Watchmen Movie

Wow... I'm disappointed that was cut from the theatrical. It makes me excited to see what other stuff will be included in the Director's Cut on DVD.

 

That is a great clip. I am counting the days for this Blu-ray.

 

Merlin_Ambrosius69: Given that the scene is only a lead into a better, much more moving scene the less the stellar performances don't feel like a big detriment IMO, especially considering the weight of emotions in the following scene.

 

I agree the next sequence goes from gripping to powerful, but that's no reason to leave in dead weight up front. Snyder is 98% of a great film-maker, IMO, but scenes like this one (set-up dialogue with unconvincing actors) make me cringe. What follows is essential and maybe should have stayed in the movie, but I'm glad the set-up got trimmed.

 

A list of theatrical screenings of the Watchmen Director's Cut, here in the U.S.:

Dates: July 17th - July 23rd, 2009

New York: AMC Empire 25, 234 W. 42nd, New York, NY
Los Angeles: AMC Media Plaza 6, 770 N. 1st Street, Burbank, CA
Dallas: AMC Mesquite 30, 19919 IH 635, Mesquite, TX
Minneapolis: Kerasotes Block E 15, 600 Hennepin Ave South, Minneapolis, MN

***dammit, Chicago. You can get the Olympics, but the Watchmen DC is just too much to ask for?

 

If thing has more depth than 300 i am going to watch it.

Opinions?

 

Oh, it definitely has more depth than 300. Although 300 is pretty much as much pure shallow fun as you could get.

 

The 300 and Watchmen each feature different thematic elements, but I think their presentation reflects their different authors.

Frank Miller's approach is obviously a little more heavy, but that doesn't mean his works fail on a thematic level.

Miller's themes in 300 resonated with me. There's not many stories today that deal with the importance of duty, patriotism, and meeting aggression with strength and violence. Fighting the enemies of civilization is a dirty business, and 300 illustrates this very well.

There's no moral equivalence in 300. There's no option as to how to face overwhelming evil -- and it's not with appeasement.

I LOVE that Xerxes draws people in with understanding and empathy. He promises them a utopia, when he's actually enslaving them.

The themes in 300 aren't delicate, but they're present.

 

The only problem with that is that the Persians were far more tolerant of foreign beliefs and cultures than the Greeks, let alone the Spartans, ever were.

 

While the Greeks -- and especially the Spartans -- weren't saints, I'm not sure I'd completely agree with that. It's likely all of Western Civilization would've fallen had the Persians succeeded.

Again ... the Greeks weren't perfect, but the Persians were expansionist in nature, and subjugated natives all over the place. I'm thankful the Greeks -- no matter how imperfect they were -- took a stand.

On the topic ... I watched Watchmen on Blu-Ray last night, and it was a GREAT experience -- perfect picture. The added scenes worked well, too.

 

But it's Robert Wisden, man! Yeah, I'd heard Juliani popped into the longer cut a few months ago, but completely forgot about it until we sat down and watched it again the other night.

BTW, for those with a copy of the Blu-Ray and a BD-Live-connected player, you can watch director Zack Snyder's live commentary session directly from ComicCon on Saturday, at 9:30 PM Pacific time. Reportedly, you'll have a chance to ask questions of him via online chat.

 

My nagging sense of instinctive gut feeling guides me to believe that in decades to come, the film adaptation of "WATCHMEN" will become a fandom revered classic along the same lines that "BLADERUNNER" achieved long after its initial cinematic release.

 

If that's true, it'll be a shame - because Watchmen is no Blade Runner.

I'd compare it more to the overwrought fandom accorded to Equilibrium.

 

As for Equilibrium...it just gets better with every showing, as far as I'm concerned; this film's rep and appreciation will only grow as time goes on, and people can separate it from the stigma of The Matrix.

I've met Kurt Wimmer personally, and he is a really amiable and nice guy. Very patient, straightforward, and real. And after talking to him, it's clear he has a good idea of what he's doing, and wants to both satisfy fans, and contribute something new and creative to action filmmaking.

He also has a really cool and endlessly-energetic kid (Wolfgang/"Wolf"/"Pup"), and he was also a blast to be around. Finally, he even adds cool and unique touches to screenings (like providing all of the concessions himself). And the news that he's penning a more Dick-faithful Total Recall remake has me intrigued.

Kurt, you definitely have a fan for life.

 

I am inclined to agree with that. I just finished watching the Director's Cut for the first time. Its a brilliant film, and yeah I think its safe to say that Watchmen is the Blade Runner of comic book films.

 

Barely managed to finish this long, drawn-out torturously boring movie.
Damn, that was painful.

