561 posts to go!

Of course no one else in America will know what the hell this movie is about.

I'm rooting for you, Zack!

Me neither.

Ta da!

I didnt care for the rush job near the all too predictable ending. It felt like they maybe intended for this to go longer and then were told "wrap this up in a few issues" - for about 9 issues it paces and meanders then it rushes out an ending in 2.

and the last part for Rhorshach? That was just dumb. And the whole part on mars? should have been 2 pages long and then done. That whole set was a self indulgent moment for the writer(s) that went on way too long. On film, if that portion is any more than a 10 minute excursion, its going to feel very corny.

and thats kind of my final summation: a good comic that days later, continues to haunt me with images and concepts, but overall it was immensely corny. fun and entertaining, but corny all the way through.

But by gum, he made sure that he had some nifty visuals in there...

U understand?

And you say destroying the Superhero myth is the main focus but you then cite a parody of the cold war (which you consider to be tangential to Watchmen) as a better example of a story than Watchmen ???

Since you certainly don't seem very sure what this is about then let me give you a hint.

The deconstruction (NOT destruction) of the Superhero Team by placing them in a far more believable world with complex motivations involving psychological studies of the characters along with the resultant cultural and political implications of their existance and deeds.

Oh and on a purely mercenary note the price of the Watchmen might well rise a bit as the Movie draws ever closer. So ordering it now could be an idea. ;-)

Sorry but there's no way I can take very seriously anyone who considers the Watchmen "boring".

Admittedly there isn't an explosion or the punching of a villain in every other panel so if that's what you crave, look elsewher.

But discovering exactly why Rorschach is Rorschach and why all the characters are who they are running alongside the main mysterious and complex conspiracy plotline was... no I can't quite remember the word.

What's the polar opposite of "boring" ?

Then again his whole casting and re-imagining of Ozy sticks out like a sore thumb so far and is a legitemate cause for concern.

And the whole POINT of Doctor Manhattan is that NOTHING is a flashback. Everything is simultaneous to him.

The whole Watchmen book plays around and with linear idea of time at crucial points.

I admit the supplemental material is "wordy" but it's hardly that great a barrier to it's enjoyment. Particularly as it shows how well realised the world is. You can see the foundations for all the characters in much of the word based articles and the charcters simply wouldn't come alive as well as they do in the main story if Moore hadn't thought them out and done the backstory of them all to the degree that the supplemental material shows he did.

Put plainly, Rorschach wouldn't be Rorschach without the extraordinary level of character study and detail the articles show.

The Black Freighter is a nice tale in an of itself but it is never supposed to supplant or overshadow the main Watchmen story.

It's used to highlight and counterpoint the actions in the main story. Visually and narratively. It's not in the Movie but it will be on the DVD in some form.

But it's also deeply rooted in the main story since the newspaper vendor and the boy are used throughout the book as a sort of "anchor" to the world outside the main characters. They are the everyman getting on with his job and the comic book fan Moore knows his work is aimed squarely at.

It's not "filler". It's in the story for a reason.

Establishing cred is part of the patter round here, so I figure I'd lay some stuff on the table. Watchmen is a novel in comic form. It's the way I'd describe it, and its the misnomer of 'comic book' that have people who read it thinking they're stepping into another issue of YOUNGBLOOD or WildC.A.T.S. It's far and away the best treatise on the form of the comic book, and the first time a sense of verite was used to describe the 'super hero'.

I understand it's not everyone's cup of tea, especially those who aren't the stamp collector versions of comic readers. This movie is probably streamlined and stripped down, to all the negative folks out there, but I see the trailer, and the posters over at SuperHero Hype, and I see a guy who fucking understands the ideas within the movie. Take a look over there...

http://tinyurl.com/ 5bf4j4

Look at how NUDE Manhattan is. Look at the Silk Spectre II shot. Look at her mother. This guy has altered the look, but has NAILED the spirit of the comic. And yeah, I know that this is a still shot, but if that doesn't convey the HEART of the book, the very essence of one of the main themes -- The visage versus the actual -- of the book, nothing could.

The trailer is fantastic for fans. But these shots are fucking incredible.

Oh yeah. I swear, sorry. No spoilers here, just take a look at those shots and tell me he doesn't know what Watchmen is about.

Ozymandias has a whole issue dedicated to his past. It's chapter 10 I think. I don't have my book handy, here. He explains his entire life to his servants, some refugees he helped. Also, he goes over his life with an interviewer in a 'filler' (sic) section of the novel.

