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Rottenwatch: WATCHMEN

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Solo said:
Can't wait to see what Ebert says. Whether he loves it or takes a dump on it, Ill be reading.
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My guess is he'll dump on it. Ebert is good so long as nothing in the movie makes him feel uncomfortable at any point - because it's at those points that he stops being the rational critic I love and starts getting hung up on one particular factor of the film that makes him thumbs down it. Originally he shat on Aliens for this, he shat on Empire of the Sun for this - and many others I can't remember. I see a certain
rape
scene in this movie doing that to Ebert.
 
Scullibundo said:
My guess is he'll dump on it. Ebert is good so long as nothing in the movie makes him feel uncomfortable at any point - because it's at those points that he stops being the rational critic I love and starts getting hung up on one particular factor of the film that makes him thumbs down it. Originally he shat on Aliens for this, he shat on Empire of the Sun for this - and many others I can't remember. I see a certain
rape
scene in this movie doing that to Ebert.
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The thing I always liked about Ebert though is that he can see his mistakes later on. Doesn't change the fact that it's kinda dumb but at least it's something. :D
 
Guled said:
is reading the book necessary in order to watch the movie?
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It shouldn't be but some stuff will not be in the movie. If you want to read the probably best graphic novel ever created just get it. You probably won't regret it.
 
I'm starting to become much more optimistic about the film after the early reviews.

I was really skeptical even with the great trailer because 300 was just such a fucking terrible movie. Just pure shit. But if Snyder was following the comic close maybe that means the comic was fucking terrible (never read it).
Watchmen being one of the greatest comic books ever should reflect better on his talent (or lack thereof) I hope.

Edit: I love this negative review:

Kirk Honeycutt said:
The real disappointment is that the film does not transport an audience to another world, as 300 did.
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WTF? The only place 300 transported me was to the beer fridge to wipe its fucking memory from my mind.
 
AndersTheSwede said:
Edit: I love this negative review:

WTF? The only place 300 transported me was to the beer fridge to wipe its fucking memory from my mind.
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Amen brother. 300 is an enjoyable comic, but insanely overrated.

That review is also funny and complete garbage.
 
AndersTheSwede said:
I'm starting to become much more optimistic about the film after the early reviews.

I was really skeptical even with the great trailer because 300 was just such a fucking terrible movie. Just pure shit. But if Snyder was following the comic close maybe that means the comic was fucking terrible (never read it).
Watchmen being one of the greatest comic books ever should reflect better on his talent (or lack thereof) I hope.

Edit: I love this negative review:



WTF? The only place 300 transported me was to the beer fridge to wipe its fucking memory from my mind.
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Watch the 300 rifftrax, it was great.

http://www.rifftrax.com/rifftrax/300

SAMPLE
 
:lol at THR seriously? They have panned so many good movies, why don't you all just go watch it and make up your own opinions instead of following everyone elses?
 
AndersTheSwede said:
I'm starting to become much more optimistic about the film after the early reviews.

I was really skeptical even with the great trailer because 300 was just such a fucking terrible movie. Just pure shit. But if Snyder was following the comic close maybe that means the comic was fucking terrible (never read it).
Watchmen being one of the greatest comic books ever should reflect better on his talent (or lack thereof) I hope.

Edit: I love this negative review:



WTF? The only place 300 transported me was to the beer fridge to wipe its fucking memory from my mind.
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Amen. Snyder emphasizes actions way too much. That might work with 300 but for Watchmen I still think it's a bad fit. I just hope the acting is not too horrible, but considering the cast that's probably wishful thinking.
 
New review in Newsweek; pretty short, mostly negative; author says he hated 300, says he's read the graphic novel before and liked it, says he felt that Snyder stuck too closely to the source material:

"The long-awaited 'Watchmen' movie takes loyalty to new limits. And that's exactly what's wrong with it."

So there you go, I guess.

Personally: to the extent that this is going to differ from the graphic novel, to the extent that compromises had to be made - those things will already detract from it. This isn't Batman where he's been reinvented a bazillion times; this is a single contained story.
 
