meepo[spoiler]That makes much less sense than the ending of the comic. If the world is living in fear of Dr. Manhattan, the world is just going to develop weapons to counteract Dr. Manhattan. Or worse, they might start trying to create a new, more-controllable Dr. Manhattan. Either way, once Dr. Manhattan is neutralized, the world goes back to its normal state of warfare.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]And exactly what weaponry would you invent against a being that is by all purposes godlike? Manhatten doesn't eat or breath, he walks the surface of the sun, he can notice events on Planck scale, he can manipulate quantum waves and subatomic particles. He is immune to bullets, can control gravity and density of objects, he can teleport around and create invisible force fields. He can see the past and the future, and generate a basically infinite amount of energy.

In DnD 3E terms, Manhatten would likely be a level 30 unbodied psion (most likely kineticist or nomad) living in a world inhabited only by warriors, experts, and commoners with not a single magical weapon around. How would they be supposed to hurt or even stop such a being?[/spoiler]

Quote from: Epic Meepo[spoiler]In the comic, the world is left living in fear of an unknown enemy from an unknown dimension, so even if they develop weapons to kill creatures like the one appearing in New York, they don't know how many more exist and what powers they have. They are facing an unlimited number of mutual enemies instead of just one individual, and are left with the impression that Dr. Manhattan was unable to stop even one such creature.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Mankind has a very "basic" understanding of analyzing its enemies. More often than not it comes down to "if it lives you can kill it by dropping one, two, twenty a-bombs on its head". Therefore I think that this mutated squid thingy would only encourage the superpowers that be to create bigger, more powerful, and more devestating nuclear weaponry. Which is exactly the opposite Ozymandias and the others wanted to achieve.

"Build bigger nukes" is usually not the answer you want to get when asking the question "how to avoid a nuclear apocalypse?".[/spoiler]

Matt Larkin (author) · March 14, 2009, 04:47:09 PM

Quote from: Ra-Tiel[spoiler]And exactly what weaponry would you invent against a being that is by all purposes godlike? Manhatten doesn't eat or breath, he walks the surface of the sun, he can notice events on Planck scale, he can manipulate quantum waves and subatomic particles. He is immune to bullets, can control gravity and density of objects, he can teleport around and create invisible force fields. He can see the past and the future, and generate a basically infinite amount of energy.[/spoiler]

And utters cool lines like "the world's smartest man is no more threat to me than the world's smartest termite."

Ra-Tiel · March 14, 2009, 05:23:44 PM

Quote from: PhoenixAnd utters cool lines like "the world's smartest man is no more threat to me than the world's smartest termite."

True. :D

However, I forgot one thing:
[spoiler][...] and can make people go *SPLAT* with the pointing of a finger.[/spoiler] ;)

beejazz · March 14, 2009, 05:41:29 PM

[spoiler]For the squid thing... they (ostensibly) lived in and came from another universe. You can't drop bombs on them until they get here and then only at your own expense. And you don't know if that'll do anything because you don't know how many of them there are on the other side. And they could hypothetically teleport things into the same space as existing physical objects without leaving home. Fighting that war is a losing proposition all around.[/spoiler]

Ra-Tiel · March 14, 2009, 05:54:08 PM

Quote from: beejazz[spoiler]For the squid thing... they (ostensibly) lived in and came from another universe. You can't drop bombs on them until they get here and then only at your own expense. And you don't know if that'll do anything because you don't know how many of them there are on the other side. And they could hypothetically teleport things into the same space as existing physical objects without leaving home. Fighting that war is a losing proposition all around.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Use Manhatten to teleport nuclear warheads to their plane of existance. No "own expenses" right there. ;)[/spoiler]

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Who Watched the Watchmen?

Steerpike

Epic Meepo

Scholar

Llum

Seraph

Matt Larkin (author)

Cheomesh

Ra-Tiel

Epic Meepo

Nomadic

Ra-Tiel

Matt Larkin (author)

Ra-Tiel

beejazz

Ra-Tiel