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jabby posted:The ending still makes sense. In fact given the more limited scope of the movie it makes more sense than using the comic-book ending, which would have come completely out of left field and seemed a lot less believable.
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Aug 18, 2014 22:51
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Your Gay Uncle posted:The Comedian fight and the Ozzy fight at the end were really well done but most of the other fights were pretty bad. I think the casting was spot on for everybody but Sally. I honestly think Snyder did the best adaption he could. Watchmen is so revered that a some people will automatically hate the movie no matter what. The ending changes actually made a lot of sense, and I loved the blue flash from Ozzy's fortress as Nite Owl and Rorschach made their apporach. I agree. It's as good an adaptation as Watchmen could get. If they did the comic's ending it would have taken all the non readers out of the film. I think Watchmen would have worked as a miniseries to give the story more time to follow the same pace as the book. The one thing I thought they got wrong was Manhattan's perspective. The book goes out of its way to explain how John views time nonlinearly. In the film it's a straight line from his lab accident to current events.
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Aug 18, 2014 22:52
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jabby posted:The ending still makes sense. In fact given the more limited scope of the movie it makes more sense than using the comic-book ending, which would have come completely out of left field and seemed a lot less believable. This is the same reason I think National Treasure is a better Da Vinci Code adaptation than the Da Vinci Code movie. Some things don't play well in a two hour movie vs a more literary setting.
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Aug 18, 2014 22:56
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Cat Hatter posted:This is the same reason I think National Treasure is a better Da Vinci Code adaptation than the Da Vinci Code movie. Some things don't play well in a two hour movie vs a more literary setting. I'll give you that The Da Vinci Code is a book. I would not call it "literary."
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Aug 18, 2014 23:24
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Action Tortoise posted:I agree. It's as good an adaptation as Watchmen could get. If they did the comic's ending it would have taken all the non readers out of the film. I have a suspicion that The Original Writer made the endboss monster from the comic deliberately cartoony and B-movie-ish as a commentary on the mundane political landscape of most comicbooks universes where politicians still dick about over pointless bullshit when the fragility and vulnerability of the entire world is constantly shoved in their face in similar incidents.
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Aug 18, 2014 23:46
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:I have a suspicion that The Original Writer made the endboss monster from the comic deliberately cartoony and B-movie-ish as a commentary on the mundane political landscape of most comicbooks universes where politicians still dick about over pointless bullshit when the fragility and vulnerability of the entire world is constantly shoved in their face in similar incidents. Right, but try selling that to a crowd who wanted to see a superhero film. I like how they managed to have conversations while in the middle of fights with Ozymandias. You see it all the time in comics but it never happens on film and if it does it's usually a character knocked away from the fight saying a quip.
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Aug 19, 2014 00:05
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KoRMaK posted:How did the ending not make sense? We all have to keep a secret. This one common enemy united us (humans). The original ending makes sense, but it was better suited to the comic. Explaining to the audience that Ozzy made a giant psychic tentacle-monster that exploded peoples heads but also gave them visions of alien life would have been hard to fit into the movie, and even harder to not seem like forced exposition. Having the 'common enemy' be Dr Manhattan fulfills the same purpose but is easier to understand. It's also easier to see the world uniting if lots of countries are simultaneously attacked instead of just one American city. Don't get me wrong, it's a matter of personal taste. But I for one like the movie ending more than the comic book one, at least for the movie.
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Aug 19, 2014 00:05
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jabby posted:The original ending makes sense, but it was better suited to the comic. Explaining to the audience that Ozzy made a giant psychic tentacle-monster that exploded peoples heads but also gave them visions of alien life would have been hard to fit into the movie, and even harder to not seem like forced exposition. Having the 'common enemy' be Dr Manhattan fulfills the same purpose but is easier to understand. It's also easier to see the world uniting if lots of countries are simultaneously attacked instead of just one American city. That's fair. I think they did a good job with the movie adaptation. Comic books can do that kind of crazy stuff, but a movie has to keep some of itself grounded in reality. The movie is a pretty great satire/alternate timeline for political events and social equality and stuff. Tentacle space monster is fun, but it's not something I can get my girlfriend to not roll her eyes at while watching. If they had gone with tentacle monster in the movie I probably would have even rolled my eyes. Reading that stuff in a comic book is exciting, but seeing it in a movie of this tone would have screwed up the integrity of it's vibe.