Dan said:
Well, let's be fair, the whole thing with the aliens waiting in the Earth's core for a million years before attacking was retarded.
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But how he gives it a thumbs down after Roeper makes it clear how retarded his recommendations for the week are is still pretty hilarious in that he tries to justify it through ignorance.
 
So if the movie sticks TOO closely to its source material, it's bad? If it deviates TOO much from its source material, it's bad? I'm scratching my head here. What the hell did Newsweek want? I understand changing some things
like the squid
for the sake of making the movie work on screen, but as long as it does, why complain that its too familiar? If anything, for many people, this will be their only experience with Watchmen. I don't know how many people want to see this movie so bad, but refuse to read the graphic novel. I want to slap the shit out of every one of them. So the closer this stays to the graphic novel, the better.
 
JdFoX187 said:
So if the movie sticks TOO closely to its source material, it's bad? If it deviates TOO much from its source material, it's bad? I'm scratching my head here. What the hell did Newsweek want? I understand changing some things
like the squid
for the sake of making the movie work on screen, but as long as it does, why complain that its too familiar? If anything, for many people, this will be their only experience with Watchmen. I don't know how many people want to see this movie so bad, but refuse to read the graphic novel. I want to slap the shit out of every one of them. So the closer this stays to the graphic novel, the better.
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One would infer that even with the various script changes, the reviewer felt it did not break away from the source material enough.

I don't really see this as uhhh, a problem. So... yeah.
 
JdFoX187 said:
So if the movie sticks TOO closely to its source material, it's bad? If it deviates TOO much from its source material, it's bad? I'm scratching my head here. What the hell did Newsweek want? I understand changing some things
like the squid
for the sake of making the movie work on screen, but as long as it does, why complain that its too familiar? If anything, for many people, this will be their only experience with Watchmen. I don't know how many people want to see this movie so bad, but refuse to read the graphic novel. I want to slap the shit out of every one of them. So the closer this stays to the graphic novel, the better.
Click to expand...

I would argue that there's no point to make a filmed version of a novel if your soul purpose is to stay as close to the source material as possible--especially if the source material is a graphic novel already. That's Sin City's ultimate pitfall--anyone who had read the comics had already seen the movie--they just weren't actually moving and required an iota of imagination. The goal of a director taking up a novel should be to make it his own and refine the familiar elements into something that doesn't deviate drastically from the source, but does deviate enough to encapsulate new meaning and relevancy that the original lacked. In essence, the goal should be to take a cliche and provide it a new dimension to make it relevant yet again--restructure the familiar.

From what I've seen thus far, the movie is basically a motion picturebook for people who can't imagine what life would be like between the panels of the comic. I'm excited about it, but I also don't want a shot for shot movie of the comic.
 
jimmbow said:
I love reading some of the Rotten Tomatoes reviews. Most of the people are just a bunch of wanna-be's that use big words and complex sentances to try to sound intelligent. And it fails!
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Seriously. I see that all the time and it makes me scratch my head.

The movie is ultimately undone by its own reverence; there’s simply no room for these characters and stories to breathe of their own accord, and even the most fastidiously replicated scenes can feel glib and truncated.
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WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN???



Here's my favorite, this one is from The Dark Knight.

It's jam-packed with flawlessly designed set-pieces and skullduggery, sure, but it's also shrouded in grim portent, overlaid with a filigree of despair, and, for good measure, covered in a patina of dire consequence.
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Wait, so your complaint is that "it's dark"?
 
I hope
Ozymandias lives at the end and Night Owl II and Comedian II visit the mother in law during Christmastime
at the end of the movie.

If there is too much changes as in the leaked script, I shall hate this movie forever
with the Night Owl bit unless Rorschach kills Ozymandias instead if Snyder wants to do something completely different ;)
.
 
Matt_C said:
I hope
Ozymandias lives at the end and Night Owl II and Comedian II visit the mother in law during Christmastime
at the end of the movie.