The 'team' on the book was Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. DC didn't care about the length of the series, really, more than having rights in perpetuity to the Watchmen books. Which they do. Which Moore HATES.

But when you say 'I get the story' then state things that are not accurate, unless you read the Cliff's notes version of the book or just skimmed it. I don't know you guys, but you sound like dudes who picked up the book and skimmed through it.

That showed them!!! You really tore those geeks a new one didn't you ?

Jesus fucking christ. What a loser.

Shatner was subject to crazy trekkers all his life so his response was understandable. (though he'd be a nobody without Trek)

Showing interst in a book or Movie you like isn't a pre-requisite for any juvenile geek stereotypes I'm afraid. But keep on trolling little man.

You are, if nothing else, an amusing distraction.

BTW Veidt is Charles Atlas. Veidt is a self made man. His physique is a reflection of his striving for perfection and there is NOTHING dark about him.

Veidt in the Movie so far is bafflingly wide of the mark even without the stupid Nazi Accent.

A modern analog would be that someone hired Cronenberg, Lynch, and Peter Straub to come up with something that would fuck with our brains just LOOKING at it, much less sending imagery that would drive people close to the event mad, and leave people around the world with nightmares about its arrival.

Those yellow fucking boxes contain text with information in them for a reason. It's not a fucking squid. It's a tentacled thing from Dimension X that is never fully shown in its entirety. And that works in this filmmaker's favor...but judging from the fact that Manhattan's dong is going to be hanging out, this movie is going to be faithful to the story.

Hope this clears things up.

If you think of the governments as the watchmen who arent doing their jobs, rather than the superheroes in the book who are outlawed its a totally different spin. I hope that came out right. I basically just flipped the story in my head and blew my mind.

But I still like calling it squiddy.

Everybody who's afraid of another 'Galactus Cloud' climax, relax - Warners are throwing money at this movie hand over fist, and the ONE fucking thing they're gonna make sure remains is the Squid.

Normal people (ie non-comic readers) would ultimately enjoy the movie sans squid anyway, but because of the (to normal people) stupid costumes and hertofore unknown characters, they wouldn't go out of their way to recommend it to other friends - UNLESS there was something beyond the requisite depth, action and character development... We're talking 'wow factor' - hence the Squid Is In.

That means Johnny Public gets something basic to write home about (with a considerate omission of spoilers, hopefully), while the rest of us fully initiated nerderbators also get a movie worthy of calling itself THE definitive adaptation of one of the greatest stories EVER told.

Sorry but it remains true. It is a corny comic book whose biggest accomplishment is making heroes with a good portion of asshole to their personalities. I guess Im deflated because after all the hype and hysteria, I expected something that would make Chaucer look like a babbling idiot. Instead, I got a Super Friends Having Sex mini-series with a rushed ending and long long looooong periods of navel gazing in the middle. It was a fun comic to read - an enjoyable diversion. But I seriously dont believe it will translate well to film, no matter how awesome the costumes and flying owlships look in the promotional photographs. How many panels were used during the psychological profiling of Rhorshach? A lot. And then the story wanders off into the personal life of his psychologist. It can work in a comic book because the reason you read comics as opposed to novels, is for their artistic style. The story doesn't have to have epic Shakesperean dialogue or sweeping Hitchcockian camera work, because as long as both are reasonably good, they combine to make a great comic. Its okay to spend vast numbers of pages on a boy reading a comic-within-a-comic because while doing so, we see what goes on in this world while our heroes are elsewhere. In a movie, its a huge risk to spend vast amounts of time with scenes entirely populated by background walk-on characters.

But because I didn't post pictures of my wet pants while reading Watchmen, Im not valid - and because Im not working for the New York Times, my opinion doesn't matter. What an absolutely retarded thing to say. I get what you're all saying about the influence this comic had, and I get what you're saying about how it cracked open the doorway to a whole genre of 'flawed hero' comics and movies - Im just saying that its been hyped by avid fans to such high levels, that you've made it nearly impossible for anyone else to ever fully fall in love with this comic mini-series. You've set the stage so that at best, they're going to say what I and several others have said in this talkback: it was good, but where's the part that changes my life? Where's the part that makes all the confusing parts about living in this world make sense? Its a comic book about super heroes having lots of sex and killing people. That's it. If I were 15 and reading this, sure I'd love it. It was blow my mind that a comic book could actually get away with some of these concepts. When I was 15, I read the Count of Monte Cristo, and it had the same exact content. It was the first novel I read that contained sex, violence, murder, revenge. Im sure if you read a talkback about how Alexander Dumas was the greatest writer ever and his epic Monte Cristo novel changed the way I view the world and my life and the universe and cubes of sugar, that you'd read it and say: "yeah it was good, but...."

