On lots of stuff

[thebruce0]

Shutterfly
Srsly, sign up for Shutterfly. They have occasional promotions where you can either redeem or earn free prints. 20-40 prints a couple times a year, imo, is a great deal :D Got my next batch of free Shutterfly prints to put up in my little office cubicle.

CakeDoes PC-Cola (basically no-name coke) and microwavable chocolate cake mix sound

Comments

[coffeejedi]

I really liked the movie, and I agree with you on the gratuitous violence actually. Some of it was necessary to show the brutality of violence, but some was just Snyder going over the top needlessly, which annoyed me because I felt it distracted from the message.

I suppose that the graphicness of the gore was designed to provoke a certain mindset in the audience. A certain uneasiness mixed with a visceral reaction. It kept you on your toes because you were never quite sure how any given scene was going to end up, and you had to constantly mentally prepare yourself for seeing something horrible. That unease could be a way to convey the uncertainty of the characters' situation, never knowing when the first nuke would drop. That's certainly present in the graphic novel, though more through dialogue and background details like newspapers and TV reports.

[thebruce0]

Exactly. And I think good arguments could be either way about what, out of all that, was really necessary to see. Some still firmly believe that making something visual takes away from the impact where the mind would otherwise fill in the detail. But then you don't have the visual shock of seeing something you don't expect to see. I think the boundary between those two styles is a matter of ethics and/or morals. They're just different kinds of shock value. The former is more mental, more imaginative, more viewer created, but harder to achieve the same level of shock. The latter is quicker, more abrupt, immediate, blunt, more controlled. Unbiased, I'm torn, and it could be argued either way.

But I have to admit that I'd rather not see gratuitous content, or rather, I'd rather directors opt for implied content, rather than visual content. Not just on the grounds of not wanting to see things, but mainly because I prefer to think about things, visualize for myself, analyze, dig into the effect of an event, rather than the shock value of

[vortech]

Part of the message was critique on the concept of a super hero film (as the novel was a critique on the super hero comics). The violence was fully necessary, because that's what would really happen when a highly trained or super powered person beats up a mugger. I mean, what would really happen to someone's face when the man of steel, or batman punches it? It's not a reddening and a welt. And the reality of the brutality of heroes is also important for understanding the Law (I want to say Keene act, but I know that's the wrong one) as a normal response. The Incredibles mocked the banning of heroes as a function of a litigious society, but there is something inherently dangerous about a top-down class based vigilante system. This is not a work of happy endings and actions free of consequence. A major theme of the novel is that every act of trying to do good comes with bad consequences, and the more broad the scale when you try, the worse the bad, disproportionately

[thebruce0]

I think the question I'm raising is not the importance of the concept, but rather the method of its portrayal. Is it really necessary to visually barrage the viewer with no-holds-barred gruesome content to get the point across

[jadesfire55]

It seemed to me at the time that a lot of the graphic violence in the film came straight out of the novel. I'm almost certain that Veidt's secretary getting shot through the leg was lifted from the page intact, but I couldn't tell you what percentage was "as written" and what was amped up for affect.

I'm with you on not wanting to see graphic violence. I get squicked out easily. The prison scene was....yuck. The more I thought about it the more I realized reading violence on a printed page doesn't affect me as much as violence illustrated in a comic, which doesn't affect me as much as violence onscreen (big or little, doesn't matter).

[coffeejedi]

She actually gets shot in the chest. The captains of industry are not in that scene though.

[jadesfire55]

Huh. The memory is a tricksy thing.

[coffeejedi]

It is, I didn't even remember her getting shot at all. The only reason I knew that is because I went back and flipped through the book on Saturday, making note of what changes they made.

[ikkarus01]

Personally, I thought the level of violence was absolutely necessary to the point of the film (and the comic). These are not your grandma's superheroes. When people get shot, bad things happen. When an arm gets snapped backwards until it breaks, bad things happen. When people get explodified by a god-like super-being, very, very bad things happen. And then they drip from the ceiling.

It was certainly shocking, but I really think it would lose a lot of its impact if it was toned down at all.

[coffeejedi]

My only real problem was Laurie stabbing the Top-Knot in the neck. I know it was self-defense, but it felt like a deliberate "killing" to me, something that Rorschach mentions Nite Owl doesn't do. Granted, he doesn't name her in that dialogue, but considering that the Silk Spectre personas were as much about promoting movie/modeling careers as they were crimefighting, I just don't see her being the type who would kill. Rorschach seemed to make a point that that was a line that he had to cross

[ikkarus01]

The Top-Knot stabbing felt like a "lost in the moment" act to me. The two of them were so caught up in the rush of combat that holding back wasn't really an option. It was a release from years of pent up aggression. Oddly, that fight was more like sex than the sex scene(s).

The prison bars scene was pretty depraved. Unnecessarily so? I don't know. Everything going on in that prison was like some screenshot from Hell, so what really counts as "unnecessarily depraved" in that context?

[ariock]

"After hearing reports of people leaving the theatre just after seeing the full (computer generated) body of Dr. Manhattan"

Seriously? Links?

[thebruce0]

rgh. I'll have to look again... can't remember if it was twitter/irc/blog... I think it was on twitter (while skimming through the < 1000 over the weekend =/)

[thebruce0]

meh, just google "got up" leave theatre watchmen