If there is too much changes as in the leaked script, I shall hate this movie forever
with the Night Owl bit unless Rorschach kills Ozymandias instead if Snyder wants to do something completely different ;)
.
Click to expand...

I don't know whether to tell you that the ending is just as you want or it's the same as you fear it shouldn't be...

To keep the curiosity and excitement intact, I'll shush but... If you really want to know...

Ozy lives :)
 
ZealousD said:
Seriously. I see that all the time and it makes me scratch my head.



WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN???



Here's my favorite, this one is from The Dark Knight.



Wait, so your complaint is that "it's dark"?
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:lol wtf? its like they pulled out a thesaurus and went crazy.
 
JzeroT1437 said:
I would argue that there's no point to make a filmed version of a novel if your soul purpose is to stay as close to the source material as possible--especially if the source material is a graphic novel already. That's Sin City's ultimate pitfall--anyone who had read the comics had already seen the movie--they just weren't actually moving and required an iota of imagination. The goal of a director taking up a novel should be to make it his own and refine the familiar elements into something that doesn't deviate drastically from the source, but does deviate enough to encapsulate new meaning and relevancy that the original lacked. In essence, the goal should be to take a cliche and provide it a new dimension to make it relevant yet again--restructure the familiar.

From what I've seen thus far, the movie is basically a motion picturebook for people who can't imagine what life would be like between the panels of the comic. I'm excited about it, but I also don't want a shot for shot movie of the comic.
Click to expand...
If you're making an adaptation of a certain medium, why would you want to change the source material though? I've read Watchmen three times and I'm excited to just see everything come alive. There's only so much you can get from reading words and looking at the pictures. Seeing them in live action, watching their manurisms, hearing their voices and looking at it from a new perspective is a wonderful thing. Looking over all the script changes, it's embarrassing to think of what the movie would have been like if it had been handled by someone with less respect than Zach Snyder.

There have been plenty of changes to the novel to make it into a movie. Dave Gibbons even drew two extra pages of content, which I thought was a nice thing to do. Sure, you can't make an exact copy. But why not try to get as close as possible? Otherwise, you're just pissing in the wind and you might as well call it something other than Watchmen.
 
quadriplegicjon said:
:lol wtf? its like they pulled out a thesaurus and went crazy.
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They remind me of the descriptions of dishes you see on the menu at a fancy restaurant. Just absurdly over-the-top and retarded.
 
JzeroT1437 said:
I would argue that there's no point to make a filmed version of a novel if your soul purpose is to stay as close to the source material as possible--especially if the source material is a graphic novel already. That's Sin City's ultimate pitfall--anyone who had read the comics had already seen the movie--they just weren't actually moving and required an iota of imagination. The goal of a director taking up a novel should be to make it his own and refine the familiar elements into something that doesn't deviate drastically from the source, but does deviate enough to encapsulate new meaning and relevancy that the original lacked. In essence, the goal should be to take a cliche and provide it a new dimension to make it relevant yet again--restructure the familiar.

From what I've seen thus far, the movie is basically a motion picturebook for people who can't imagine what life would be like between the panels of the comic. I'm excited about it, but I also don't want a shot for shot movie of the comic.
Click to expand...


This is why I like Neil Gaiman. For Stardust he made the comment that he didn't want people to see a film that tried to be to much like the book and failed, and gave the writers his blessing to make it their own.
 
polyh3dron said:
Does anyone know where I can find Blade Runner reviews from 1982 when it first came out?
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NYT:

THE view of the future offered by Ridley Scott's muddled yet mesmerizing ''Blade Runner'' is as intricately detailed as anything a science-fiction film has yet envisioned. The year is 2019, the place Los Angeles, the landscape garish but bleak. The city is a canyon bounded by industrial towers, some of which belch fire. Advertising billboards, which are everywhere, now feature lifelike electronic people who are the size of giants. The police cruise both horizontally and vertically on their patrol routes, but there is seldom anyone to arrest, because the place is much emptier than it used to be. In an age of space travel, anyone with the wherewithal has presumably gone away. Only the dregs remain.