Hadn't read the comic, but got a lot of the details from the montage--well, sorta I guess.
Intellegence may be necessary to enjoy the movie, but it doesn't guarentee enjoyment.

 

I'm glad I didn't pay money to see this garbage.
Honestly, how can they make a boring comic-book movie? OK, Ben Afflick managed to make the character of DareDevil boring, and the recent BatMan and Superman movies have been lifeless shells (Dark Knight was OK, but over-hyped because Heath Ledger's death), but this is a super-team in a very, very boring movie. One good character, and a bunch of horrible ones who spend all their time whining.
It was like sitting in the breakroom at a public high school. Left-wing slanted politics about how evil republicans (especially Nixon) are ready to plunge the world into nuclear war after having ripped apart the constitution... And the simplistic all criminals need to be killed murder happy gun freaks designed make the NRA look like even bigger idiots than they are.
Where to even begin. Pseudo-intellectual poserism is about the best I can say. I kept waiting for at least a good FX shot, but the glowing blue god effects were old after about 5 minutes, and it didn't get better than your average PS2 video game after that.
As for super powers... There was the blue god, and everyone else was a gadgeteer with different tools and martial arts.

 

Side-by-side with right-wing slanted politics demonizing liberals.

 

Yeah Watchmen isn't slanted one way or the other. It damns political and popular culture more so than anything. All though if it has a target it is Reaganism

 

Although I read Moore is a Freemason, I believe he's definitely more of a leftist -- especially after reading his intro to V For Vendetta. Keep in mind, I'm speaking from my worldview.

However, that being said, I believe in Watchmen, he created one of the most intellectually honest work pieces of work I've ever read. In doing so, I think he traveled down the path of moral equivalence a bit, but at no level for me to get my underwear in a bunch.

Rorschach and Veidt obviously form the political dichotomy in this story, and Moore examines them both in their most extreme. Veidt/Ozymandias is drawn as the cerebral intellectual who thinks he himself can achieve a one-world, Kumbaya-singing, hybrid-car driving, peacefest. The only catch is that he has to kill millions and guard his new world with a facade of lies.

On the other hand, Rorschach is seen to be so detached that he forgets society's laws all together, and thinks he can dispense his own brand of justice. It was nice watching him cleave a child rapist/murderer's head in two, but that's not his job, and once can only imagine a world where everyone goes about enforcing laws as they see it. Chaos would ensue.

In then end, we see that truth must be spoken to power, and that true peace isn't the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice.

 

I strongly disagree with this overreaching critique. In fact I had the opposite reaction compared to Koohii's on every point: I find the movie enthralling on a story/character level, as well as visually, and I don't think it's boring in the slightest; I perceive and accept that the "evil Republicans" sub-plot is the stuff of typical comic-book extremism and exaggeration, and therefore appropriate to this inflated-reality, quasi-satirical story; I do not perceive the movie to be putting forth the idea that "all criminals need to be killed murder happy gun freaks designed make the NRA look like even bigger idiots than they are." In all truth, I'm not exactly sure what that sentence is supposed to mean -- I get lost in the syntax no matter how many times I read it -- but I am certain that neither the movie, nor the comics it's based on, are advancing the position that the NRA are idiots or that all criminals deserve death. Did someone mention oversimplification? Because if nuances have been overlooked, or complexities ignored, it's a fair bet it's occurring in this spurious, under-educated, overheated critique, and not in the film under review.

 

Allow me to punctuate to clarify the confusing sentence. My appologies for the lack of clarity--I get that way when typing too fast late at night.

"See those silly right wingers? See how their solution is to kill everything? Just like those NRA freeks who need machine guns to hunt deer. Look how they completely misunderstand our attempts to provide proper therapy and rehibilitation for criminals. They call us shallow bleeding-hearts. They just needed to be hugged more as children."

It could be that I completely missed tons of details that were worked into this movie because I am not familiar with the comic. It could be that the comic was a great piece of literature that is truly wonderful. If this is the case, the movie failed to convey any of that in detail. All we got to see was a bunch of washed out heroes with no background into what they were in their hey-day. And after watching this movie, I have no interest whatsoever in looking into the comic.
So, I have to say, this movie did not do any justice to the comic at all.
Thus, I have to list it as not just a bad movie, but a horrible one.

And that is all I have to say on the matter.

Incidentally, if you want a movie that intellegently argues both sides of the death penalty and mocks both of them, check out "Guilty as Charged" starring Rod Steiger. Excellent movie in all respects.

 

You admit not having read the comic... then you say the movie did not do justice to the comic.

If you're not familiar with the comic you're not in a position to say whether or not the movie did justice to the comic.