Watchmen out this Friday

So was there some silent agreement while I was gone that we weren't gonna talk about this in an effort to avoid overhyping it?

I just the graphic novel for Christmas from my wife with a promise to take me to see it in March. Great stuff. At one point I was rethinking her offer only because she's not a huge fan of super violent stuff, but I think overall the story is worth the gore.

Thinking of avoiding the rush on Friday and catching it Saturday afternoonish.

Also, I'm dressing up as Doc Manhattan. And by "dressing up" I mean "painting myself."


See you nerds there.

EDIT: Wow... somehow this ended up in the completely wrong forum. Sorry about that - please move this biotch.

I'm going opening night, to the midnight showing. Normally I wouldn't do something like this, but my FLGS is running the screening and they're having a sale and party attached to the event too. How can I resist?!!

http://origin.ih.constantcontact.com/fs039/1102000774051/img/137.jpg?a=1102460438061

So yeah, I'll be out tomorrow night with all the freaks and geeks and naked (hopefully painted) blue guys. No, I am not wearing a costume! And no, that does not mean I'm going naked!

I like comics, but I find myself not caring much about this movie. I mean, I already know how it ends. Then again, I thought that the DARK KNIGHT movie totally sucked ass, too, so what do I know?

I'm going to a matinee on Friday. I have pretty low expectations based on what I've seen and who the director is.

I was really excited about it at first, now I'm very, very skeptical. The clips I've seen over the past couple of weeks ranged from excruciatingly bad to OMG in your face extremity. Neither are what WATCHMEN should be, and I'm beginning to feel like the problem with the movie is going to be that it's a 2009 movie- it's impossible to watch the film in the proper historical/temporal context because it's just not 1985/1986 any more. You can do that with the book, but with hyped-up CGI, speed ramping, and current music it's impossible to really get the right intent out of it.

The actor playing Adrian is _horrible_, at least from what I've seen. He looks like he's 10 years old and has a weird speech impediment or something. Stupid casting. That was totally Jude Law's role. Or Tom Cruise. I read about the ending and I actually think it's a pretty neat idea that is in keeping with another theme in the book. Won't spoil it, but I think it's pretty WATCHMEN-y even if it's not the deus ex machina we all love from the book.

Then the reviews...the super-high reviews from the nerd quarter (AICN, CHUD, etc.) all have a subtle tone that is basically "We never thought that a WATCHMEN film would come out, and we're thankful that it isn't total garbage so it's good enough- no, wait, I mean, it's AWESOME" It's almost like people are surprised that it's good at all so they assume it's great. There have been comparisons to the kinds of maverick films Hollywood was willing to risk in the 1970s. The NY Post review compared it to 2001, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, and DR. STRANGELOVE. But then other reviews have criticized it for being _too_ faithful to the book, being remote, and preposterous. Metacritic has it around a 50 right now and I bet that's going to be what happens- a straight split down the middle of people who absolutely hate it and people who absolutely love it. And I think that will be the case with fans of the book as well, not just the general public.

I dunno...I'm seeing it saturday, if it makes me regret my tattoo there's going to be hell to pay. I'm going in with very low expectations at this point.

dclose wrote:

I'm going opening night, to the midnight showing. Normally I wouldn't do something like this, but my FLGS is running the screening and they're having a sale and party attached to the event too. How can I resist?!!

Sweet jesus, a movie screening with Source customers. What odds are you willing to give me that someone shouts "HUZZAH!" at some point?

Resistance is easily achieved by recalling the types of conversations I overhear when I'm in there.

One of the reasons these superhero movies are so exciting to the nerd patrol is that they somehow vindicate that subculture. There's a collective sense of "you like us, you really, really like us! And our geeky enthusiasms, too!" As an event, a movie release like this one makes people comfortable in their own geekiness by legitimizing it. In that sense, it's like a Pride parade for the greasy-hair-and-Green-Lantern-t-shirt set. It even has the revealing costumes, but the after-parties aren't as good.

Apart from the event itself, though, I'm not sure what the appeal of the movie is supposed to be. Why not just read the comic book? What makes the film more valuable or authentic than the original work? WATCHMEN is, above all, a comic book about comic books. Why even try to translate it to a completely different medium (apart from the desire to make money)?

Maybe I'm just getting old, but I think I'll stick with the smelly paper and the pretty, hand-drawn pictures.

-- Mr. Grouchy.

JoelCFC25 wrote:

dclose wrote:

I'm going opening night, to the midnight showing. Normally I wouldn't do something like this, but my FLGS is running the screening and they're having a sale and party attached to the event too. How can I resist?!!

Sweet jesus, a movie screening with Source customers. What odds are you willing to give me that someone shouts "HUZZAH!" at some point?

Resistance is easily achieved by recalling the types of conversations I overhear when I'm in there.