''Blade Runner'' begins with a stunning shot of this futuristic city, accompanied by the rumbling of Vangelis's eerie, highly effective score. It proceeds to tell the story of Rick Deckard and his battle with the replicants, a story based on Philip K. Dick's novel ''Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?'' In brief: replicants are manmade creatures that possess all human attributes except feelings. They have been built to serve as slaves in Earth colonies that are Off World, i.e., elsewhere. Whenever the replicants rebel, the job of eliminating them is given to a special, skilled hunter. This expert is called a blade runner.

Rick Deckard is the best of the blade runners, now retired. He is as hard-boiled as any film noir detective, with much the same world view. So when he is told, at the beginning of ''Blade Runner,'' that an especially dangerous group of replicants is on the loose, and is offered the job of hunting them, he can't say no. Even in the murkiest reaches of science-fiction lore, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

''Blade Runner,'' which opens today at the Criterion Center and other theaters, follows Deckard's love affair with a beautiful replicant named Rachael, who is special assistant to the high-level industrialist who created her. It also follows Deckard's tracking down of the runaways, most notably their white-haired, demoniclooking leader, Batty (Rutger Hauer). These events involve quite a bit of plot, but they're nothing in the movie's excessively busy overall scheme. ''Blade Runner'' is crammed to the gills with much more information than it can hold.

Science-fiction devotees may find ''Blade Runner'' a wonderfully meticulous movie and marvel at the comprehensiveness of its vision. Even those without a taste for gadgetry cannot fail to appreciate the degree of effort that has gone into constructing a film so ambitious and idiosyncratic. The special effects are by Douglas Trumbull, Richard Yuricich and David Dryer, and they are superb. So is Laurence G. Paull's production design. But ''Blade Runner'' is a film that special effects could have easily run away with, and run away with it they have.

And it's also a mess, at least as far as its narrative is concerned. Almost nothing is explained coherently, and the plot has great lapses, from the changeable nature of one key character to the frequent disappearances of another. The story lurches along awkwardly, helped not at all by some ponderous stabs at developing Deckard's character. As an old-fashioned detective cruising his way through the space age, Deckard is both tedious and outre.

At several points in the story, Deckard is called on to wonder whether Rachael has feelings. This seems peculiar, because the icy, poised Rachael, played by Sean Young as a 1940's heroine with spaceage trimmings, seems a lot more expressive than Deckard, who is played by Harrison Ford. Mr. Ford is, for a movie so darkly fanciful, rather a colorless hero; he fades too easily into the bleak background. And he is often upstaged by Rutger Hauer, who in this film and in ''Night Hawks'' appears to be specializing in fiendish roles. Mr. Hauer is properly cold-blooded here, but there is something almost humorous behind his nastiness. In any case, he is by far the most animated performer in a film intentionally populated by automatons.

Mr. Scott, who made his mark in ''Alien'' by showing a creature bursting forth from the body of one of its victims, tries hard to hit the same note here. One scene takes place in an eyeball factory. Two others show Deckard in vicious, sadistic fights with women. One of these fights features strange calisthenics and unearthly shrieks.

The end of the film is both gruesome and sentimental. Mr. Scott can't have it both ways, any more than he can expect overdecoration to carry a film that has neither strong characters nor a strong story. That hasn't stopped him from trying, even if it perhaps should have.
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I was wondering if there was a site where there were a whole bunch of them.. RT only seems to have new ones.

I'm interested in seeing how many people completely shat on Blade Runner who came around later on and comparing that to how these same people are reviewing Watchmen.
 
Matt_C said:
I hope
Ozymandias lives at the end and Night Owl II and Comedian II visit the mother in law during Christmastime
at the end of the movie.

If there is too much changes as in the leaked script, I shall hate this movie forever
with the Night Owl bit unless Rorschach kills Ozymandias instead if Snyder wants to do something completely different ;)
.
Click to expand...
Comedian II?
 
