[Film] Watchmen

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Postby Gendo'sPapa » Tue Mar 10, 2009 10:32 am

I enjoyed it. I plan to see it again before I make any final judgements but one thing did bother me.

Zack Synder needs to lay off the slow motion. It's a tool and should be used effectively. Shooting your film All in Slow Motion is not an effective use of said tool.

Seriously, they cut out things like Hollis Mason's death (a key device for Nite Owl II in the latter half of the film) but they have time to add an extra half hour to the narrative by shooting everything in slow motion.

Only thing that wasn't in slow mo was when Rorschach ate those canned beans. And even then you could tell Synder wanted to accentuate that third bite in can 2.

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Postby Shiro » Tue Mar 10, 2009 5:52 pm

Hollis Mason's death is on the extended cut. The studio made him shorten the movie. But I see your point.
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Postby Gendo'sPapa » Tue Mar 10, 2009 6:42 pm

Short Rant Here:

Oh, I know they shot Hollis' death, it can be glimpsed in the trailers- but one thing that is frustrating me lately is this whole trend with DIRECTOR'S CUT.

Director's now use it as a lazy way of circumventing making the best film possible for the theaters. I'm a filmmaker and a huge film dork (I prefer the film grain on my Eva 1.01 as opposed to the trailers super cleanliness) so I'm very much into the theatrical experience, and far too many times now have I had to pay to see a film, find it to be lacking something and then learn- Oh, we kept that stuff out for the Director's Cut.

A decade ago a film had to EARN it's Director's Cut. It had to be a film that because of it's impressive quality garnered the respect for fans to wonder, what's missing and can we see it? So years later the director would go back and reinsert that missing footage to make the alternate cut. In some cases it worked magic- ALIENS. In other cases it was a curiosity but hindered the film- Ridley Scott did his "Director's Cut" for Fox as a marketing gimmick and because people asked, he prefers the original.

Now it seems any film coming out is promised a DIRECTOR'S CUT. It's a weak marketing ploy to draw in more money. I love the Lord of the Rings but it really started there. The first two films were great theatrical endeavors and the Extended Cut's only enhanced them. Come the third film, while I'm not saying it was a lesser theatrical experience, Peter Jackson, knowing he had the Extended Cut coming, completely axed the death of Saruman- the key villain of the first two films- and instead choose to have more hack and slash moments. While I loved the Hack and Slash bits I much would've preferred to see the death of Saruman than 5 more minutes of that.

With Watchmen I'm just bugged that the film had so much slow motion it was a detriment to the story. I'd love if someone could time to see how much slow motion is actually in the film cause I promise, a good half hour of character beats and moments that could've enhanced the plot were lost for shots of Rorschach tying his shoes in SLOW MOTION.

I know it's the cliche film guy to bring up but I gotta give guys like Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen their dues. Those are guys who stand by their theatrical cuts and don't alter them, even though we know they shot the footage for far longer cuts of GANGS OF NEW YORK and ANNIE HALL respectively.


....of course after my rant I realize my hypocrisy since Hideaki Anno is doing nothing BUT changing Evangelion.

Oh well.....I ranted. A rant doesn't necessarily need to make sense.

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Postby drinian » Tue Mar 10, 2009 7:28 pm

Gendo'sPapa wrote:Oh, I know they shot Hollis' death, it can be glimpsed in the trailers- but one thing that is frustrating me lately is this whole trend with DIRECTOR'S CUT.

Director's now use it as a lazy way of circumventing making the best film possible for the theaters. I'm a filmmaker and a huge film dork (I prefer the film grain on my Eva 1.01 as opposed to the trailers super cleanliness) so I'm very much into the theatrical experience, and far too many times now have I had to pay to see a film, find it to be lacking something and then learn- Oh, we kept that stuff out for the Director's Cut.

Watchmen was nearly three hours long as it stands, and the experience of watching a film in a theater begins to break down at about that length... any more, and there would have to be an intermission. I would much rather allow the director to release an extended version for DVD in such a way that it can be enjoyed in a similar way to other long-form works like TV serials or novels; that is, viewable in segments. The fact of the matter is that the story as presented in the theatrical cut was already pretty dense for those of us who hadn't read the book.

Also, I really enjoyed the movie. Thinking about going back to see it in Imax.

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Postby Guyver Spawn » Tue Mar 10, 2009 7:43 pm

The Director Cut comes out this July on DVD which Zack said in a interview. The DC is three hours and 25 mins long (Holy Crap!).
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Postby Sharaz Destler » Wed Mar 11, 2009 12:26 pm

Hey there. Want to know what I found online on Monday? It seems on Newgrounds.com someone answered the question, "What would WATCHMEN look like if it were done as a Saturday morning cartoon?"

