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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Watchmen movie news

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13:36 / 24.11.08

One of these days I'll have a theory that turns out to be right. You'll see.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:03 / 24.11.08

Perhaps if you advance the theory that the squid has been dropped because the destruction of New York City by twenty tons of deliquescing psychic calimari would look utterly bloody stupid?

14:23 / 24.11.08

By poster campaign I more or less meant this image. The rest is merely trashy.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

14:41 / 24.11.08

The posters are pretty suspect, yeah. The Rorschach one bothers me particularly, with its clear lack of proper copy-editing.

15:48 / 24.11.08

Perhaps if you advance the theory that the squid has been dropped because the destruction of New York City by twenty tons of deliquescing psychic calimari would look utterly bloody stupid?

Perhaps Haus perhaps. But until I finish the parallel universe viewer I guess we'll have to live in blind ignorance, rooting in the gutters of What Might Be.

The Natural Way

15:58 / 24.11.08

Just to be clear: my motivations for already getting the fear from this movie have sod all to do with needing to see Watchmen played out the way it is in the comic. My fear is that I thought 300 was laughable bollocks and this'll be more of the same.

I'm not offended by Muse tracks.

18:52 / 24.11.08

I wonder if the movie iteration of the second Silk Spectre doesn't make more sense than the comic version, though?

The original, as drawn by Dave Gibbons, whatever her strengths in terms of characterisation, never seemed all that sexy.

Partly, I think that was to do with failings in the art (if only Frank Cho had been around at the time ...) but she was supposed to be smokin' hott, right? Otherwise why would Dr Manhattan have been gutted, to the extent that he was? And why would Nite Owl have come out of retirement, to the extent that he does?

01:38 / 25.11.08

not sure about that. Manhattan may have only been playing out his love for her because it was necessary and fitted the time line. Also, smoking hot girls aren't the only ones to get the love...

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

02:03 / 25.11.08

One of the things that I've always liked about Watchmen was that Dreiberg and Laurie both looked fairly ordinary. Not unattractive but like normal people -- athletic to varying degrees but not idealized. It makes their affair more powerful to me, actually. It punches home the conceit that this is a world where there are vigilantes but not super-heroes, with the exception of Manhattan. The ordinariness, even with all the fetish crime-fighting sexiness, emphasizes the distance between the heroes and Jon.

Which isn't to say anyone in the cast looks wrong for their good looks, just that Watchmen has always been a very non-idealized story for me, where people put on costumes but maybe look a little schlubby but are still basically serious.

07:50 / 25.11.08

Dunno, I always thought Laurie was supposed to very good-looking. Granted, very good-looking in an unkempt, homey way, but very good looking nonetheless. Ozymandius clearly ain’t no slouch in the looks department, neither.

Also, Ozymandius, a vigilante? Really? He was a vigilante, sure, but by the time Watchmen rolls around he’s something else entirely.

08:29 / 25.11.08

I take your point, Papers, about the ordinariness.

But, while Moore/Gibbons got away with that in the comic, it wouldn't work on screen. The audience would be asking itself (say, in the Rorschach/Nite Owl bar scene) why these busters in funny costumes weren't shown the door, rapidly.

They have to be a bit amped up, I fear.

12:07 / 25.11.08

I'm quite looking forward to this.

Of course, it's an entirely personal view, but I found Watchmen to be a real chore to actually read; possibly because of the 3x3 rigidness of it, possibly because it was 20-odd years old by the time I read it, possibly because the Cold War doesn't really have much resonance.
I've tried three times, but I just can't get the same amount of pleasure out of it as most other people seem to. I actually feel that it's a good story, but the style of telling doesn't appeal at all.

And, in a (possibly) point-missing exercise not seen since the start of Spurs' current season, I actually think that some slow-mo airpunch moments might actually improve the narrative no end; although robbing the narrative of "some" of the layers, this might benefit a number of the "other" layers.

12:19 / 25.11.08

I found Watchmen a real chore to actually read

Pull yourself together, Neon Snake - it's a comic!

Nobody's asking you to get through 'Finnegan's Wake', or related.

Although maybe they should ...

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

16:27 / 25.11.08

You've got a point, Grandma. I hope Snyder has found another way of reinforcing the disparity using hot people, which would certainly be true if another director was involved (flashing onto a Watchmen by the Coen Brothers, for some reason), but I'm not sure I quite have that kind of faith in his ability.

Maybe it's a moot point, but I'm musing on the ways they could approach those sorts of themes while the Hollywood Hivemind has attached itself to the material.

