Watchmen - Offical Thread - USE SPOILER TAGS!

[chalkitdown]

I can't understand it, either. How could a panel sit down and watch this, and then decide a 16 rating would suffice?

[Irene Demova]

I can't understand it, either. How could a panel sit down and watch this, and then decide a 16 rating would suffice?

I wish the UK boards would do this; I'm gonna have to go pirate it so the internet does not completley ruin it for me

[Dolph Wiggler]

Surely you must know someone over 18 that'd be willing to buy you tickets to it. I mean it's not as if cinemas have bouncers or anything. I never had any problems when i was younger and i looked really young for my age.

[smurphy]

I'm 18 but have no ID. It sure would suck to go all the way to Glasgow then get turned down at the Imax.

[Dolph Wiggler]

Surely you must know someone over 18 that'd be willing to buy you tickets to it. I mean it's not as if cinemas have bouncers or anything. I never had any problems when i was younger and i looked really young for my age.

The Cinema in Glasgow was enforcing the gooseberry fool out of the place. they had a line of people who didnt have ID's and were doing a pretty good job of making sure it stuck.

Wow, that sucks alright. Even in the big cinemas near me they don't really give a gooseberry fool. Have to be fairly selective about viewing times because of it though to avoid schoolkids and whatnot.

[Irene Demova]

Surely you must know someone over 18 that'd be willing to buy you tickets to it. I mean it's not as if cinemas have bouncers or anything. I never had any problems when i was younger and i looked really young for my age.

It's heavily checked at the moment, they don't want any stories of underage kids getting in

[Mr Thropwimp]

I'm gonna spoiler this whole post to save people the hassle of constant highlighting or whatever.

Not sure what to think because the book was too fresh in the mind. I could recognise most of the places where the dialogue was a straight quote, and then the bits that changed were just as obvious (even down to dialogue). This is my fault, mind, not the film's.

The style was what I found most jarring. In some places it was great, and I could instantly tell that each scene in the film tried to recreate one of the frames from the comic, almost detail for detail. In some ways it felt like they tried to force this, or force some of the lines, and the slow-mo fetish didn't help. In a way it seemed like it was used to mask a lack of creativity, in a fashion not too dissimilar to Bay's 3-second-epilepsy-shot fetish in Transformers where you spend 5 minutes watching absolutely nothing at all, because it changes too fast to make any sense.

I've no complaints about the plot except that the big MacGuffin in the comic was put on the sideline in the film. The fear of a world war 3 was quite oppressive in print because it featured so heavily. In this it's relegated to almost passing mention in favour of going for Rorschach's mask killer conspiracy. I agree that the 'lesser evil to undo all greater evils' event was visually spectacular but not keeping in theme with the original sentiment.

Which is probably my single greatest gripe about what otherwise would be a brilliant film. The rest is mere nitpicking and is easy to gloss over, but the film Watchmen was only about the guys in costume. The book, while they were the main characters, didn't just document their journey and relationships but New York's descent into chaos as the threat of armageddon drew nearer. You had the parallel stories intertwined between issues. The film gets rid of all but the masked adventurer bit.

The change to falsely vilifying Dr Manhattan was a good one. Watchmen, to me, is absurd enough as it is without some daft idea of a fabricated alien invasion. Teleporting reactor overloads all over the world just so they could explode and wipe away all traces of human life was a cop out. Removes the atrocity element. Even the Hiroshima references were subdued.

Good film though. I'd give it 8/10 for being entertaining and rather unique as far as these things go. It would've been a 9 or a 10 if they made their mind up about doing an adaptation or an interpretation instead of mixing it. Rorschach was always going to steal the show, too.

tl;dr 8/10 let down by some things, improved by others. Worth watching, definitely.

[Jax]

Surely you must know someone over 18 that'd be willing to buy you tickets to it. I mean it's not as if cinemas have bouncers or anything. I never had any problems when i was younger and i looked really young for my age.

It's heavily checked at the moment, they don't want any stories of underage kids getting in

I saw a 12 year old (i'm guessing obviously; he looked around that age) in the showing i went to.

[HSH28]

Did anyone else notice the "S.Q.U.I.D." branding on the terminal towards the end?

Yes.

Oh and I didn't mention it before, but the music in the film is almost exclusively great.

[chalkitdown]

Could've done without the sex scene with Leonard Cohen, though.

[Luboluke]

So, was this shot with imax cameras then? Will it be the same as TDK on an imax screen, what's the deal?

I'm clueless about this stuff, I convinced my whole family to go and see TDK in the imax because I thought it was going to be in 3D.

