Heartland

watchmen graphic novel was quite cool, and just about coherent... albeit full of twists, turns and subplots.

basically, the rantings and ravings of a deranged and paranoid lunatic (alan moore) (not that that's a bad thing... )

sadly the film was a rambling mess

i read a review somewhere that i thought summed it up quite nicely. it basically said the the graphic novel was so entrenched in the style and folklore of comics that it would not work translated to any other medium

they also said that the film was afraid of deviating from the original even slightly because of the amount of devoted fanboys who would have lynched the director, and that as such it failed to translate to the screen

it looked kinda ok, but on the whole it was a bit of a mess, wasn't it?

What did I think?

I liked it, less than 300/Sin City/Blade Runner but more than most of the pish normally released.
I'm a sucker for the alternative reality stuff, and if you're gonna make a film, have something happening - explosions and complicated plots please.

So, it ticks all the boxes, but I can see how it could have been better.

Just read the book man. The film is bearable if you've read the book several times.
The book is a work of genius. Not in my opinion - that is fact.

Hom_Corleone wrote:Just read the book man. The film is bearable if you've read the book several times.
The book is a work of genius. Not in my opinion - that is fact.

apart from the squid

weebleswobble wrote:

Hom_Corleone wrote:Just read the book man. The film is bearable if you've read the book several times.
The book is a work of genius. Not in my opinion - that is fact.

apart from the squid

Yes, apart from the squid. He'd just injested 10 times his regular acid dose when he wrote that bit. And stangely, he never came down.

Even Hitler missed the squid!

finally finished it and that was one of the longest, who gives a fuck movies I have ever watched... pffffff....

"Pish, shite, rubbish!"
- Blast!, Teh Grauniad

all about the final cut, or at least directors cut.

in the end it is still the best adaptation of Moore's work so far

oh dear, first movie I've ever watched where the clock counting down was more interesting than the fillum

That happens to me almost every time I go to the cinema. You need to watch more sh!t films.

you're not helping Claire

boudicca wrote:That happens to me almost every time I go to the cinema. You need to watch more sh!t films.

Yeah, but by your own admission, you can't follow a plot to save your live.

As a fanboi of the comick, it's almost impossible to imagine what it would be like to come to the film unaware of the plot and characters.

And I think the squid made more sense than the movie.

markfiend wrote:As a fanboi of the comick, it's almost impossible to imagine what it would be like to come to the film unaware of the plot and characters.

And I think the squid made more sense than the movie.

The world would be a better place without the movie. I had to think about it - but that's my conclusion.

I was lucky enough to read the comic before being subjected to the movie. In my view, it's sheer impossible to translate all those twists, turns and subplots, as The Boss Man pointed out, onto the silver screen/computer monitor/flat screen TV. It wasn't bad as comic book adaptations go (Fantastic Four : Rise of the Silver Surfer being the most B-movie like A-movie comic book adaptation by a sea mile and then some) and stylistically it does take the frame cues and colour scheme from the comic, but after having watched it, I shrugged my shoulders, said 'meh' to myself and then removed it from my harddrive and grabbed the comic again for some REAL Alan Moore madness.

aye, that's pretty much what i did too

the watchmen is one of those books that works on so many levels that on the ninth or tenth readinbg you are still finding new details/insights/takes on it. it's simply not possible to transfer that to feature film format without losing shed-loads and/or making it a garbled mess. it would have been nice to see someone have the financial bottle to back terry gilliam's vision of it.

while we're on the subject, why the fuck does the v for vendetta movie swap the blowing up of parliament at the start of the film for the blowing up of thew post office tower (or is it the old bailey? it's wrong eitherway)? the whole point is that this november the fifth we get something to really celebrate.
arse-candles.

eastmidswhizzkid wrote:the watchmen is one of those books that works on so many levels that on the ninth or tenth readinbg you are still finding new details/insights/takes on it. it's simply not possible to transfer that to feature film format without losing shed-loads and/or making it a garbled mess. it would have been nice to see someone have the financial bottle to back terry gilliam's vision of it.

while we're on the subject, why the fuck does the v for vendetta movie swap the blowing up of parliament at the start of the film for the blowing up of thew post office tower (or is it the old bailey? it's wrong eitherway)? the whole point is that this november the fifth we get something to really celebrate.
arse-candles.

What he said - on all counts.

You can't sit in front of a film and flip backwards and forwards between the pages, you can't examine the artwork seeing how many smiley faces (with or without the blood splat) you can count, you can't examine the parallels between the comic and the comic-within-a-comic... I could go on but I won't

Also, a lot of the things that Watchmen (the comic) invented—superheroes as "real people", the "gritty and darker" quality, the non-linearity, the intertextuality—have all become comic (and cinematic) cliché; Watchmen became a victim of its own influentiality (if I may coin a word) so that the film, nearly 25 years after the comic book came out, looks derivative of the many works that copied the comic.