Thanks for your comment, my dear anonymous. As much as I would like to deny it, I'm sure the sacred cow status that Watchmen-the-comic has to me does nothing to temper my already substantial vitriol. Indeed, it does occur to me that from a studio perspective, it is pretty hard to see how they would come up with the money for this beast without packaging it for very very broad appeal and assuring the return of their dollars. But as a person who is actually watching the film, this really isn't my concern, nor should it be.
Simply put, I feel that it is not adequate comfort for me to see that the film was not as bad as it could have been. My demands are in fact pretty simple; in essence, that the film be good, and in my very very humble opinion, I felt that it was not.
I find it difficult even to find enough sympathy with the director and producers to offer a nice-effort-pat-on-the-back. Perhaps it is overly idealistic or ivory tower to say, but it is my feeling that if one intends to make art righteously, it must come first from an interest in making art. I don't think this is mutually exclusive with the business end of things...I'm thinking here of accounts of working with moguls like Mel Brooks, or later Dino DeLaurentis. It is hard for me to conceive of this project as much more than a money scheme, or, at best, some kind of masturbatory urge.
The key comment for me is this: "If you want to do a story like this in a fully, tastefully realized and cost-effective way then you would pretty much have to abandon the idea of making it into a film. You would pretty much have to make it into a comic-book--which is what it already was." Ahem...
Anyway, that's just my opinion, and as I said, I am a pretty notorious grouch. I mean, you're talking to a dude who thinks action movies peaked out at John Boorman's Point Blank, which was made in 1967! Talk about a dinosaur!
Simply put, I feel that it is not adequate comfort for me to see that the film was not as bad as it could have been. My demands are in fact pretty simple; in essence, that the film be good, and in my very very humble opinion, I felt that it was not.
I find it difficult even to find enough sympathy with the director and producers to offer a nice-effort-pat-on-the-back. Perhaps it is overly idealistic or ivory tower to say, but it is my feeling that if one intends to make art righteously, it must come first from an interest in making art. I don't think this is mutually exclusive with the business end of things...I'm thinking here of accounts of working with moguls like Mel Brooks, or later Dino DeLaurentis. It is hard for me to conceive of this project as much more than a money scheme, or, at best, some kind of masturbatory urge.
The key comment for me is this: "If you want to do a story like this in a fully, tastefully realized and cost-effective way then you would pretty much have to abandon the idea of making it into a film. You would pretty much have to make it into a comic-book--which is what it already was." Ahem...
Anyway, that's just my opinion, and as I said, I am a pretty notorious grouch. I mean, you're talking to a dude who thinks action movies peaked out at John Boorman's Point Blank, which was made in 1967! Talk about a dinosaur!
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