Keith, like a scientist

16:36 / 25.11.08

The happy part of this trailer was seeing the dorky "real life" Drieberg. The Nite Owl costume transforms him into an everyday fit looking superhero god guy, but it's nice to see they are making him a receding hair/large bespectacled bird nerd after all. Another reason to have hope for me.

08:59 / 26.11.08

To be honest, I share some of the doubts being expressed here about the director's abilities.

What I'm holding onto though (as an experiment, I'm trying to be optimistic about something for once - see also, the financial markets) is that '300' wasn't all that great in the first place. I read an issue at the time, but couldn't really see the point of continuing.

Pretty clearly, the guy's dealing with much better source material here.

Which, I suppose, will make it doubly awful if he drops a bollock, as it were. But then he must know that. Who'd want to go to their grave as the guy who fucked up 'Watchmen'? I don't think I'm overstating the matter when I say that if he does, the chances are he won't be remembered for anything else.

On the other hand, he may not care, at all, about what a bunch of people who routinely hang about in pubs and coffee bars, wearing glasses, think about their ridiculous Holy Grail. Or he may just be a hack.

I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt, though.

As Bruce Willis once said (and let's face it, he should know) 'no one sets out to make a bad movie'.

I just hope that something hasn't gone wrong.

10:56 / 26.11.08

For the record, it wouldn't surprise me if the movie turned out to be entertaining, or at least not totally awful, so in that sense I hold out some hope. What I don't hold out any hope for is the possibility that it will be anything like the translation the comic deserves. And I think that might be the key thing: whether you're happy for the film not to live up to its potential.

The Natural Way

11:39 / 26.11.08

The key thing for me is whether or not the film feels like the stupid ranting of an underdeveloped fanman. I'm worried that I'll just spend my whole time in the cinema thinking 'What a berk'. Thing is, I don't think 300's embarrasing crapness had that much to do with the source material. It was all down to that guy's stupid head, loads of stupid shouting and histrionics about Sparta, kewl slow-mo fight scenes and weird montages of men just, y'know, being hard men. And shouting. Overcooked, overwrought twaddle.

12:57 / 26.11.08

I suspect that we'll get the surface story, and that it will be as entertaining as any other big actiony film since The Matrix, and it will be, yes, cool.

Maybe there will be some subtext, I've seen the speculation about how the costumes appear to be have been consciously chosen to ape the Schumacher Bat-films, so maybe, just maybe, the film will deconstruct superhero movies in the same way that the book deconstructed superhero comics. Thing is, I don't know if the genre (films) has enough material to warrant that deconstruction, but you never know.

I guess the level of enjoyment will come down to how much the telling of the surface story entertains, balanced against how much of the subtext you want to see put up on the screen. I don't really know enough about the book to comment on the subtexts; I didn't find it engaging enough to really dig into, so maybe I am missing the point, but I'd be happy enough to see the 'main' story told well.

14:35 / 26.11.08

I have real doubts that any attempt to deconstruct Hollywood's superhero output will come off as anything more than very, very shallow indeed. It seems like such a tacked on superfluous idea, and, besides, that stuff was never what made Watchmen interesting, at least as far as this Boboss is concerned.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

14:47 / 26.11.08

I think part of my low expectations -- and they are very low -- is that they'll leave out the stuff without superheroes, which seemed irrelevant initially until you get to the squid. I'm not necessarily talking about the Black Freighter, which would be tedious (although I maintain that to do a faithful to the themes adaptation, you should include the Freighter as a movie everybody's watching, but that's just pedantic of me), but all the people in New York that we see in short scenes.

A lot of the background detail, like the militant feminists (who remind me very much of the feminist army in The Passion of New Eve, which always felt surprisingly Watchmen to me) may end up being washed away. Partly because of time constraints and partly because they'll miss the point of the non-superhero stuff. I don't really mind that there's not going to be a squid, but this street-level view of people trying to function in an America with super-vigilantes and GOD running around, being led by Nixon of all people...

That, for me, is where the drive of the story always was, and it's one of the things that would make it feel successful for me rather than a merely mediocre adaptation. The Wachowskis managed to do it in their way which made me quite happy, but I'm not as yet impressed by Snyder so I'm skeptical.

And that's enough fanwank for the morning. Someone fix me a drink!

16:01 / 26.11.08

Dunno, I always thought Laurie was supposed to very good-looking.

Yeah. That's the point of the Silk Spectre alter-ego: teh hottness. And that's also why the Laurie/Dreiberg stuff works, in its own geek-pleasing manner.

