Yes, it is. But the scene itself wasn’t ugly or uncomfortable on its own merits, it was out of place and seemed to be either a way for the film makers to scream “mature film” or indulge in some sort of fetish. Actually, you can substitute “sex scene in film” for “violence in film” and I’d give the same response. I found the sex and violence to be unnecessarily over the top.
Um, you did get the point that “indulging in some sort of fetish” is precisely what that scene in the movie was about, right?
Personally, I think Watchmen is the best Comic movie ever made. Although The Dark Knight Returns is a great movie, it ain’t realy based on a comic book, just the comic book characters. I’m glad i didn’t read the original comic series. It would have tainted my enjoyment of this movie. I think I can now finally read the series.
Actually, I have that reaction generally to most R-rated movies. I guess I’m not so enamored of sex scenes that I need to see them in any detail (or if I do, I’ll just get a porno for that or, conceivably, an NC-17-ish movie like Fatal Attraction or Basic Instinct where the sex is pretty much the whole plot) and it looked to me like it just brought a movie that was already trying to tell a huge story to an abrupt halt. Dan gets aroused by superhero action far more than just wrasslin’ on the couch. It’s not necessary to overexplain this; he goes after Laurie good and hard and we can cut to her smoking afterward and asking “Dan, was it good? Did the costumes make it good?”
Perhaps my impressions are tainted by the audience snickering and the over-the-top music choice.
I don’t think he could make different choices, I think there’s some line about how he’s just ‘a puppet that can see the strings’, meaning just as constrained as everybody else, though aware of that.
However, I’ve always tended to see that a little differently – it’s not as if he merely can see the future (and past), it’s just that to him it’s indistinguishable from the present, i.e. in a way, it’s actually happening to him right now; he is being surprised at the interview, all the while he is also chasing jailbait on patrol and contemplating life on Mars – it’s all just ‘now’ to him. That doesn’t appear to mesh with the whole tachyons obscuring the future thing, but I’d say that was totally unnecessary and inconsequential in the first place – I don’t think he’s ever been shown as being able to alter the future based on what he ‘sees’ in it (and how would he, since it’s already happening to him), so while he may or may not be able to see the future and Ozy’s plans at some given point, it’s just all the same already happening to him, but he can’t act on it any differently than he has always acted and will always act.
OK, I’ll just finish this beer and then go to bed; if this still makes sense in the morning, I’ll be surprised.
The tachyon thing, I gathered, was just a way in the comic to keep Jon from revealing key details about how the story ends, and hinting that WW3 was the cause. I assume that as he finds a new galaxy and lives on indefinitely, he will continue to perceive time in his simultaneous way, with a fuzzy gap around November 1st, 1985.
Walking out of the theater, my friend and I both thought it was pretty much perfect. My three biggest problems with it are:
[ul]
[li]The masks’ super-human strength undermines the “Dr. Manhattan vs. humans” dichotomy.[/li][li]Some of Nite Owl & Silk Spectre’s uses of that strength blur the “Comedian & Rorschach vs. empathetic characters” contrast. When the heroes do things like stabbing a street thug in the neck, there isn’t much difference between them and the sociopathic anti-heroes. (And we lose the irony of those anti-heroes being the ones who won’t go along with Veidt’s plan.)[/li][li]In my opinion, Rorschach shows too many emotions in his death scene. He should have been as “flat” as ever, until the final outburst.[/li][/ul]
I support the changes they made to the climax and the child-killer flashback. The Giant Space Squid would have taken too much exposition, and the Mad Max setup would have been seen as a ripoff. My favorite addition probably is Rorschach taking the time to put his hat back on while fighting Ozymandias.
I would have liked to see more evolution of the costumes of the Comedian and Dr. Manhattan.
I thought the Big Blue Dong hung unnaturally still and straight. Others have used words like “flapping”, but I must not have been looking at it during those scenes…
Yes, I did, and a less gratuitous sex scene would make that point. The potential fetish I was referring to was the film makers.
Jeebus cripes, it was a garden-variety Skinamax style sex scene. Hours of the stuff is available every evening on premium cable. It didn’t mean jack, except it was a nice relief from all the violence.
I wasn’t generically criticizing gratuitous sex (which I like overall), I was criticizing gratuitous sex in the movie. It was out of place and distracting, and a subtler scene would have made the same point.
Thank you. My feelings exactly.
Well, I thought they did as good a job as was possible in a 3-hour film.
My biggest complaints were that the actors were too young for the roles. Though for Silk Spectre II’s nude scenes, I am willing to forgive.
And they didn’t get Nite Owl’s cape right. Probably wouldn’t work in the real world anyway.
by Zebra
Well, I thought they did as good a job as was possible in a 3-hour film.
My biggest complaints were that the actors were too young for the roles. Though for Silk Spectre II’s nude scenes, I am willing to forgive.
And they didn’t get Nite Owl’s cape right. Probably wouldn’t work in the real world anyway.
I graduated from high school and started college in 1985. A whole lot of my schoolmates were terrified of the threat of nuclear war, to the point of supporting a unilateral “freeze”. A lot of Democrats were certain that Reagan was going to destroy us all. And Reagan was elected partially as a reaction to the urban crime of the 1970s.
More likely, the second time he took a more subtle approach, and then asked more politely. Still creepy, but even in the comic, SS1 was psychologically a bit of a mess.
It occurs to me that if Blake/Comedian is going to have Army pallbearers at his funeral (better, in an American setting and given his military service, than the mock-Edwardian top-hatted guys from the GN), there should also have been a rifle salute and a bugler playing “Taps.”
Is there a real cemetery in that place, relative to the Manhattan skyline?
The 1985 in the book was an alternate 1985 where Nixon had never fallen out of power. Remember Blake’s line about not having had a night like this since Woodward and Bernstein? The 1970s never ended in the Watchverse. At least not until it got squidded back to the 19th Century.
Comedian’s coffin. :smack:
It was also odd that all six of the pallbearers were wearing captain’s bars on their epaulettes.
Then again, private funerals at private cemeteries don’t always do the full ceremony. The pallbearers might have been personal friends of Blake, or immediate co-workers. Since he spent his later years doing more undercover work than public work, it seems to me more likely that his funeral was deliberately low-key. Dr. Manhattan’s handlers would probably have preferred that he not be there.
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I guess my point would be, a subtler scene would NOT have made the same point, or at least, not as effectively.
Sure, he was more consensual the second time around, but she still knew he’d tried to rape her. Most women hate people who try to rape them. So I’ll buy that whole “psychologically a bit of a mess” bit.