Kevin Smith
Superhero
- Joined
- Apr 22, 2008
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I think that visually the movie looks great and is beautiful.
But the fact that they tried show horning so much in in the time they allotted caused the story to suffer, IMO. It's a daunting task to begin with trying to adapt that book, and I like the movie and think Snyder directed his heart out. But if they were going to go as far as they did, the best thing to do would have been to have done a series of 8 or 12 "episodes", each spanning a little over an hour, either in serialized format or on HBO, this would have allowed them to get everything perfect. The best adaptation of it is still the Motion Comic for me (sans one actor doing all the voices).
I know people say that they got so much of it on the film, some say "too much", but I totally disagree, I don't think that they got enough. There are too many nuances and stories within stories that are missing, particularly with Rorschach and Dr Manhattan's stories. Almost the whole thing with the psychologist and Rorschach is cut out. In the book this all takes place from the psychologist's perspective and we are allowed to see the effect that Kovacs is having on him. In the movie we see none of that.
The book also heavily emphasized that Manhattan's father was a watchmaker and how he pushed his son into going into the field he did, the parallel there to Einstein was fantastic. The movie has none of that.
I know some will say I'm nitpicking but that stuff was the book, man! It told all these stories while slowing telling this big linear one.
Matthew Goode is a great actor but he was terribly miscast as Veidt. They should have had a bigger guy for one thing. But they really needed to build Veidt up more as a "hero". Even in the book when he's on the tv while Dreiberg and Laurie are starting to get busy the first time on the couch Veidt is in the background on television performing stunts, and that's all we know about him until the very end, that he's just this big world renown hero that everyone loves. He comes off as a total good guy you'd never suspect as being the "villain", he's the "purest" and "most perfect" seeming of all the Watchmen until the final Act, when we see all his flaws revealed. The movie had none of that, they made him too ominous and "boogeyman" right from the beginning. Anyone could tell he was the bad guy as soon as they saw him. They even made his uniform primarily black for ****sakes. Even upon reading the book for the first time, and knowing how it ended thanks to someone spoiling it for me in my local comics store, as I read the book I was so sucked in that even though someone told me how it ended there was a point where I did not believe it was Veidt doing it. The mystery was VERY well built in the book.
Needless to say that is not the case in the movie.
And that's another thing, the acting. I don't really feel like they are characters like I did in the book, I feel like I'm watching a play kind of where you're very aware of what you're watching. I very rarely feel engaged by any of them or pulled into their performances. The movie's also a little too melodramatic at times for my taste, especially in areas where the book was not. The best performances were that of Comedian, then Rorschach and Dreiberg are tied for me. Haley was great as Rorschach but I always imagined him sounding like the Question from JLU or more how the guy voiced him in the Motion Comic. That was perfect. Rorschach in the movie is just doing the same gruff raspy voice we're used to hearing for most "hardass" characters in film these days, Baleman 2.0. Akerman was terrible as Silk Spectre. Her acting sucked. I didn't buy Gugino as an old lady at all either....I've seen more believable performances in made for tv movies of young folks playing old folks. She was great as SS1 though. Oddly enough her and Comedian have more chemistry than Wilson and Akerman in this movie. When she shows up in Dreiberg's apartment it's like she just wants to screw. Doesn't come off at all as her character did in the book, IMO.
Dr Manhattan was cool. I thought Crudup did well, but would ave appreciated a more "booming" voice like WE ALL READ HIM AS HAVING. One thing I disliked is the gratuitous amounts of pecker shots we had...in the book it is done very matter of factly. And it isn't in every shot with him. The movie goes out of its way to emphasize to us that he is naked...with big glory shots of his penis. The book handled it tastefully...the movie does not, IMO.
Another thing I disliked was the pointless violence they put in seemingly for nothing more than just the shock value of it (yet removed things like Kovacs and the psychologist and the other things relevant to the story I mentioned). Rorschach chopping a guy up? No. The way he handled this in the book was 100 times better, and I don't care if films have copied it a hundred times after it, Rorschach did it first. It was subtle yet effective, not grotesque and gorey, it was the complete opposite of the child killer scene in the movie. I'd have much preferred to have seen Rorschach allow him to burn up as he left after he lit he and his house on fire than personally stand there and chop his head up. That was just disgusting to me and somewhat out of character for him, even if he was the "cause" of his death either way.
I wasn't wild about the music selection for the movie as I found it took me out of the movie too much as I watched it, particularly the first time viewing it, but I understand the song selection at the same time and think some of it was clever and understand that they were trying to give little nods to parts of the book that were not in the film. The astute comic reader may or may not pick up on this but the average movie goer will be like "okay, why is this song playing?" (re: Valkyrie playing in Vietnam). I appreciate the "nods", but I believe the movie went about this in the wrong way. Zack Snyder isn't Quentin Tarantino.
Now I don't hate the film's ending, because it works in the context of the film, but if they'd have done it exactly like the book as I described up there, it would not have flown, they'd have had to have kept the original alien ending (which was fantastic). The book was perfect in every way and the ending was great. I prefer the book to the movie any day, you become so immersed in it. The movie at times really drags and is hard to watch, IMO. And this is coming from a guy who loves comics and movies so much he comes to a message board to post about them.
All in all, I love Zack Snyder. I think he's a great director. I think MOS is going to be awesome. And I think he did the best he could with Watchmen and I give him an A + for effort, it's a beautiful looking movie, and he did a great job. But I really do hope that Watchmen is revisited one day and particularly in the format which I described up there. I believe that is the only way to do it true justice, short of doing a trilogy which covers 3-4 chapters of the book over a 2 or 2 and a half hour span of a movie. I think it could have been so much more than what it ended up being and would have done much better at the box office if they did it this way. Mostly because regular audiences could have understood it and it would have shown what made the book so great.
