Comments | veazey21: It is to LOL

veazey21

It is to LOL

Mar 02, 2009 23:24

OK, so you know how "Watchmen" is coming out on Friday? And how it's based on what is usually agreed to be the best comic book of all time? And how every comic book nerd on the planet has his Ambush Bug boxer shorts in a twist, hoping that it'll be good but secretly worried that it's going to suck like every other adaptation of an Alan Moore book ( Read more... )

idiocy, comics, rants, awesomeness, movies, hilarity, reviews

Comments 12

redesigner March 3 2009, 05:00:33 UTC

While the New Yorker's reviewer may not have gotten it just right, I have to say that my gut tells me that the movie isn't going to do well.

The graphic novel is in a precarious position when it comes to movie adaptations. Fanboys scream bloody murder when a director makes changes that deviate from the original text, whereas the casual moviegoer will pan a film that doesn't make any sense. There's no real satisfactory middle ground for a graphic novel.

All that said, I don't feel compelled to see the film in the slightest and probably won't bother. I think their marketing blitzkrieg is going to backfire after the first weekend--people who see the film are going to go to their friends and say "What the hell was that?!" And the chart will drop right down off the board and into the trash can.

veazey21 March 4 2009, 02:04:09 UTC

I don't mean any offense by this, but it's probably not your kind of thing anyway. The book was a deconstruction of the superhero genre, which is something you wouldn't really enjoy unless you also enjoyed regular superhero comics. Unless you can see The Question, The Shadow, and Mr. A in Rorschach, you're probably not going to enjoy it quite as much, for example ( ... )

spazmire March 3 2009, 06:24:19 UTC

Yeah wow, some people really are shallow.

So far I have noticed one major problem with the movie, veidt is wearing all black. why? when did he ever do this? if i sit through the movie just to find that they've made their own insinuations as to who the real villain is....

veazey21 March 4 2009, 02:05:04 UTC

Well, the metallic-gold leotard would look patently ridiculous. I thought it did in the book, too, but I hope that there's no additional foreshadowing. That would just be wrong.

You really ripped him a new asshole weezel365 March 3 2009, 09:00:38 UTC

And I haven't even read the review yet. But I'll be sure to link to this cut-down when I write the WeezeL Brand Movie Review.

Oh, and one more thing, I have a present for you when you get here.

veazey21 March 4 2009, 02:11:34 UTC

Did I really?
I tried to go through and refute his paper-thin arguments and offer at least one of the numerous counterexamples, to point out that if you go in with a negative preconception of what you're about to see, you're always going to find fault with it and you'll probably miss the good parts, too. And if all you think of comic books as is Archie & Jughead eating a lot of hamburgers, then you're going to be completely out of your element, Donny, when you see Watchmen.

bumpcrud March 3 2009, 23:58:05 UTC

I read that review this morning and felt the exact same way. I'm not well versed in comics but I have gone back and read the gems that were suggested to me (Watchmen, Killing Joke, Long Halloween, Year One, Preacher, Y the Last Man, Walking Dead). After reading these I will never understand how people can just write off an entire form of media.

I know that this isn't your argument exactly, just something I was thinking.

veazey21 March 4 2009, 02:16:18 UTC

Oh, no, it goes along quite well. It's stereotyping.
I don't usually like anime, but Cowboy Bebop is a great show.
Normally, I'm not much on suspense/horror movies, but stuff like "Wait Until Dark" is fantastic cinema.
I usually have real trouble with long-winded authors, but Dune and The Lord of the Rings were compelling enough for me to get over the discursive descriptions.

If you think that superheroes are for kids, I dare you to read "Demon in a Bottle," "The Killing Joke," and anything that Neil Gaiman did on "Sandman" and not change your mind.

darkpoet303 March 7 2009, 05:00:31 UTC

I loved the movie and I can't wait to read the graphic novel. I thought they did an excellent job at filming it. I really enjoyed the story, the characters--especially Rorschach, and the cinematography.

veazey21 March 7 2009, 06:36:35 UTC

They didn't change much from the book to the movie, from everything I've heard. I'm going to see it tomorrow, so I don't know for sure, but the biggest change was they omitted an entire subplot. It wasn't vital to the story, but it added a lot of flavor to the world and helped fill in some of the missing details. Basically, it's about this kid reading comic books at a newsstand. The comic he's reading become a device to help narrate the events happening in the main storyline, echoing what the other characters are doing and saying in a unique and sometimes alarmingly prescient way. It would not have worked at all as part of the movie, so it's understandable that they cut it out, but it's integral to the book version of the story.
Snyder also changed the villain's master plan, somewhat. Basically, the thing that happened in New York was a very different kind of thing in the movie than in the book, but the one in the book needed a lot of setup that the thing in the movie didn't need. Again, complexity removed for the sake of ( ... )

darkpoet303 March 8 2009, 04:20:31 UTC

I heard they were making an animated movie about one of the things they cut out of the movie. I'll have to look out for that. My friend Roseanna's going to let me borrow her copy of the graphic novel tomorrow, so I should be able to start reading it soon. I'll let you know when I get done. :)

I hope you enjoy the movie. :)

veazey21 March 9 2009, 06:36:43 UTC

Well, they made an animated version of "Tales of the Black Freighter," but that's because it's a comic book within the Watchmen universe. If you remember the guy at the newsstand with the green sweater and the kid in the horn-rimmed glasses, they're the vehicle through which the comic-within-the-comic is brought into the story. It reflects and parallels what's going on in the actual storyline in an eerily accurate way, and serves to add more depth to the whole thing, but would have been completely lost on most movie-goers. So, they're putting that on a DVD separately because they filmed it and made it ( ... )