Here it is: [url]http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/485797[/url]

I guarantee you, your reactions will be somewhere between laughing yourself silly and moaning in despair. This thing is so funny, yet so wrong in so many ways.
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Postby Guyver Spawn » Wed Mar 11, 2009 3:08 pm

I already saw that and it looks very official. I'm suprise a studio never try to that back in the 80's or 90's.
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Postby THE Hal E. Burton 9000 » Wed Mar 11, 2009 7:55 pm

Guyver Spawn wrote:I'm suprise a studio never try to that back in the 80's or 90's.
um, they tried

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmen_%28film%29#Failed_projects
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Postby Guyver Spawn » Thu Mar 12, 2009 5:05 pm

I was talking about a TV show for kids since Robocop and Rambo had kids shows in the late 80's and early 90's. The 1990 Watchmen screenplay was awful and it had nothing to do with GN at all.
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Postby Mr. Tines » Thu Mar 12, 2009 6:48 pm

Enjoyable film, good adaptation, best Hollywood big number release I've seen in many a year. The film's 18 certificate was qualified with "strong bloody violence" which I think is overclaiming that side of it more than a bit (and making no reference whatsoever to Dr Manhattan's nuclear weapon).
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Postby honsou » Thu Mar 12, 2009 9:40 pm

Warning review will have spoilers

Before I go into anything I would say that this was the best comic book movie of all time. It had moments of pure brilliance, the scenes on mars with Dr. Manhattan and Silk Specter were enthralling. In general the preformances of Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan and Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach were amazing. The film really did stay faithful to the comic to great detail, really a great job here. Also the time period feels just about right, there would be no way to do this story with any less time and there was no way you could of released a movie that was longer then 2 and a half hours long.

That being said there were 3 problems with the film, the biggest is the fight scenes. Everyone except for the last one, had that cheesy slow motion and a odd focus on the most brutal acts of violence. It almost felt like they needed to keep the audience's attention with the acts of violence, sort of underestimating the intelligence of the audience (or hell maybe they are right, but regardless it took away from the movie)

Second the ending, this is not because there was no squid, I had come to terms before seeing the movie that they couldn't put that in the film. It was really the execution of it, with Ozymandias's new plan blaming it on Dr.Manhattan instead of an alien race, it does not seem logical that because of this the USSR would ally with America automatically. Would the USSR, knowing that Manhattan was from America think it was an American attack of some sort? Even though he was out of the picture in everyone elses eyes, wouldn't the Russians think it would be some sort of trick? Also (and this is really more of a nit picking point) I hated how Ozymandias knew when he turned on the TV that the world would just unite, it was so much more powerful in the comic when he sees it on the TV and screams "I did it!". Then they took out the last interaction between Manhattan and Ozymandias that was really special, and replaced it with Nite Owl beating the shit out of him.

Last is really a minor point but for me an important one. In Rorschach's back story, when he finds the little girls killer. At the end he kills the man with a butchers cleaver. This quite frankly really disappointed me, originally Rorschach killed the man by lighting a fire and walking away while the man screamed for mercy. That sort of scene would better explain the sort of emotional detachment you see though out the rest of his life, the killing with the cleaver felt like another instance of trying to add blood and gore to the movie, in which it did not need any.

Despite its flaws, its an amazing movie and I'd recommend it to anyone

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Postby Mr. Tines » Fri Mar 13, 2009 5:35 pm

honsou wrote:Last is really a minor point but for me an important one.


Yes, that was, I felt, the most gratuitous change.
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Postby NAveryW » Fri Mar 13, 2009 6:52 pm

I saw it last night and loved it way more than I expected to. I found it thoroughly engaging throughout the entirety of the film, which is something I can only say about this and The Dark Knight (and possibly some other stuff that I saw so long ago that I forgot about).
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Postby NemZ » Sun Mar 15, 2009 2:24 am

honsou wrote:Last is really a minor point but for me an important one.


They probably thought the scene would come across as a ripoff of Saw to people who don't realize the comic is far older.
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Postby slothen » Sun Mar 15, 2009 12:20 pm

NAveryW wrote:I saw it last night and loved it way more than I expected to. I found it thoroughly engaging throughout the entirety of the film, which is something I can only say about this and The Dark Knight (and possibly some other stuff that I saw so long ago that I forgot about).


funny cuz the dark knight sucked ass.
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Postby THE Hal E. Burton 9000 » Sun Mar 15, 2009 3:22 pm

^SAY WHUT?
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Postby Annihilationscape » Wed Mar 18, 2009 10:35 am

*sigh* I guess someone was bound to dislike the Dark Knight.

My earlier opinions about the Watchmen stand, but something interesting happened to me a few days ago: my best friend asked me if I was going to buy it when it came out on DVD/Blu-Ray. I realized I wasn't sure.

I mean I enjoyed the film, but... I'm honestly not sure I want to own it. And I really don't know what I think about that.
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Postby THE Hal E. Burton 9000 » Wed Mar 18, 2009 1:26 pm

Annihilationscape wrote:*sigh* I guess someone was bound to dislike the Dark Knight.
while I don't disagree that it ran too long and should have been broken up into two a la Kill Bill with Harvey Dent's fall from grace given a better deserved and developed narrative, TDK is easily among the best superhero flicks EVAR
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Postby Annihilationscape » Wed Mar 18, 2009 1:49 pm

Yeah, I mean I'm not saying it's a perfect film but it absolutely wasn't horrible.

But yeah, who's going to buy Watchmen when it comes out?
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Postby Guyver Spawn » Wed Mar 18, 2009 2:21 pm

I will be buying the movie for sure. I hate how people bitch Doctor Manhattan him naked in the movie when it no different then Rei naked in End of Evangelion.
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