But the fact that they tried show horning so much in in the time they allotted caused the story to suffer, IMO. It's a daunting task to begin with trying to adapt that book, and I like the movie and think Snyder directed his heart out. But if they were going to go as far as they did, the best thing to do would have been to have done a series of 8 or 12 "episodes", each spanning a little over an hour, either in serialized format or on HBO, this would have allowed them to get everything perfect. The best adaptation of it is still the Motion Comic for me (sans one actor doing all the voices).
I know people say that they got so much of it on the film, some say "too much", but I totally disagree, I don't think that they got enough. There are too many nuances and stories within stories that are missing, particularly with Rorschach and Dr Manhattan's stories. Almost the whole thing with the psychologist and Rorschach is cut out. In the book this all takes place from the psychologist's perspective and we are allowed to see the effect that Kovacs is having on him. In the movie we see none of that.
The book also heavily emphasized that Manhattan's father was a watchmaker and how he pushed his son into going into the field he did, the parallel there to Einstein was fantastic. The movie has none of that.
I know some will say I'm nitpicking but that stuff was the book, man! It told all these stories while slowing telling this big linear one.
Matthew Goode is a great actor but he was terribly miscast as Veidt. They should have had a bigger guy for one thing. But they really needed to build Veidt up more as a "hero". Even in the book when he's on the tv while Dreiberg and Laurie are starting to get busy the first time on the couch Veidt is in the background on television performing stunts, and that's all we know about him until the very end, that he's just this big world renown hero that everyone loves. He comes off as a total good guy you'd never suspect as being the "villain", he's the "purest" and "most perfect" seeming of all the Watchmen until the final Act, when we see all his flaws revealed. The movie had none of that, they made him too ominous and "boogeyman" right from the beginning. Anyone could tell he was the bad guy as soon as they saw him. They even made his uniform primarily black for ****sakes. Even upon reading the book for the first time, and knowing how it ended thanks to someone spoiling it for me in my local comics store, as I read the book I was so sucked in that even though someone told me how it ended there was a point where I did not believe it was Veidt doing it. The mystery was VERY well built in the book.
Needless to say that is not the case in the movie.
And that's another thing, the acting. I don't really feel like they are characters like I did in the book, I feel like I'm watching a play kind of where you're very aware of what you're watching. I very rarely feel engaged by any of them or pulled into their performances. The movie's also a little too melodramatic at times for my taste, especially in areas where the book was not. The best performances were that of Comedian, then Rorschach and Dreiberg are tied for me. Haley was great as Rorschach but I always imagined him sounding like the Question from JLU or more how the guy voiced him in the Motion Comic. That was perfect. Rorschach in the movie is just doing the same gruff raspy voice we're used to hearing for most "hardass" characters in film these days, Baleman 2.0. Akerman was terrible as Silk Spectre. Her acting sucked. I didn't buy Gugino as an old lady at all either....I've seen more believable performances in made for tv movies of young folks playing old folks. She was great as SS1 though. Oddly enough her and Comedian have more chemistry than Wilson and Akerman in this movie. When she shows up in Dreiberg's apartment it's like she just wants to screw. Doesn't come off at all as her character did in the book, IMO.
Dr Manhattan was cool. I thought Crudup did well, but would ave appreciated a more "booming" voice like WE ALL READ HIM AS HAVING. One thing I disliked is the gratuitous amounts of pecker shots we had...in the book it is done very matter of factly. And it isn't in every shot with him. The movie goes out of its way to emphasize to us that he is naked...with big glory shots of his penis. The book handled it tastefully...the movie does not, IMO.
Another thing I disliked was the pointless violence they put in seemingly for nothing more than just the shock value of it (yet removed things like Kovacs and the psychologist and the other things relevant to the story I mentioned). Rorschach chopping a guy up? No. The way he handled this in the book was 100 times better, and I don't care if films have copied it a hundred times after it, Rorschach did it first. It was subtle yet effective, not grotesque and gorey, it was the complete opposite of the child killer scene in the movie. I'd have much preferred to have seen Rorschach allow him to burn up as he left after he lit he and his house on fire than personally stand there and chop his head up. That was just disgusting to me and somewhat out of character for him, even if he was the "cause" of his death either way.
I wasn't wild about the music selection for the movie as I found it took me out of the movie too much as I watched it, particularly the first time viewing it, but I understand the song selection at the same time and think some of it was clever and understand that they were trying to give little nods to parts of the book that were not in the film. The astute comic reader may or may not pick up on this but the average movie goer will be like "okay, why is this song playing?" (re: Valkyrie playing in Vietnam). I appreciate the "nods", but I believe the movie went about this in the wrong way. Zack Snyder isn't Quentin Tarantino.
Now I don't hate the film's ending, because it works in the context of the film, but if they'd have done it exactly like the book as I described up there, it would not have flown, they'd have had to have kept the original alien ending (which was fantastic). The book was perfect in every way and the ending was great. I prefer the book to the movie any day, you become so immersed in it. The movie at times really drags and is hard to watch, IMO. And this is coming from a guy who loves comics and movies so much he comes to a message board to post about them.
All in all, I love Zack Snyder. I think he's a great director. I think MOS is going to be awesome. And I think he did the best he could with Watchmen and I give him an A + for effort, it's a beautiful looking movie, and he did a great job. But I really do hope that Watchmen is revisited one day and particularly in the format which I described up there. I believe that is the only way to do it true justice, short of doing a trilogy which covers 3-4 chapters of the book over a 2 or 2 and a half hour span of a movie. I think it could have been so much more than what it ended up being and would have done much better at the box office if they did it this way. Mostly because regular audiences could have understood it and it would have shown what made the book so great.
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