I agree. I enjoy shopping at the Source, but I definitely do not want to watch a movie with a theater full of their customers.

JoelCFC25 wrote:

Sweet jesus, a movie screening with Source customers. What odds are you willing to give me that someone shouts "HUZZAH!" at some point?

I am totally betting on someone "correcting" the screen, loudly, at many points during the evening, along with many, many "HUZZAH!"s, overweight guys in too much spandex, and a few questionably-dressed females too. I said I'm going for the show -- I didn't say which one!

Try again Barnes - months back you were ready to heap the praise all over this one. I dont need you backing out now, filling me with all these doubts about what I know to be true...


THIS MOVIE IS OUR MESSIAH.


IT SHALL LEAD THE NONBELIEVERS TO FOLLOW US NOW!

WATCHMEN is, above all, a comic book about comic books.

This has been my argument against a WATCHMEN movie for going on 25 years. It's actually about the medium, so transposing it to film doesn't make a whole lot of sense...UNLESS it's a really smart adaptation that is about comic book movies and effectively does for the genre what the book did for comics. But that's almost impossible, and I doubt very seriously that anyone involved in this production had the chops to pull off a once-in-a-lifetime grand slam like that.

The really sad thing is that there is no way to recapture the feeling of reading WATCHMEN when it came out. I remember buying the first issue in this little comic shop by the bowling alley where I bowled in a YABA league along with my usual pile of X-MEN, BATMAN, GI JOE, etc. and I just thought it looked cool. But it was something really, really new. Different. Very serious. Grim. And really kind of about the real world as much as anything else. It was shocking, exhilirating, exhausting, and completely compelling. Suddenly X-MEN seemed kind of lame and outdated. And the book totally keyed in on the Big Boogeyman of the mid-1980s, nuclear paranoia. It scared me to death that nuclear war was talked about so much and so often...Reader's Digest used to run these articles "How would you survive a nuclear war"...THE DAY AFTER was a lot scarier than any horror movie...and if you were into punk or hardcore it seemed like every other song was about Armageddon. The book took that and made it a viable, realistic context.

Now, kids don't even think about Armageddon so I can't help but think if WATCHMEN, in a socio-political context, is actually irrelevant to anyone born after 1980 or so anyway. Sure, that mean old Osama Bin Laden is still out there and we're apparently always at an "orange" terror alert but the cellphones still get text messages, the Xbox still turns on for a couple of hours of HALO WARS, and American Idol is on tonight. And the trains run on time.

What does that mean? It's time for a new WATCHMEN. And I don't think the movie is going to be it, but I wish that it was.

Ska_baron wrote:

Try again Barnes - months back you were ready to heap the praise all over this one. I dont need you backing out now, filling me with all these doubts about what I know to be true...


THIS MOVIE IS OUR MESSIAH.


IT SHALL LEAD THE NONBELIEVERS TO FOLLOW US NOW!

I'm thinking its going to bomb at the box office so badly it'll directly cause the end of the superhero movie fad.

This movie is going to rock.

I don't even care a whit if it is not 100% accurate. I just want to see Rorchach.

Steve"Bring IT!"Avery

Here's the thing, Ska...I failed my saving throw against the early marketing because it was designed to specifically attract the people who read the book- a very smart move, because that kept the naysayers at bay. That first trailer was almost 100% images and panels directly from the book and anyone who had read it with any retention could likely go through and map everything directly to the original panels and dialogue. And that first Comic Con poster from last year drawn by Dave Gibbons- it looked exactly like the original covers but it was a new image we'd never seen (The Comedian getting decked by *****). If that's not exciting to a WATCHMEN fan, I don't know what is.

At first, I did think Snyder was a good choice if only because he's got the heart to do it. But seeing recent clips, I wonder if he's got the directorial skill to pull it off. He knows no restraint, and that may be a problem. He has no finesse, he's all brute force. That's awesome for 300, maybe not awesome for WATCHMEN.

I hope that next week, when F:AT is all a-titter over the movie, that I'm the one proclaiming it the greatest comic book movie ever made. I hope that I'm calling it one of the best movies I've ever seen. But realistically, I know that probably won't be the case. But there's hope, at least.

It'll open strong, no doubt about it. I don't think it'll open like THE DARK KNIGHT did, but it'll be #1 with a sizeable take and likely a pre-Memorial day record. But I do think it'll drop sharply in the coming weeks and will probably be identified as a "minor" hit along the lines of the first HELLBOY.

Juniper wrote:

One of the reasons these superhero movies are so exciting to the nerd patrol is that they somehow vindicate that subculture. There's a collective sense of "you like us, you really, really like us! And our geeky enthusiasms, too!"

Jesus Juniper you act as if comic geeks are the only ones that have movies coming out.
I got one word for you.

Candyland.

OH, YEAH GAMERS! OUR TIME HAS COME!!!