As we sat down, this dawned on me and I could hear my brother saying, "When are they handing out the goggles?".

[SuperFinal]

Caught a late showing of it last night.

As a complete Watchmen n00b I didn't expect that I'd keep up with the spiralling plot. Surprisingly for me, I came away loving it. Suffice to say, all the parts I loved have already been summarised in previous posts, but overall I found the film to be a great character piece.

I can't wait to see the director's cut now and even feel compelled to track down the graphic novel. A sentiment I'm sure is being repeated across the world. And that can only be a good thing.

9/10

[TheTurnipKing]

To be fair, it's largely the same as the graphic novel, and theres no age restriction on that.

It's amazing just how much of the density of the original version is intact in the film, and that it still works, Nothing that had to be cut is essential, and few of the changes are terribly jarring*. Nonetheless. The home version will undoubtedly be superior, because it can be both extended and paused.

I wonder what Alan Moore makes of it? It sounds like the kind of adaptation of his work that he's always wanted, and indeed, it's probably the single best adaptation of serial art into a movie I've ever encountered.

*the only things that caught me was the change to Rorschach's origins, the manner of the death of the first of Big Figure's henchmen and Dan punching Veidt at the end, and in the final analysis... none was terribly out of place - they fit the film, even if they weren't straight from the source.

[Danzig]

Solid 7/10. Good for the most part but some of the cuts meant the story lost some of the charm. Would have liked more time spent on the original Minutemen/Veidt/the newpaper stand owner.

[Irene Demova]

Solid 7/10. Good for the most part but some of the cuts meant the story lost some of the charm. Would have liked more time spent on the original Minutemen/Veidt/the newpaper stand owner.

There will be more on the newspaper stand but it had to be cut to make the film short enough to release

[Mr Thropwimp]

I wonder how far the director's cut goes: if it delves into the characters' history and sideplots further.

Needs more Bubastis.

[Danzig]

Probably been posted already but quite interesting:

http://io9.com/5160960/how-911-changed-watchmen

[Powers]

I didn't enjoy this. The fight scenes seemed to use excessive violence just because that's Zack Snyder's "thing".

The ending didn't quite make as much sense as a giant strawberry float off squid, Veidt was just wrong, as was the sex scene and the constant musical references.

However, Dr M. was spot on, and his flashback scene was easily the highlight of the film. The only thing missing was him knowing he'd get bored of the photograph and dropping it at his feet and walking away, but oh well.

[Mr Thropwimp]

I didn't enjoy this. The fight scenes seemed to use excessive violence just because that's Zack Snyder's "thing".

The ending didn't quite make as much sense as a giant strawberry float off squid, Veidt was just wrong, as was the sex scene and the constant musical references.

However, Dr M. was spot on, and his flashback scene was easily the highlight of the film. The only thing missing was him knowing he'd get bored of the photograph and dropping it at his feet and walking away, but oh well.

In the sense that Dr Manhattan is just as alien to humans as a gigantic squid was, I don't think it was that change that spoiled things a little.

I think it made Veidt look a little simplistic though. There was none of the stuff about kidnapping the world's greatest artistic talents to help create something so mind-blowingly twisted it'd literally scare people to death and leave survivors emotionally destroyed. In which case you could say Veidt didn't just think aliens would be a common enemy - he could associate insanity with it. The initial blast had to have fall out. It was mentioned how people were still being admitted to hospital, thinking their babies were eating them from the inside.

The film lost that, though, I think. And I guess you could blame 9/11 for making Americans in particular so selectively sensitive to such matters. Y'know, it's fine to show dogs eating six year old girls; and it's fine to glorify Vietnam (studio CEOs wanting to make America look successful, fnar); but the destruction of New York and the atrocities of it? Nah, too close to the bone.

There was also Dr Manhattan's last remark to Veidt, "it never ends." Which was there to say that Veidt's plan was still far too short sighted and not even he was smart enough to avoid that. I guess they compensated by showing his despair as Dan and Laurie leave though.

The film didn't, at least, butcher the comic. I guess Hayter just made it as faithful as he possibly could.

[Tafdolphin]

Probably been posted already but quite interesting:

http://io9.com/5160960/how-911-changed-watchmen

My main problem with the movie related to this.

Snyder uses gratuitous violence the whole way through the film yet pulls the punch when it comes to the one scene where violence is the most needed. I understand that the 9/11 comparisons would eventually come, but considering how brave the producers and studios were in making an R-rated comicbook movie, you think they could have pushed through and shown the real consequences of Veidt's plan.