As said before, the opening dialogue is not there. The second and third journal entries, all gone. These are all great insights into his psyche. On the other hand there's an extended fight sequence with the swat team after Rorschach jumps out of the window of Jacobi's apartment. He gets up with one broken leg and says "Ten years I've waited for this" and then proceeds to beat up half a dozen cops before they manage to overpower him. Give me a break. I know, I know, that was already present in Hayter's draft, but why keep such pathetic trite?
And that opening is missed, but again, this is film. Dialogue, especially long drawn out dialogue, takes up precious screentime. Fight scenes run shorter than dramatic scenes do, as a general rule. I don't mind the fight scene, because let's face it, if we're going to see Rorschach fighting to stay up and relishing the encounter, why not see him fighting and relishing the encounter?
already elaborated. He has friendly chats with Pinochet and talks like a high-society la-di-dah prick "Chilean Spanish, such a bastardization of the language.". What happened to the liberal, (appearingly) humble Adrian Veidt of the graphic novel? This guy screams VILLAIN, which in turn weakens the plot twist, if not pretty much revealing it early on.
Where does he have a "friendly chat" with Pinochet? Veidt has always talked like he belongs in high society, and he's always displayed a bit of an ego. Maybe he believes Chilean Spanish is a bastardization of the language. Maybe that's relevant to the movie and it's setting.
He screams "villain" because of his attitude, or because Pinochet is calling him?
The plot twist you refer to is, quite simply, not that impressive. There, I said it. It wasn't a cliche in 1986, but now, decades later, "good guy turning out to be the villain" has been done to death. People should see it coming from a mile away, really.
What Veidt DOES and the fact that it could concievably work is shocking. You have a character who is really, if you think about it, only barely in the movie and story, not developed too much, ending up being the villain. And that's supposed to shock people? Thank goodness Moloch is in this to throw people off, but come on, does anyone ever buy that Moloch might be the person behind it all?
Films follow a structure, and people are generally pretty familiar with it. An intelligent audience knows the villain, even if it's a twist villain, will likely be introduced to them at some point. And I don't think they're broadcasting that he's a villain by having Pinochet call him. He's a powerful man worldwide.
I disagree, just about any "celebrity cameo" in the comic serves it's purpose in the story or at least is quite cleverly included.
Yes, especially those random shots of Jon shaking hands with Kennedy, Nixon, Nixon just showing up as the President still...random "names" that Alan Moore liked and wanted to include.
They're placing WATCHMEN in our world, and a few name drops or references are needed to do something like that.
Here we have John McLaughlin, Pat Buchanan, Eleanor Clift, Annie Leibowitz, Larry King, the entire Nixon cabinet etc., and most of it is quite badly written.
Badly written how?
That's not the way how things work in storytelling. If any changes are made to known existing historical characters, they should be adressed accordingly. Otherwise, there's no reason not assume that Watchmen pinochet is the same as "our" Pinochet.
Then maybe the reasoning for him calling isn't to show Veidt is a member of an international conglomerate of villains. I mean, I don't know, I'm just speculating. I can't remember if it comes up again later on in the script.
This is where I have to stand corrected. I looked at that page of the script again and "Not fate that butchers them" part is indeed there. What I meant is "rudderless world" and "existence is random" parts were omitted.
What you call wordiness I consider brilliant dialogue written by Moore, and replacing it with simpleton language does not do Watchmen justice.
Hey, I like it, too. But its still wordy. Words eat up screentime. They pared down a number of "passages", seemingly for that reason. Hayter did the same thing.
I'm sorry..."simpleton" language?
I think it's a reasonable assumption as to where he got it from and I bet I'm right. In any case, he fails miserably.
My assumption is just as reasonable, if not more so, given the context of it's use.
Eh, I generally don't care that much about either Batman comics or its movie adaptations. Even so, Batman's origin/canon has been rewritten and rebooted so many times since 1939, it's hard for me to point finger at those adapting it to the big screen, but like I said, I'm not the right person to answer that question, because I simply don't have a deep attachment to the Batman mythos like some other people may have. Not to mention that no Batman comic is anywhere near Watchmen quality.
Batman has some very consistent elements to his mythology that have been changed in the movie mythology. You don't care, you don't care. Just curious.
"In the context of a film script"? What does that even mean? From that point of view, you might as well change nearly everything when adapting from source and still say it fits within the "context of a film script". After all, a film is a film and a book is a book.
It means in the context of a film script. You don't just write everything that is happening visually into a script. That's the job of storyboards, art departments, and the Director.
Again, what elements do you feel are "missing", based on the script?
Then he's not doing a very good job so far, because I can't think of a better way to patronize your audience than an opening montage.
How is that patronizing an audience? It's no more or less patronizing and unsubtle than dialogue that spells out exactly what happened at the beginning of the graphic novel.
, but I always remembered that.