That relationship's the heart of the book, if you strip away all the fancy-pants 'deconstruction of the genre' antics that Moore and Gibbons were drenching it in. I've got to say that nothing in the trailers has suggested that it's all that important to the film (with the exception of the nuclear explosion money shot).

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

16:54 / 26.11.08

Dreiberg's dream. Ah-- if nothing else, I would love to see that whole page done up on screen, just to see how they'd do it.

19:36 / 26.11.08

Papers, your view of Watchmen runs close to my own. I might write something about it, actually.

Maybe I'll save my thoughts until the movie's release date is upon us...

07:48 / 27.11.08

they'll leave out the stuff without superheroes

I'm guessing that's a criticism they'll have anticipated, and so trying to avoid, as far as they can. If the Black Freighter material's being left out, it's really just a question of about five minutes of screentime.

It depends what they're doing instead of the giant squid, but whatever they're planning won't be the same without the sense of it impacting on the regular folks. As the director must know.

At the risk of sounding like a terminal drag (and yes, the film probably will be a load of shit, everything is ... Life is) it seems too early to dismiss the movie, based on a thirty second trailer.

Let's face it, if they'd cast Stallone as Rorschach we'd all still be going to see it, regardless.

08:47 / 27.11.08

Let's face it, if they'd cast Stallone as Rorschach we'd all still be going to see it, regardless.

With Chuck Norris as Dr Manhatten.

11:05 / 27.11.08

Burt Reynolds as The Comedian.

Demi Moore as the Silk Spectre.

Crispian Glover as Rorschach.

Andrew McCarthy as Nite Owl.

John Travolta as Dr Manhattan.

Why is nobody paying me for these ideas?

12:08 / 27.11.08

I was hoping we'd see the Dave produced TV version with Kilroy Silk as Ozymandias but life's a constant disappointment.

12:26 / 27.11.08

If you were to pitch what I'm presuming is your disastrously low-budget, hotel porn vision of 'Watchmen' to Dave TV, Mr G, then I wonder if Alan Moore wouldn't, perversely, endorse it?

13:09 / 27.11.08

I'm sure he would. In fact i would say that he'd be chomping at the bit for his Stan Lee-like bit part. He could even have taken the part of slightly depressed Evening Standard seller but it's sadly not to be.

13:30 / 27.11.08

I've decided I'm going to see the Watchmen and like it. I'm not gonna expect the comic, but a "Wow! Flash! Pop-trash!" version of the comic, and I'm OK with that. When I want to remember what an amazing story it was, I'll re-read it. I might even buy that "Ultimate" reprint of it, to keep my Sandman volumes company. Seriously: could it possibly be more buchered than "The Crow"* was?

Then I'm gonna sit and patiently wait for the film adaptation of Moore & Gebbie's "Lost Girls".

*Butchered when compared to the comic: As a stand alone film, it was pretty decent.

13:45 / 27.11.08

Then I'm gonna sit and patiently wait for the film adaptation of Moore & Gebbie's "Lost Girls".

I believe Brett Ratner's working on that right now.

14:17 / 27.11.08

Damn! I was pulling for G. del Toro...

14:51 / 27.11.08

but it's sadly not to be

We'll have no more of that sort of negativity.

What are the chances of the following happening;

A) 'Watchmen' emerges to muted acclaim, three and a half stars out of five in 'Empire' magazine.

B) Moore is furious about it.

C) So much so that he'd be prepared to put some of his own money into your grim, hard-edged view of the material.

'C' is a leap, certainly, but I've thought about it, and actually, it's do-able. There'd be problems with the Dr Manhattan stuff, (Mars, etc) but they wouldn't necessarily be too much for a man, very much alone in a room, who was trying to square the idea of gods being alive in the world with all this fearful material to do with 'Asian Babes'. You know, notionally.

I think the concept has legs.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

15:55 / 27.11.08

Papers, your view of Watchmen runs close to my own. I might write something about it, actually.

Having watched Brazil recently, I'm struck that the director that I think would do justice to my take on Watchmen would be Gilliam--I don't see him ever doing it slick, it's a broken down present rather than a broken down future. It has to be so gritty and hard-edged and ugly that Ozymandias's plan almost makes sense in a terrible, terrible way.

But the movie will come out and we'll see what they do. It will either be good or it won't.

That said, I can only really see the source material being treated with enough room for normal people and vigilantes and everyone if it was a miniseries, so who knows.

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