They’re already done filming? Wow…it seems like they just started. I’m very excited about this, but also worried. You know movies have to appeal to the lowest common denominator to make any money. I hope they can do that while still keeping to a faithful adaptation of the story.
Oh, and The Comedian looks awesome.
This was one of my concerns about the movie when I first heard about the casting: many of the actors are too young. These photos bear that out to some degree - particularly Nite Owl. He looks like Batman in that get-up - where’s the paunch?
Comedian looks pretty good even though he is too young and I cannot see his scar. I hope they are able to age him to the point of the haunted, nearly-broken man he is at the time of his death.
There’s a shadow on Comedian’s cheek which (I think) is the scar. But the actor is way too young.
Darn it, they got Nite-Owl’s cape wrong. That was the coolest part of his outfit.
Overall, I think the visuals look good. I refuse to get my hopes up, but there is a small glimmer of hope.
Note The Comedian’s mask. In the comic he wore that type of mask before he got his scar. After he got his scar he changed to a hood. So no visible scar is no problem. As for his age, he looks about right for pre-scar Comedian.
I should apply for Randi’s million dollars. I knew they’d look utterly ridiculous.
Bah. This sounds like a bad imitation of The Tick.
-FrL-
[ducks]
Hmmmm. Looks pretty damned good. I’m looking forward to it, although it’ll be a very tall order for them to meet my and eight trillion other Watchmen fanboys’ expectations.
I was lent the all-in-one-volume graphic novel by a friend in college, and just got swept away by it. Wow. Just… wow. A great story, arresting images, and layer upon layer of meaning and significance, as well as a tour de force of alternative U.S. history. The pirate subplot wasn’t my favorite, but I understand its place in the comics. I have to admit (don’t hit me!), I think it can be jettisoned or drastically pared back in the movie without too much harm being done.
I think the pics look great - but I am going to see it regardless.
I agree that the Pirate Tale is central to Watchmen in terms of summarizing the basic story and theme for the overall book. But it is also not essential for the movie - film is a different medium that, if done well, wouldn’t need that thread running through it.
If they really feel the need for a greek chorus in the film then a television program in the background would be more appropriate anyway.
Yes, but. The pirate story is just clubbing you over the head with the theme of the book. I’m a fairly bright guy; I could easily have figured out what the book was about without having it spelled out for me, word by word, in a superfluous pirate comic (which, incidentally, completely destroyed the flow of the narrative).
It’s going to be horrible. Watchmen should never be anything but a comic. I’ve asked this before, but why does everything have to be a movie? What’s gained by making a mediocre, test-marketed, committee-approved movie out of a beloved work? Watchmen especially is a work that belongs to a specific medium: the superhero comic. A big-budget movie will be like a bad translation of a beautiful poem.
Here’s an idea. How about some original fantastic movies? You know, like Star Wars or Terminator or Alien or The Matrix?
It’s not “spelling it out” for you, it’s echoing and reflecting for dramatic irony type of thing. It’s a narrative device - art - not a “for Dummies” helping hand.
My feelings exactly. Watchmen is a very media-specific work. It’s a comic book about comic books. There are a lot of comic books that could be successfully made into movies; but Watchmen isn’t one of them. Translating it into another medium like film will lose its effect.
Yes, I realize that. And it’s certainly true that I’ll never be half the writer that Alan Moore is–but I strongly feel that in this case he made a mistake. YMMV, of course.
This is a joke, right?
If Zack Snyder is smart — and I will grant you, there isn’t much intellectual heft in his previous two movies, however visually dynamic they may be, but bear with me — he will recognize this, and he will transplant the themes of the comic book to the movie world. There’s no reason you couldn’t look at how Moore and Gibbons were deconstructing the archetypes of the genre, in print, and translate the same thematic approach as a deconstruction of the archetypes of the film version of the genre. We have enough superhero movies, now, to have injected the sensibilities of the genre into the mainstream, and to thereby support an examination of the form of the same nature as the original.
I’m not saying that’s what Snyder’s doing, or that if it is, he’s up to it. All I’m saying is that while a movie about comic books would almost certainly fall flat, a movie about movie superhero mythology has great potential.
And just as one teeny, tiny piece of evidence that this is what the movie has in mind, look closely at the picture of Ozymandius: his suit has nipples.
That, for those familiar with how comic book heroes have been treated in Hollywood, is a fantastic little piece of wit.
… or maybe just bad costume design.
Or really good costume design, considering Ozymandias’ costume is inspired by ancient Roman and Egyptian armor that had sculpted abs as well as nipples. Joel Schumacher missed the mark by putting those on Batman and Robin, but for Ozymandias, it works, and I think Snyder gets that.
Of course, Dave Gibbons and two other excellent comic book artists, Adam Hughes and John Cassaday, contributed to the costume designs for the movie, and they all know what they’re doing.
no
But even if Snyder was possessed by the collective ghosts of Eisenstein, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Powell, Truffaut, and Welles, he’d still end up making a movie. And it might be a great movie. But that would be missing the point. The essential element of Watchmen was self-reference and you can’t make a self-referential movie about anything other than a movie.
As you wrote, he might possibly make a self-referential movie about the superhero movie genre and it might be great. Or he might make a great action movie. But it won’t be Watchmen - it’ll be a different work with the same name and some common characters.