Straight off the bat, sorry for not posting on Friday, I had a nice depressing post about disappointment, when I realized it just wasn't in any way true or on point, so I scrapped it. On the other hand, I got accepted into the MDiv Program at the Candler School of Theology, so yay. Now, on to the good stuff...
I'm going to try to focus on the movie today, since tomorrow will be about the original comic. As it stands after my first viewing, Watchmen is a good movie. Not a great movie but not a bad one either. It's definitely a bit too long, and could have served from another rewrite in certain areas, but overall it does well.
While I think that the length could have been easily fixed by them making it into a nice 12 part HBO miniseries, what the movie had going for it was that it did well in keeping tight to the story. However, this was also part of the bad side too. By sticking so hard to the story, it was able to appeal to the fanboy in me, but it also felt to drag down in unnecessary parts. By trying so hard to stay true to the source material, it kept making me think why certain parts were in and others were out.
That being said, my main fear in the making of this movie was realized, and that is what really disappointed me. The violence exists in the comic, yes, but it is in very short and controlled bursts, that allow it to reach its full effect. In the movie, fight scenes are extended out to be sure to show shattering bones and tons of bloody hits. Yeah, that makes for a good action movie, but that's not what Watchmen is to me.
Alongside this was the (in my opinion) gratuitous sex scene. Yes, they have sex in the comic, but five minutes of thrusting and moaning didn't quite serve to move the plot along very well, when that piece of the plot didn't even seem to be much in focus during the rest of the film.
However, my main fanboy rant has to come with the change in the ending. It's not a bad change, in fact it works within the confines of the movie and maybe it is just because I've read the book so many times that it has become ingrained into my skull, but I really like Moore's ending and it makes perfect sense to me. I know that a big reason for at least part of the change is the "post 9/11 world" that we live in, but I don't see how this change was any different in relation to this, so why not keep it the same, or at least similar?
Those are just the downers though, the rest of the movie holds up really well. I like the choices for Nite Owl II and Rorschach, although I didn't much care for Silk Spectre II, that could just be me. And for all of this nagging, I still would like to see it again to pick it apart one more time, and I will agree with a lot of people that the opening credits sequence was quite possibly the coolest part of the entire film.
However, you can save yourself a lot of trouble with all this, if you just drop $15 and pick up the collection. Now that it's out on film, I'm sure you can find it just about anywhere. It is a fantastic read, but we'll get into that tomorrow.
I'm going to try to focus on the movie today, since tomorrow will be about the original comic. As it stands after my first viewing, Watchmen is a good movie. Not a great movie but not a bad one either. It's definitely a bit too long, and could have served from another rewrite in certain areas, but overall it does well.
While I think that the length could have been easily fixed by them making it into a nice 12 part HBO miniseries, what the movie had going for it was that it did well in keeping tight to the story. However, this was also part of the bad side too. By sticking so hard to the story, it was able to appeal to the fanboy in me, but it also felt to drag down in unnecessary parts. By trying so hard to stay true to the source material, it kept making me think why certain parts were in and others were out.
That being said, my main fear in the making of this movie was realized, and that is what really disappointed me. The violence exists in the comic, yes, but it is in very short and controlled bursts, that allow it to reach its full effect. In the movie, fight scenes are extended out to be sure to show shattering bones and tons of bloody hits. Yeah, that makes for a good action movie, but that's not what Watchmen is to me.
Alongside this was the (in my opinion) gratuitous sex scene. Yes, they have sex in the comic, but five minutes of thrusting and moaning didn't quite serve to move the plot along very well, when that piece of the plot didn't even seem to be much in focus during the rest of the film.
However, my main fanboy rant has to come with the change in the ending. It's not a bad change, in fact it works within the confines of the movie and maybe it is just because I've read the book so many times that it has become ingrained into my skull, but I really like Moore's ending and it makes perfect sense to me. I know that a big reason for at least part of the change is the "post 9/11 world" that we live in, but I don't see how this change was any different in relation to this, so why not keep it the same, or at least similar?
Those are just the downers though, the rest of the movie holds up really well. I like the choices for Nite Owl II and Rorschach, although I didn't much care for Silk Spectre II, that could just be me. And for all of this nagging, I still would like to see it again to pick it apart one more time, and I will agree with a lot of people that the opening credits sequence was quite possibly the coolest part of the entire film.
However, you can save yourself a lot of trouble with all this, if you just drop $15 and pick up the collection. Now that it's out on film, I'm sure you can find it just about anywhere. It is a fantastic read, but we'll get into that tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment