[Waycos]

I thought to kick things off everyone might find this interesting:

the New York Times has some director commentary on one of the scenes from the movie.

I'd like to remind everyone.. No spoilers for at least a week. Don't ruin it for people who haven't seen it yet.

[Malone]

I saw it last night at the 12:01AM screening and was quiet impressed.

...and thats all I am going to say about that.

[Cybercat]

Just a quick question. I saw a clip of the movie on the daily show and the CGI looked very fake. Was that just some unfinished bit or does it really look so crappy at points? I won't be watching the movie until monday, but I would like to know in advance how high to put my expectations.

[Scarlet Speedster]

Just a quick question. I saw a clip of the movie on the daily show and the CGI looked very fake. Was that just some unfinished bit or does it really look so crappy at points? I won't be watching the movie until monday, but I would like to know in advance how high to put my expectations.

What you saw in the clip is what is in the movie.

[Cybercat]

That's disappointing. The tank in that clip looked really fake. They should be able to do better these days.

[Graham]

Yeah, the tank was disappointingly cartoony looking, but other than that, the CG wasn't all that bad.

I was very impressed with the way this story was adapted to film. Although it was more or less exactly like the comic, same as Sin City. But it was still very entertaining. I think the guy they got for Rorschach was pretty spot on.

I was happy with it.

[linpixie]

The blue dangling dick was kinda distracting...

[Graham]

Pervert!

I didn't find it to be distracting. I thought the part in the flashback where Jon first appears in the cafeteria after becoming super powered was pretty funny though. When he was floating in the air and spread his arms wide, all I could think was "Who watches THIS watchman?!" *wiggle*

[Katesickle]

I just saw this a few hours ago, and I enjoyed it. It wasn't spectacular or anything, but still a good movie. I was surprised at the number of people who brought their little kids to see it (and subsequently left with said kids). Just 'cause its based on a comic doesn't make it a kid movie, folks.

Also, Dr. Manhattan is awesome.

[Cybercat]

Well, it's rated R. If parents think they should just ignore that, they get what they're asking for.

[redtangerine]

Pervert!

I didn't find it to be distracting. I thought the part in the flashback where Jon first appears in the cafeteria after becoming super powered was pretty funny though. When he was floating in the air and spread his arms wide, all I could think was "Who watches THIS watchman?!" *wiggle*

I know the term 'lol' is tossed around a lot these days, but I serious laughed out loud when I read that.

Anyway, my girlfriend and I saw Watchmen last night and I enjoyed it. I thought it was better than the book, but I honestly didn't find the book to be that great (I know, blasphemy, I'm the worst person ever, etc.) and the ending was a bit more plausible to me than the original.

And yes, Rorshach was dead on (though, not a complain agains the big R, but he did seem to be channeling his best Christian Bale's Batman, so I find it odd that people love Ror's voice, but denounce Bale's).

[Richard Cory]

My prediction turned out to be spot on: it was cool, but undershot the depth of its source material. Also, the music selection was very odd.

[Useless Trivia Man]

We saw it last night. I friggin' loved it. Mrs UTM - being less of a comic-book-superhero geek - was a bit less blown away, but that's totally understandable. (I think most of us know that Dr. Manhattan spends most of the movie naked, but every time his penis was shown onscreen she giggled. (Weiner!)) She's like that.

I agree with what redtangerine said about the change to the ending - this way actually was a bit more plausible. My sole complaint was a very minor detail change that I don't understand: Why did they change Rorshach's story about the murderer of the little girl? I loved the original tale how he lit the place on fire and left the guy to cut his own arm off, but I was rather disappointed that they changed it for the big screen. As I said, it's a minor thing, but it didn't make sense to me. I can forgive it though - I'd happily sit through it again on the big screen, and it'll definitely be on my movie shelf when it comes to DVD.

