NERDGASM
I saw Watchmen last night, at the 4:30 show. I was on an adrenaline high from the get go till 30 minutes after the movie was over (at which point I was wiped out beyond reason).
For all you two (maybe? I think Opal MIGHT have read it, I don't think Kaitlyn has) people on my friends list that haven't read Watchmen...
WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU DO IT NOW
That aside, I very much enjoyed the movie. It was as faithful an adaptation as can be possible given 300+ pages of nine panels apiece into a 2.75 hour movie- that is to say, very faithful. It compresses a lot of the backstory stuff that was cut for time into a very neat opening montage firmly establishing the alternate history, and gets right to the story itself. For those people who have stumbled here through someone else's friends page or something, Watchmen begins as follows:
One night, in New York City, an aging man is watching TV in his well appointed, high rise apartment. Someone breaks in, beats the tar out of the man, and throws him through his plate glass window to the pavement many stories below. The police arrive and investigate, but are baffled. That night, a man in a mask resembling a constantly shifting inkblot of the sort used in old psych profiling grappling hooks up to the apartment and searches through it. A secret closet reveals a superhero costume of the dead man's own- he was a costumed adventurer, just like the investigator. So the masked investigator begins the rounds of his remaining colleagues with a theory- someone is hunting masked heroes.
Regrettably there is some of what I call the Henry Fonda problem with Watchmen. It relates to a scene in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West where you see a hardened gunman kill an entire family- father, teenage son, and teenage daughter- save for the under-ten son, who was inside the house. When he comes outside, he simply stares at his family's killer, until one of the killer's underlings asks him, by name, if they are to kill the child. His response is, 'Well, now that you've gone and used my name...', and he shoots the boy (itself shocking for the 1968 release date of the movie). The music swells, and the camera pans around to show us the face of Henry Fonda, who until this time was THE all-American good guy on film.
The point of that digression is that a lot of things can be lost in context. Seinfeld and the Beatles are less revolutionary-seeming now that their innovations have filtered through the genre or medium that they worked in. So too it is with Watchmen, which along with Frank Miller's 'The Dark Knight Returns' helped usher in the end of the silly and frivolous Silver Age of comics. Before this time, comics were bound by the Comic Code Authority to a certain standard, including strict rules about violence, sex, and drug use.This led to some pretty strange things (cellophane S shield power and 13 different kinds of Kryptonite, for example), and to a general idea that comic books were by nature immature- that they had caricatures rather than characters. Watchmen (in 1986), by contrast, treated every one of its characters as people with flaws and problems, and examined the effect these people (both powered and unpowered) might have on the real world.
(As an aside, this trend was already starting with the Bronze age of comics, from the mid 70s to the mid 80s. Watchmen speeded that process up considerably, and led to the extremely grim, gritty, and violent comics of the 90s, most of which were pretty bad because they were written by people who didn't quite 'get the joke', as it were.)
All that led to Watchmen being basically the most popular western comic book of ever. Like, seriously. EVAR. This may not be just (Art Spiegelman's Maus or assorted works by Will Eisner are said to also be very meritorious, but not having read them I cannot informedly comment.) Back to the movie- it is a faithful adaptation of that work. You are very likely to enjoy it.
For somewhat squeamish people (Kaitlyn, in particular) be warned, this movie earns its R rating. However, I believe it does not do it gratutiously. The violence is not all that frequent, but when it exists, it is often brutal. Don't look away- this is part of the point. A deconstruction of comic books cannot exist without a deconstruction of the Biff! Sock! Pow! comic book violence that goes with it.
Go out and watch (or read), and have fun!
For all you two (maybe? I think Opal MIGHT have read it, I don't think Kaitlyn has) people on my friends list that haven't read Watchmen...
WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU DO IT NOW
That aside, I very much enjoyed the movie. It was as faithful an adaptation as can be possible given 300+ pages of nine panels apiece into a 2.75 hour movie- that is to say, very faithful. It compresses a lot of the backstory stuff that was cut for time into a very neat opening montage firmly establishing the alternate history, and gets right to the story itself. For those people who have stumbled here through someone else's friends page or something, Watchmen begins as follows:
One night, in New York City, an aging man is watching TV in his well appointed, high rise apartment. Someone breaks in, beats the tar out of the man, and throws him through his plate glass window to the pavement many stories below. The police arrive and investigate, but are baffled. That night, a man in a mask resembling a constantly shifting inkblot of the sort used in old psych profiling grappling hooks up to the apartment and searches through it. A secret closet reveals a superhero costume of the dead man's own- he was a costumed adventurer, just like the investigator. So the masked investigator begins the rounds of his remaining colleagues with a theory- someone is hunting masked heroes.
Regrettably there is some of what I call the Henry Fonda problem with Watchmen. It relates to a scene in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West where you see a hardened gunman kill an entire family- father, teenage son, and teenage daughter- save for the under-ten son, who was inside the house. When he comes outside, he simply stares at his family's killer, until one of the killer's underlings asks him, by name, if they are to kill the child. His response is, 'Well, now that you've gone and used my name...', and he shoots the boy (itself shocking for the 1968 release date of the movie). The music swells, and the camera pans around to show us the face of Henry Fonda, who until this time was THE all-American good guy on film.
The point of that digression is that a lot of things can be lost in context. Seinfeld and the Beatles are less revolutionary-seeming now that their innovations have filtered through the genre or medium that they worked in. So too it is with Watchmen, which along with Frank Miller's 'The Dark Knight Returns' helped usher in the end of the silly and frivolous Silver Age of comics. Before this time, comics were bound by the Comic Code Authority to a certain standard, including strict rules about violence, sex, and drug use.This led to some pretty strange things (cellophane S shield power and 13 different kinds of Kryptonite, for example), and to a general idea that comic books were by nature immature- that they had caricatures rather than characters. Watchmen (in 1986), by contrast, treated every one of its characters as people with flaws and problems, and examined the effect these people (both powered and unpowered) might have on the real world.
(As an aside, this trend was already starting with the Bronze age of comics, from the mid 70s to the mid 80s. Watchmen speeded that process up considerably, and led to the extremely grim, gritty, and violent comics of the 90s, most of which were pretty bad because they were written by people who didn't quite 'get the joke', as it were.)
All that led to Watchmen being basically the most popular western comic book of ever. Like, seriously. EVAR. This may not be just (Art Spiegelman's Maus or assorted works by Will Eisner are said to also be very meritorious, but not having read them I cannot informedly comment.) Back to the movie- it is a faithful adaptation of that work. You are very likely to enjoy it.
For somewhat squeamish people (Kaitlyn, in particular) be warned, this movie earns its R rating. However, I believe it does not do it gratutiously. The violence is not all that frequent, but when it exists, it is often brutal. Don't look away- this is part of the point. A deconstruction of comic books cannot exist without a deconstruction of the Biff! Sock! Pow! comic book violence that goes with it.
Go out and watch (or read), and have fun!