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Aug 19, 2014 00:29
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In Popeye there's a ton of visual gags. Early/midway through the movie there's a number "Everything is Food" in which one bully steals the chair out from under Vanilla Ice. We laugh because he keeps his position sitting without a chair. A few cuts later you can see him give up his seat to somebody and they fall down because there's no chair. Later in the song you can see he took his "seat" back.
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Aug 19, 2014 00:58
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Dude, it's cool that you're doing a tribute movie marathon, but I think Robin would be totally fine with you skipping a few here and there.
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Aug 19, 2014 01:11
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Action Tortoise posted:Right, but try selling that to a crowd who wanted to see a superhero film. Yeah I totally agree, plus it was at least in the ballpark of Veidt's original plan therefore it was shitloads more preferable to the versions of the film that nearly got made. Apparently Tim Burton came quite close to directing the film with Johnny Depp playing the Comedian. Michael Bay was also in contention back in 2003. I probably should also point out that the film has dozens and dozens of little subtle moments that referenced the original comic that everyone except the most insane fans would have missed. Eg: quote:When Dan and Laurie are having dinner you can hear someone in the background say "I'm glad I ordered the four-legged chicken!" In the corresponding scene in the original graphic novel, there is an image of a waiter carrying a four-legged chicken. 
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Aug 19, 2014 01:22
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:Yeah I totally agree, plus it was at least in the ballpark of Veidt's original plan therefore it was shitloads more preferable to the versions of the film that nearly got made. Apparently Tim Burton came quite close to directing the film with Johnny Depp playing the Comedian. Michael Bay was also in contention back in 2003. If someone could invent an engine that was powered by butthurt nerd rage a Michael Bay Watchmen would give us enough fuel to finally conquer FTL travel.
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Aug 19, 2014 05:13
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RandomFerret posted:Dude, it's cool that you're doing a tribute movie marathon, but I think Robin would be totally fine with you skipping a few here and there. Hey. Go gently caress yourself. Popeye is awesome.
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Aug 19, 2014 06:42
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Your Gay Uncle posted:If someone could invent an engine that was powered by butthurt nerd rage a Michael Bay Watchmen would give us enough fuel to finally conquer FTL travel. The business model of Bay's production company Platinum Dunes is literally "Buy up the rights to whatever IP we can get hold of and churn out a quick remake with whatever director who'll put up with our poo poo" which has so far given us terrible new versions of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Amityville Horror, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and now Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There's pretty much a 100% certainty that a beloved nerd favourite will eventually get put through the Baygrinder and excreted into cineplexes across the country. Fun subtle moment from a movie that thankfully never got made: the scriptwriters who wrote up the terrible 2010/2012 script for TMNT where the Turtles were aliens (who eventually fulfill a prophecy to save the multiverse because they are the Chosen Ones of legend  ) may have dropped a subtle clue as to how they felt about turning the story into a classic Bay film in the scene where they had Casey Jones working a lovely brain-numbing job as a night guard in a tacky furniture manufacturing plant called "Bayos Factory". I'm sure the writers felt similarly lovely working in Bayo's movie factory. 
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Aug 19, 2014 07:05
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jabby posted:The ending still makes sense. In fact given the more limited scope of the movie it makes more sense than using the comic-book ending, which would have come completely out of left field and seemed a lot less believable. It was just as out of left field in the book, really. The advantage the book has is you can put it down, say "what the gently caress", go back and review the clues, and then pick up again, whereas the film continues to run, but I'm sure you could pull it off if you wanted to.
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Aug 19, 2014 08:06
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Action Tortoise posted:I agree. It's as good an adaptation as Watchmen could get. If they did the comic's ending it would have taken all the non readers out of the film.  Snyder is great with movie trailers, intro credits, and some visual flair/action but I don't exactly think of the dude and go "well that was the best case scenario".Honestly the Dawn of the Dead remake is like the only Snyder movie I can completely enjoy without constantly rolling my eyes, as weird/unpopular as that opinion is...and looking back maybe that's more credit to James Gunn. Punkin Spunkin has a new favorite as of 08:28 on Aug 19, 2014 |
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Aug 19, 2014 08:24
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Wasn't Terry Gilliam attached to it at one point? I'll be honest, love the guy, but he's not the first name that pops in when I think Watchmen; all the same I'm sure he'd have done a great job. Should have been a large budget TV show anyway.