[Paddy0]

I approve of this film! They had my favourite scene from the book so its all good

[The Illusionist]

My sole complaint was a very minor detail change that I don't understand: Why did they change Rorshach's story about the murderer of the little girl? I loved the original tale how he lit the place on fire and left the guy to cut his own arm off, but I was rather disappointed that they changed it for the big screen.

I thought the same thing, and came to the conclusion that - due to time constraints - there was little detail about the true depths of his traumatic childhood, and this was a way of thoroughly showing his Moral Event Horizon. If anything it makes him even more brutal - at least in the comic, the guy had a chance to escape. Now it was pure, vicious retribution without ANY kind of mercy, making him all the more dangerous to those around him.

I went to see the late-night showing, and I have to say I genuinely enjoyed the movie - high praise from me, who generally gets bored halfway through and start trying to spot editing mistakes

Despite almost 3 hours in length, I didn't find myself doing that with Watchmen. The plot moved on sufficiently fast enough to keep my attention for most of the time, and I was surprised to realise that it was nearly 2 in the morning when I got home.

I have to say that I agree with the... prominence of Dr. Manhatten's glowing-blue-mini-Manhatten. I know the film was R rated and was trying to be true to the comic in that his nudity was an outward sigh of his withdrawel from society, but at times it was almost gratuitous and as full-frontal nudity is such a rare sight in mainstream cinema it tended to be distracting during scenes when I was trying to focus on important plot-points

Of which there were lots, and I couldn't help but think of quite a bit of the exposition as excuses to crowbar large swathes of text from the book all in one go. I understand that a lot of it needed to be said, with the absence of the comic's minor characters to fulfill that role, but it could probably have been done more subtly, or at least with something more than talking heads.

Having said that, the change to the ending was one that I greatly appreciated. The comic version rankled me for undermining a very important theme from the rest of the story, but the movie version enhances that same theme while not altering the plot even a little bit, and I think the majority of people in the audience with me did not object.

[linpixie]

Forgive me for not knowing, but how does the movie's ending change from the original story? I guess I could look it up, but it's so much easier to just ask...

[The Illusionist]

If you don't want to know, don't highlight the black bar!

In the novel, Ozymandias not only develops a teleportation devices, but instead of simply using a bomb he instead genetically engineers a giant psychic 'alien' and sends THAT to New York. The teleportation process kills it outright, leaving it's enormous corpse merged with numerous buildings and it is the psychic shockwave created by it's death that kills millions of people and traumatises millions more besides.

The idea is that he unites Earth against a common foe - 'Aliens' that attack humanity from 'another dimension'. So for an ordinary human being in 1985, he has access to 23rd Century genetic manipulation and pops the concept of 'Aliens' into the story completely out of the blue, which I think messes with the whole idea of the story being that the Watchmen are ordinary people in a reasonably 'real' setting.

In the movie, Ozymandias - with Dr. Manhattan's help - reverse engineers Manhattan's teleporting ability under the guise of benefitting mankind, but instead uses it to simply teleports a bomb into a heavily populated area, making sure the energy signature matches that of Dr. Manhattan. He basically makes it looks like Dr. Manhattan flipped and attacked the Earth, uniting humanity against him instead.

It's entirely plausible, given Manhattan's previous attitude and actions, it ties up all the same plot points, and is a very good reason for Dr. Manhattan to permanently abandon Earth afterwards. More importantly, it doesn't pull giant-psychic-alien-clones out of nowhere and spoil the major theme of Watchmen being "like normal 1985, but with one superman working for the USA".

I realise that's probably a personal preference, but it seems much cleaner and doesn't make Ozymandias look like an actual "super"hero rather than a very smart, highly athletic guy in a funny outfit.

[linpixie]

Wow, yeah. That is kinda silly to throw that in there at the end. Thank you for explaining.

[Scarlet Speedster]

I agree with the reasoning behind the ending change, but I don't consider it as effective as the comic's. I will admit that the squid is a little out of nowhere, however the Black Freighter stuff connects to that in an important way.

