Watchmen

[Legend]

I know there is about to be some blockbuster movie and its based on an old comic but what is the watchmen all about? Is it sort of like the justice league or the avengers and comprised of metahumans?

[saifan]

Good write-up here:
http://www.avclub.com/content/featur...never_watchmen

[Legend]

Thanks,i have some sort of idea now,the guy who created the comic is somewhat of a pioneer of the antihero.I have to say that dr.manhattan is the only character that i'm interested in.

[saifan]

Rorschach is the guy most folks who read the comic rave about. He is like that books Wolverine.

[bulldog]

Quote "Why hadn't I read Watchmen until about a month ago? Let's just say I'm too busy getting laid, sky-diving, leading training drills for my private army like the big homey Mishima, and savoring fine wines and Cuban cigars to waste my precious, precious time reading funny animal stories and picture-books about grown men who dress up like animals to fight crime. No, that's not even remotely true. I am a huge fucking geek, but I am not, alas, a comic-book geek." Unquote

lol i found that part of the write up amusing

[smart]

I read it in college it blew me away. Read or buy the graphic novel. The movie will be really good because the story line is tight.

[lupinIII]

Eh, like a lot of comic book geeks my opinion pretty much mirrors a lot of the criticisms of translating Alan Moore's works. The original tone of the story gets lost, or watered down to make it work as a movie, blah blah.

I hope he keeps it as thematically dark as possible, allows the dialogue of the actor's to remain subtle, and keeps the action sequences understated without any of the ridiculous over-use of slow-motion he used for 300. I really don't have good expectations for this flick though, the concept of Watchmen was utter genius so I'll always be negatively biased like that.

That said, the comic will always be there so it's not like I'm missing anything or losing the original work, I'll just be getting a different perspective on it.

[Justawannabe]

I guess I'm one of the odd comic fans who wasn't blown away. I liked it, its a good story, but I didn't see it as the huge break away most folks claim.

Sean

[scroller]

I had to read it 3 times over several years before I really "got" it, particularly the ending. Here's my analysis: ultimately it's a horror movie disguised for a while as a superhero story.

Beyond the story, one of the primary things it does is use the comic layout to do things no other media can accomplish, like -- (a) scraps of newspapers you can read for backstory if you take the time & flip the comic upside-down, (b) dwelling on illustrations that are repeated metaphors for the dialogue being spoken, (c) the "symmetry" issue in which the all the panels are reflected front-to-back throughout the whole book, and in the middle you've got a clue as to who is in "the center" of it all.

No movie can recreate any of that meta-artistry stuff. Also, typical movie has 120 page script (1 page/min), Watchmen has 28x12 = 336 pages, so by my count they can only cover about 1/3 the events in the graphic novel. To say nothing of the newspaper/ excerpts/ stolen files presented at the end of each issue.

[SarahG]

Isn't this the movie that still has the production rights in legal limbo (even after they've gotten so far in making it)?