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Aug 19, 2014 08:27
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Watchmen was always going to be hard to adapt, not just because of the reasons stated. It was a reaction to the state of comic books at the time, but since comic book movies aren't in that same state now, it needed some severe adapting. Alan Moore only liked one of the screenplays written, the one David Hayter did, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't the one that got made. I've felt for a while that given the state of comic book movies at that time (a bit less so now, especially off of Guardians of the Galaxy, but it wouldn't be out of place now), the graphic novel adaptation we needed wasn't Watchmen, but Kingdom Come.
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Aug 19, 2014 08:43
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To be honest, it seems like the only director I could see doing a proper job for Watchmen is Eye's Wide Shut era Kubrick; and even then it would be somewhat Nolan-Esque where it would take place in a much less sci-fi looking alternate 80's or 90's and toning down the slightly less unrealistic aspects (aside from Manhattan of course). He'd give the movie a proper sense of paranoia and doomsday that Snyder didn't.
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Aug 19, 2014 08:53
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Didn't Kubrick usually just use source material as a jumping off point and then make his own barely-related movie?
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Aug 19, 2014 09:05
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My Lovely Horse posted:Wasn't Terry Gilliam attached to it at one point? I'll be honest, love the guy, but he's not the first name that pops in when I think Watchmen; all the same I'm sure he'd have done a great job. Terry Gilliam agrees with you: quote:Terry Gilliam considered directing this film as early as 1989, but after several rewrites assisted by Charles McKeown, decided the material unfilmable except as a 5-hour miniseries at a cost of $1,000,000 per page (with CGI not in use yet).
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Aug 19, 2014 09:18
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This is more of an art direction thing than anything else, but in Guardians of the Galaxy I thought it was a nice touch that all the technology for remotely manipulating objects (the tractor beams, Yondu's arrow, the little claws on one of the spaceships) uses the same golden vapor-looking visual effect.
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Aug 19, 2014 10:42
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Cleretic posted:David Hayter Solid Snake?! (fake edit: yep. I didn't know he was a screenwriter too) e: This wasn't a bad adaptation IMO but it completely falls apart in the finale hackbunny has a new favorite as of 13:18 on Aug 19, 2014 |
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Aug 19, 2014 13:14
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:The business model of Bay's production company Platinum Dunes is literally "Buy up the rights to whatever IP we can get hold of and churn out a quick remake with whatever director who'll put up with our poo poo" which has so far given us terrible new versions of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Amityville Horror, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and now Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There's pretty much a 100% certainty that a beloved nerd favourite will eventually get put through the Baygrinder and excreted into cineplexes across the country. The Friday the 13th movie wasn't too bad. At least it's not the worst the series has ever churned out.
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Aug 19, 2014 14:03
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I rather liked the Nightmare remake. Well, I liked Jackie Earle Haley and the microsleep thing. Parts of the mise en scene were alright. Although the effects were far from special.
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Aug 19, 2014 14:20
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I liked the Friday the 13th remake well enough, but Nightmare just left a bad taste in my mouth. It wasn't funny, it shone a big spotlight on (living) Freddy's predatory nature which loops back around to it not being able to be funny at all, and worst of all no loving Robert Englund  I take my schlocky 80's splatter movies seriously.
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Aug 19, 2014 14:55
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mng posted:I liked the Friday the 13th remake well enough, but Nightmare just left a bad taste in my mouth. It wasn't funny, it shone a big spotlight on (living) Freddy's predatory nature which loops back around to it not being able to be funny at all, and worst of all no loving Robert Englund Assuming I remember correctly, it wasn't until the sequels that Freddy was "funny". I thought the original (and again, it's been a while) was played a lot more as a straight horror than a campy horror movie.
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Aug 19, 2014 15:03
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A weird thing about the Nightmare remake is that they almost had an interesting twist with the part where the main characters believe Freddy was innocent but then it just says nah, he was guilty.
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Aug 19, 2014 15:13
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AFewBricksShy posted:Assuming I remember correctly, it wasn't until the sequels that Freddy was "funny". I thought the original (and again, it's been a while) was played a lot more as a straight horror than a campy horror movie. Yeah that's true, but he still started out as a boogeyman with some zippy lines. And then later he kills people with a loving Power Glove. Compared to the contemporary slashers at the time, aside from Chucky and Evil Dead, it was nice to see some humor injected into a movie. Oh, the Chucky remake is pretty good as well!