My gripe with the change to the ending for the movie is this: Dr Manhattan is heavily associated with America. While he will hold the primary blame for the destruction, America will be seen to shoulder the blame as well. Guilty by association. For me, that fails to preserve the concept of unifying the world, specifically America and the Soviet Union. While the addition of foreign cities to the attack would encourage more solidarity than if just NYC were targeted (as is highly evident by the events of 9/11), I don't feel that the event was separated enough from the US to warrant the final result.

As for the movie as a whole... I'm pretty torn. Torn in that I don't want to add to the negativity and somewhat unfair bashing that the film, and specifically Snyder, is receiving amongst the comic community.

Stating that it was an impossible task to begin with is absolutely true. I went into this a bit in another thread so I'll just copy that here and then add a little:

As the film industry stands, specifically Hollywood, a truly faithful adaptation of Watchmen is undoable. Snyder was not the man for the job. This film only goes on to reinforce the truth that comics can still do certain things better than Hollywood, regardless of what advances have been made in effects technology. Despite being published by DC comics, Moore and Gibbons' Watchmen is very independent in spirit. No studio would finance a film with the budget necessary to faithfully adapt the book because it is too risky a return on their investment. The film at times touches on the themes explored far more skillfully in the book, but it also misses the point entirely at times. The depiction of violence in the film was bordering on glorification where as the comic presents it as the disturbing horror that it is. The omission of certain aspects of Laurie's story results in an incomplete character arc in the film.

I read an interesting quote that I think sums it up rather well, "if someone hands you a slip of paper that says "Crazy guy thinks he's a knight" or the novel DON QUIXOTE, which do you get more out of?"

I think the best way to describe Snyder's "adherence" to the source material is karaoke. The lyrics are all there, but it's pretty empty regardless. Snyder strikes me as a very visual oriented director and perhaps too stylish for Watchmen. The slow motion and some of the shots that work well in the graphic novel do not work as well on screen.

An interesting aside about the Watchmen comic, many of the pages, and some entire issues are extremely intricately designed. Far beyond the design of single panels, but the very deliberate and specific structuring of the panels on the pages create a larger mosaic. Using the panels as storyboards is simply not capable of replicating that in any way on the screen. The idea that comics are storyboards to me is a huge misconception that I think Hollywood would really do well to understand.

Back to the movie and Snyder. To really capture the feel of the comic, I think a more raw and less stylized approach would have been more effective. Snyder's almost trademark approach definitely got in the way of that I think.

I'm not saying all this to dis Snyder, I think he's very good at what he does, which is create visually arresting moments. He would probably make great music videos, 300 certainly was one. As a storyteller though, I cannot help but feel he falls short. I have not seen his Dawn of the Dead remake, but in both 300 and Watchmen I feel that he had difficulty with the female characters.

Overall, it didn't give me the same feeling that the comic did. I think that's the most important thing to accomplish in an adaptation of a singular story like Watchmen (as opposed to say Batman or Spider-Man which has had many different takes on the material over the years to choose from). More so even than upholding every bit of minutia. When the movie restricts itself too much by trying to be "faithful" to the comic, I feel like that's where it failed. It was soulless, humorless, and lacking passion. However, when it does its own thing, it's highly entertaining.

I certainly wouldn't say it's not worth seeing, or not worth your money. Ultimately though, it wasn't what I hoped for. However, a while ago I was in Borders and the very first table when you walk in was covered with copies of Watchmen and various other material. So at least we got a $120+ million advertisement for one of the greatest comic books ever made.

[Cybercat]

I finally got to see the movie with some of my friends. I never read the book so it was all new for me and they managed to make it all understandable anyway. Sometimes movies based on books (be they comic or regular books) only work for people who already know the story, but no such problem here.

I don't understand why some people go on about the nudity so much, neither the blue wang nor the sex scene would be enough to up the rating above 13+ here, it's only 16+ because of the graphic violence.

One question, because one of my friends had to catch a train we didn't wait until after the end titles. Did they have anything after that like some movies do?