But just make sure you DONT actually do that unless you are an employee of the New York Times. Otherwise, Im just going to tell you how your opinion doesn't matter because you're not reviewing it professionally.

retarded.

(Im sure the comic explains this somewhere, but as others have said, it might take an extra read or two in order to pick up missed plot points. Unfortunately, I dont think people will be willing to watch a movie 3 or 4 times in order to 'get it')

I'd be interested to know if there's any work in the comics medium that your think ranks with 'high literature' - and if not, is it because you think the splicing of writing and illustration is intrinsically redundant? Because I think that'd be a pretty sweeping statement...

Kid: yeah its okay if I dont 'get it', but theres a lot of people who are saying, "well you cant get it by just reading it once" or "dont bother discussing if you've read it less than 3 times."

So my question is: how many times do you think the general movie-going public is going to pay to watch a movie in order to be able to (a) understand whats going on in it and (b) discuss it with people who defend it like a contested gold mine. I read the comic - at this point, I think Im entitled to an opinion. The notion that I have no idea what Im talking about or have any respect for the groundbreaking strikes its creative team accomplished is not even a concern of mine. I dont care if copies of this comic can cure melanoma if you rub its pages on your skin. I just wanted to share my thoughts having read it. Now if you dont mind, I have to go. I may be onto something with this page rubbing thing.

As for mr. Salad, I assure you that the only emails I've sent to him are my nude portraits. So far, my love-sick cries for his affections go unanswered.

(Still looking for the rolleyes emoticon)

Frankly it's fairly irrelevant at this point if some people don't get Watchmen or think they have a more informed opinion of it with little to back it up.

You don't need to like it. But you certainly aren't going to alter how it is percieved. The jury was in decades ago. It's considered one of the best comics ever written and a Quantum Leap in the medium.

Were I to post on every board on every website in the world for the next 100 years nothing would change that assessment either way.

Think of it like The Wire. I don't need dozens of critics lauding it and never did to know it is one of the best TV shows ever made. But it's pretty much accepted it is and that isn't about to change.

If some are incapable of seeing how Watchmen radically altered how Comics and the stories they told were constructed, written and regarded and the influence it has had on popular culture then you just don't see it and aren't about to start.

If you don't think Comics are a valid Medium I also cannot help you. You should perhaps have took the lesson from Photography, TV and Cinema. Since they were considered "vulgar" and unable to convey deep meaning for much of their early formative years. Nobody argues that horseshit anymore.

If however you think that Watchmen fails to properly utilise or expand on the medium then argue that. There are plenty of examples of how it uses the conventions of the comic book and pushes them further than they had before to counter such a view.

Calling the protagonists assholes for example is pretty fucking thin stuff TBH. (not to mention wrong)

Why not simply tell us which comic book was more revolutionary since you are so sure that Watchmen is little more than "corny" ?

"Its a comic book about super heroes having lots of sex and killing people." Puuuuhleeeaaase. Change the Superheroes to Gods or Gangsters or Kings or Politicians and how many other works of fiction do you think we could shoehorn into that vapid description if we wanted to ?

You also complain that the Watchmen is too "wordy" then try to retreat into a defense that it somehow wasn't Chaucer or Shakespeare ?? Who the fuck claimed it was ???

Perhaps you were expecting the denizens of New York in a fictionialised world of 1985 to speak in Elizabethan English or Middle English ??

Hard to say, but I DO know namedropping a couple of Giants of Literature is neither here nor there with regard to the quality of Watchmen.

I would also point out that since you somehow missed the entire point of "The Abyss gazes also" (One of the most well known and cited chapters in the book since it focuses on Rorschach) then perhaps arguing that your own view as a well informed one falls down just a touch.

The clue is that however the Movie chooses to utilise the Psychiatrist (not Psychologist)his importance in the book and that chapter is as plain as the blots on his cards. Far from "wandering off" his part of the story is pivotal in showing how Rorshach is far from an "asshole". Dr Malcolms relationship and views change to reflect the main theme of the chapter and the Nitszchean quote it is based on.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion. This would be mine.