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Aug 19, 2014 15:15
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mng posted:
Not subtle, but I liked that it turned out that it wasn't actually a reboot, but was instead a sequel.
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Aug 19, 2014 17:15
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Cleretic posted:Alan Moore only liked one of the screenplays written, the one David Hayter did This city is afraid of me...I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!" ... and I'll look down and whisper "hrghurrrgh" e: \/\/ That's way better SpaceCommie has a new favorite as of 21:28 on Aug 19, 2014 |
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Aug 19, 2014 17:48
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SpaceCommie posted:This city is afraid of me...I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!" ... and I'll look down and whisper "Save you?!" 
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Aug 19, 2014 21:14
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This is only Gibbons-approved Watchmen adaptation.
Tunicate has a new favorite as of 22:25 on Aug 19, 2014 |
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Aug 19, 2014 22:23
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The problem with Watchmen is that the comic is one of those things that comic book fans cling to as something that legitimizes comic books as Art and is something that has transcended the genre and the medium to be regarded as a genuine work of literature, and there is absolutely no way the movie could have had the same effect. It's like making a (really good) novelization out of Citizen Kane and then complaining that it didn't live up to the film.
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Aug 20, 2014 00:54
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...of SCIENCE! posted:The problem with Watchmen is that the comic is one of those things that comic book fans cling to as something that legitimizes comic books as Art and is something that has transcended the genre and the medium to be regarded as a genuine work of literature, and there is absolutely no way the movie could have had the same effect. It's like making a (really good) novelization out of Citizen Kane and then complaining that it didn't live up to the film. I've been saying that since 2005 as to why a film version of Watchmen is a waste of time and inherently misses the point no matter how good it ends up being, but no one gives a poo poo.
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Aug 20, 2014 01:00
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mind the walrus posted:I've been saying that since 2005 as to why a film version of Watchmen is a waste of time and inherently misses the point no matter how good it ends up being, but no one gives a poo poo. It was still a p. good movie even if there was no way it could have the same effect on the medium of film as the original did for superhero funnybooks.
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Aug 20, 2014 01:08
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...of SCIENCE! posted:It was still a p. good movie even if there was no way it could have the same effect on the medium of film as the original did for superhero funnybooks. It was a drat good film and anyone who expected that same impact would have been a fool.
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Aug 20, 2014 01:12
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It's an ok movie. Probably the best anyone could reasonably hope for in an adaptation. Certainly the most slavishly faithful thing in many many ways, although I find that kind-of funny because despite what even film professionals will tell you comic panels are not just storyboards you can film and expect similar artistic results from. I definitely never expected it to be half as influential as the books though. Really it just felt like someone in Hollywood got wind it was "unfilmmable" and found that Snyder's ego made a perfect conduit for finally getting the project done. I remember a lot of film circle masturbation around the fact that they "got it done" at the time. Eh, this is a topic I'm too bitter on. If you look into my post history you'll find an embarrassing number of retarded words from when I was even stupider than I am today and vainly trying to convince GBS goons that a Watchmen movie is not worth the time and energy.
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Aug 20, 2014 01:13
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...of SCIENCE! posted:It was still a p. good movie even if there was no way it could have the same effect on the medium of film as the original did for superhero funnybooks. Taking it for itself it's a good movie. The intro is a little  because of all the visual shorthand it does with the heroes interacting with Warhol and JFK but I thought it did Hollis' finale really well.
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Aug 20, 2014 01:14
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mind the walrus posted:I've been saying that since 2005 as to why a film version of Watchmen is a waste of time and inherently misses the point no matter how good it ends up being, but no one gives a poo poo. One of the problems with Watchmen is that there was a lot going on, and different people liked the comic for different reasons. Did you enjoy the 80s Cold War paranoia? Do you really hate Nixon? Were you secretly rooting for Rorschach? Did Nite Owl's impotence make you weep nerd tears in your bedroom? I think the varied reaction to the movie has to do with what appealed to you in the comics vs. what was translated in the movies. (For the record, I really enjoyed the movie, a little more than the comics, and a lot of that had to do with Dr. Manhattan plus the soundtrack and general look.) There was a similar and worse problem with the movie John Carter. Everybody who grew up reading the books is either dead or outside of the target audience demographic, and if the movie had been more authentic to the subject material, it would have looked like even more of a ripoff of Star Wars, even though Lucas borrowed heavily from those pulp novels.
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Aug 20, 2014 02:03
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