Lady Taffer on 13/3/2007 at 01:46
Oh GOD no, not Watchmen!! Granted, I'm not a huge fan of the book, but I recognize it as being very well written, but it's so long I don't possibly see how anyone could make it into a movie. :(
As for big studio productions like this? I find that it seems to be pretty much tradition for directors to insult their audiences' intelligence by "Oh, they don't know jack shit about this so we can get away with coming up with whatever the hell we want" assumptions. Bleh. . .
Well, to Frank Miller's credit, Dark Knight returns was one awesome piece of literature. . . it's just a shame that was his only good work.
Moi Dix Mois on 13/3/2007 at 02:11
It's almost like none of you are aware of the Rorschach testshot hidden in the 300 trailer, because I would have expected it to have been posted by now otherwise...
Inline Image:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v736/thecatface/800px-Rorshach_badge.jpgHowever, as Vigil will tell you, I have poor reading skills, so maybe it was already posted and I simply missed it.
I regard any forthcoming Watchmen film with cautious optimism. Some comics are just so perfect in every detail that you would have to be an utter fuckwit to make a mess of an adaptation.
Please let it be good, sir.
Lady Taffer on 13/3/2007 at 02:34
Perfect? ehhhhh. . I wouldn't go that far. It's a pretty decent graphic novel, though. :cheeky:
Pyrian on 13/3/2007 at 02:40
I really don't see how Watchmen could be squeezed into a movie. :erm:
Moi Dix Mois on 13/3/2007 at 02:47
Entirely subjective of course but Christ, can you honestly think of any better graphic novel than Watchmen?
I would rate certain parts of Sandman as coming close, but not much else.
Dark Knight Returns?
Hmm.
edit: Directed at Lady Taffer.
Lady Taffer on 13/3/2007 at 03:15
I know Watchmen is a great story but I can't understand the amount of devotion some people have towards it.
I think I feel like its issues are obsolete, or not touched on with the amount of attention they deserve, or maybe they're not displayed in an invigorating way with new takes on the situations. . . . .granted, I didn't read all of Watchmen, but the biggest problem I had with what I did read was that I found that I absolutely did not care about the characters. . not at all, and since characters are the most important part of a story to me, that is definitely a BAD thing.
I'm not sure why the characters fell so flat for me, but at least I can understand it better with the character of Rorschach.
I felt like I'd already seen him before: as Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver. :p
Maybe it's the Citizen Kane thing, where it's supposed to be one of the greatest movies ever, but secretly most people find it boring. . or something.
Aerothorn on 13/3/2007 at 04:11
Keep in mind that Watchmen is over 20 years old - so if some of its issues seem dated, you can't blame it (though I did not find them such).
As for characters being likable, that's why I LIKE Watchmen. There's parts of it I don't - the Tales of the Black Freighter is brilliant in conception but in execution is dreadfully slow and boring, and only takes time away from the awesome main story - but the characters, particularly Rorschach, I find all very likable. Not as people, mind you, but as characters.
Sadly, the director (Zak Snyder, or something) has announced that he plans to film ALL of the Black Freighter seens. As noted, Watchmen has a LOT of stuff and a lot of layers, so they'll have to do a fair bit of trimming. Why not trim the one part of the book that is (allegory aside) completely unrelated to the rest of it? Nah, they'll probably end up cutting people's backstories and motivations and history and other INTERESTING things.
And yes, I'm fully aware of the Rorschach image. It's an image. It is no indication of quality in any way. What, am I supposed to be thrilled that there aren't CG robots with giant lasers running around?
At least they scrapped David Hayter's plans to set the movie on the modern day. That would have removed the entire motivation for Ozymandias' actions. Dave needs to get back to MGS and leave Watchmen alone >: (
Lady Taffer on 13/3/2007 at 04:27
Yeah, for some odd reason I feel Watchmen would resonate with me more strongly if I was a man .. . but then again, maybe not. It's weird because on the flip side I love Dark Knight Returns, which is not exactly geared towards a female audience either.
Fafhrd on 13/3/2007 at 09:10
Jesus Christ. You people complaining about a film adaptation of Frank Miller's Greek Fascist Wank Fantasy actually retaining everything that made it Frank Miller's Greek Fascist Wank Fantasy seriously need to pull the stick out of your asses. I'm no fan of Frank Miller, in fact I think he's the most disturbingly misogynistic writer working in the field of comics today and that he's got some severely fucked up and overly simplistic paranoid political views. That does not, however, take away from my enjoyment of what is a spectacularly well shot, edited, and choreographed fantasy action flick.
And bitching about Zack Snyder's adaptation of Watchmen before a single frame of film has been shot, or it even has a shooting script, is BEYOND retarded. (Also, according to every movie news site ever, the David Hayter Watchmen draft that Paul Greengrass was going to make the movie with was borderline fantastic; though from what I've heard of the ending, I don't understand how the mechanism of the climax can have the same political ramifications that the one in the book did.)
oudeis on 13/3/2007 at 10:55
I stopped reading comicbooks shortly after the Marauders slaughtered the Morlocks in the X-men series, and I haven't kept up on Miller's work since I read "Sin City"- which I found laughable, laughably-overpraised horseshit- but the only theme I'd noted in his canon was this kind of 80's-era 'Japanese culture is going to dominate the world!' superstitious awe. I'm guessing the political views you cite were on display in 'Martha Washington', which I saw but never read, but where was the misogyny?
