Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

[GoldenPilgrim]

Wait...so...
Is that seriously a finished scene, like, as it is going to appear on the big screen, sound and all?

Is he adapting Watchmen or Streets of Rage?

[domino harvey]

Armond White is going to give himself an ulcer worrying about whether he should pretend to like this movie

[cdnchris]

Is that music really appearing in the film?

Jesus.

I don't know what's more offensive, the scene or the fact it looks like aint-it-cool is jizzing their pants over it.

[jbeall]

It's time to give Harry Knowles another wedgie.

[domino harvey]

I can understand the appeal for a lot of films that I have no interest in, but I simply cannot compute how anyone who watched that clip could think, "Hey, give me nearly three hours of that, please!"

[Murdoch]

Good lord, it's like an Uwe Boll movie.

[jbeall]

Not even. It's just another formulaic fight scene where keystone cops (okay, rioting inmates) get hip-tossed, somehow getting knocked out cold in the process. (Do they ever get back up and fight? Pussies.) I don't think this clip is anything we haven't seen before in a thousand other movies; what I don't get is Harry Knowles' ecstatic blogpost. I know he's a psycho fanboy and all, but even by his lamentable standards, that's really over the top.

[knives]

Moore: 0 Hollywood's big prick: 6

Honestly I just want some one to adapt his work perfectly so that Moore can have an stroke over such a paradox for himself.

[cdnchris]

What exactly was the moment that was so amazing we should save it for the big screen? ](*,)

[Cde.]

i think it was Night Owl's totally awesome Batman move from the Owl Ship.

[JonathanM]

Why can't people get that excited about good films?

"Click here for the bit in The New World when Smith returns back to the English camp. Warning : This scene is so AWESOME and TOTALLY SWEET that you want to save it for the big screen. AWESOME... AWESOME... AWESOME..."

I'm sure that out there somewhere is a parallel universe in which art house cinema gets received with endless hype whilst mainstream blockbusters are treated with complete contempt.

"Dude... it's in English! Why would I want to go and see a film in English? I speak it all the time!"

[Cde.]

"Click here for the bit in The New World when Smith returns back to the English camp. Warning : This scene is so AWESOME and TOTALLY SWEET that you want to save it for the big screen. AWESOME... AWESOME... AWESOME..."

Oh man, I wish.

In all seriousness though, I'll probably be saying things like that when The Tree of Life nears release.

[knives]

[JonathanM]

Nice.

That's a very slender version of Moore. Doubtless he has the same personal trainer as Night Owl.

[nsps]

Just because I don't feel like talking Moore I'll go with this as I think it is entirely possible. Verhoeven has been doing it for years (Starship Troopers) He just needed to have the suits look stupid and have the only violence shown be absolutely disgusting. As for 300, I think it was accidental subversion, but I still enjoy Spartan Slo-mo Storybook Time nevertheless.

Hmmm. I think you're right about Starship Troopers but I think Starship Troopers is a much more limited critique than Watchmen. ST never, for even one second, suggests that the humans shouldn't be fighting or that their sacrifices are for nothing, instead it takes potshots at the suits and makes it clear that there's not much glamour to be had in the actual waging of war.

I've grown a bit tired of hearing about the political satire of ST. The film has a few satirical vignettes, to be sure, but it mostly just feels like a video game. Kill a bunch of smaller giant insects, then take on the big one. Repeat.

And while the macho posturing of "300"—coupled with its combination of homophobia and homoeroticism—is laughable, I am fairly certain that that isn't the intent.

[Nothing]

Are you two joking? Starship Troopers quite clearly implies that the humans started the war with the bugs and all of the leads (not only the 'suits') are repulsive aryan stereotypes. Every Verhoeven film from this period (Robocop through to Starship Troopers) is a satirical masterpiece, as subversive as Hollywood cinema can get. Showgirls being the coup de grace.

[nsps]

It's been years since I watched the movie—like when I was in high school—but the action sequences were so redundant and boring that no amount of subversion could have saved it for me.

This is awesome. Who did it?

[luridedith]

First look at a completed scene from "Watchmen". I have to admit I laughed throughout. It's even worse than we thought.

Oh my god, its like a parody of every vapid superhero blockbuster of the past couple of years. Its completely distilled all the elements that make the fanboys wet (obnoxious "badass" macho posturing, lame RAWK music, swooooshing sound effects and tacky slow motion where every mundane movement is ridiculously underlined) and just made the entire movie simply out of the elements. Are we sure Zack Snyder is for real and this isn't some kind of colossal joke? (I LOVE Showgirls and Verhoeven by the way - he has a snide, vulgar sense of humour that dull, humourless Snyder lacks)

I'm so sick of every single major release basically being empty, aggressively juvenile 12 year old geek fantasies. Do high school outsider geeks even exist anymore considering the jocks/preps/masses have the exact same taste and interests now?

[Binker]

High School geeks read Sartre now

[knives]

Nsps, I don't know who made that
Luridedith, I really hope that he actually got it and is doing the subtlest parody ever. If so he got it right. That's the last string of hope I have. If my friend who saw the prison scene on teevee is any indication though, people won't get it.

[Jarpie]

That "complete" scene looks just so god-awful, like many here have already said so. I hated 300, and I was very sucpicious about Snyder "directing" Watchmen the movie from the beginning, and my suspicions were apparently proven right. And what the hell were those stupid grins before and after the lousy fight?

I'm sure many in here agree, that Terry Gilliam should've directed Watchmen, visually and thematically probably only director who could've made it as it should have been made.

[jbeall]

The grins aren't so bad, as they're at least consistent with the characters' newly-rediscovered happiness at being in costume again after a long hiatus.

And re: Gilliam directing, I think he'd have too much respect for the source material to even take the project on. I'm coming around to the view that The Watchmen shouldn't even be filmed in the first place. <sigh> when does Blade IV come out?

[nsps]

And re: Gilliam directing, I think he'd have too much respect for the source material to even take the project on. I'm coming around to the view that The Watchmen shouldn't even be filmed in the first place. <sigh> when does Blade IV come out?

Isn't that what happened? I think Gilliam twice tackled the adaptation and twice deemed it unfilmable, at least as a single film. (I think he suggested a miniseries.)

[starmanof51]

And re: Gilliam directing, I think he'd have too much respect for the source material to even take the project on. I'm coming around to the view that The Watchmen shouldn't even be filmed in the first place. <sigh> when does Blade IV come out?

Isn't that what happened? I think Gilliam twice tackled the adaptation and twice deemed it unfilmable, at least as a single film. (I think he suggested a miniseries.)

A 12 episode HBO series was what I was hoping for.

[somnambulating]

I'm thinking, the extended Rorschach's Journal scenes tell you about as much as you need to know concerning the adaptation.

Watchmen the film will tend to excel in these inhuman moments where Snyder can lift directly from the already cinematic bits of Rorschach's Journal. This is why directors are usually steered away from using extensive Voice-over and score throughout a film; you have to be an absolute ape to botch the use of these tools in a scene. However, there are incredibly crucial human moments in the original story that call for more than narrated phantasmaghoria. If Snyder has the wrong philosophy of film, which plenty of evidence is pointing toward, the misdirection of the later type of scene ultimately presents us with an unbalanced storytelling, poor exposition of necessary information, and an over all lower cinematic experience.

Watchmen will do about as much as V For Vendetta.