Buttonbasher said:
Comedian II?
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I think he's just implying stuff based on a comment by her after they leave her mom's house about wanting a new costume with a mask and a gun.
 
This is going to involve a lot of WMG, but...
The squid... if someone survived that, what would happen to them? Would they be locked in a looney asylum for the rest of their lives? Would it make a great insane supervillian? What if the lone survivor was a little kid? I DEMAND ANSWERS, MY MIND IS WANDERING...
 
twinturbo2 said:
This is going to involve a lot of WMG, but...
The squid... if someone survived that, what would happen to them? Would they be locked in a looney asylum for the rest of their lives? Would it make a great insane supervillian? What if the lone survivor was a little kid? I DEMAND ANSWERS, MY MIND IS WANDERING...
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Nothing happens to them. There were alot of survivors from the incident and they lived a regular life e.g. The new frontiersman crew, etc etc.


EDIT: Double post :/
 
shagg_187 said:
Nothing happens to them. There were alot of survivors from the incident and they lived a regular life e.g. The new frontiersman crew, etc etc.


EDIT: Double post :/
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THAT'S NOT FUN. And I doubt that Alan would allow any survivors of the tragedy to live a happy life afterwards. Fuck it, I really need to read the thing now. DAMN YOU IO9.COM FOR PIQUING MY INTEREST!
 
twinturbo2 said:
THAT'S NOT FUN. And I doubt that Alan would allow any survivors of the tragedy to live a happy life afterwards. Fuck it, I really need to read the thing now. DAMN YOU IO9.COM FOR PIQUING MY INTEREST!
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You haven't read it and you spoiled it for yourself? :/

Ok. Go and read NOW!
 
You know I was thinking to myself earlier today that Watchmen could wind up like Blade Runner, i.e. critically divided and later loved, I am happy and not altogether surprised to see the same sentiment starting to boil up in this thread.

I suppose we should have figured from the get go that Watchmen would not please everyone.
 
AndersTheSwede said:
I'm starting to become much more optimistic about the film after the early reviews.

I was really skeptical even with the great trailer because 300 was just such a fucking terrible movie. Just pure shit. But if Snyder was following the comic close maybe that means the comic was fucking terrible (never read it).
Watchmen being one of the greatest comic books ever should reflect better on his talent (or lack thereof) I hope.
Click to expand...

300 is a 30 minute read; and Snyder just slow mo'd the fuck out of it to justify getting it in theaters.

It's a cool moment in history and whatnot; but that movie fucking blows and the comic really wasn't one of Miller's best.

I don't know. The main thing that bothers me about Watchmen so far is everybody is young and tight.

I'm really hoping we get Miss Baggy Pussy and Erectile Dysfunction Man in the movie.
 
So... what's the deal with IMAX. Does this movie hit every IMAX or only certain ones? My local one has two ocean documentaries playing. I see no signs of Watchmen on movietickets.com or their official website. The Jonas Borthers apparently plays from the Feb 27th- March 5th. Not at my location. ...
 
ZealousD said:
Seriously. I see that all the time and it makes me scratch my head.



WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN???
Click to expand...

I read it is a criticism that despite the fact that the scenes, aesthetically, look very much like those in the graphic novels they still nevertheless feel hollow and a bit artificial. It's actually a criticism I've seen in a few of the reviews.

Some of the RT criticisms I can definitely understand and appreciate (especially the ones about the film sticking too closely to the book), but Kirk Honeycutt's was one that really pissed me off. His criticisms basically boiled down to: the costumes don't look good, the fighting isn't as good as in asian cinema and the human crimefighters act, well, human. It's definitely a review that didn't mean shit in my opinion.

I'm still approaching the film with an air of anxiety. I enjoyed the book, but after 300 I can honestly say that simply re-creating a great graphic novel with meticulous detail isn't impressive to me. I'd rather see a director take the necessary creative liberties and alienate some of the über hardcore fanbase than simply recreate the panels from a book.
 
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