Still, as awesome as it all looks, there was something that kind of bothered me. I mean, the trailer is totally awesome, sure, but something felt... off. I think I realized it after reading The Watchmen comic Wikipedia page.
They talk about how the art style in the comic leans towards realism, sticking to primary colours and Golden Age art-styles. In the trailer, all the colours are super-vivid and everything looks stylized!
It feels like the director said: "Hey look! It's a movie that used to be a comic! The movie looks like a comic!" This is something that might have worked for 300, which was an extremely stylized comic, but it seems like stylizing The Watchmen would be taking away from it. The comic is remarkably dense with material, so I think the focus should be on the delivery and keeping the story's original integrity, rather than tout how true to the comic all the movie's angles are.
So, that's my worry with this movie. That energy was spent in the wrong places... but then again, it is a movie, and it's not like it could have the same impact that the comic, especially when they advertise it as another comic-book movie.
I think I'll enjoy it nonetheless!
Comments
12:58 Fri Aug 8th, 2008
Hey Mr. I, they're actually choosing colors that reflect the comic, despite the odd palette of Watchmen. Check out the production blog link I posted a few months back for the details:
Ten Months to Midnight
I think that it's a little early to laud or condemn the movie, despite everyone's expectations. It is a difficult adaptation, to be certain, but thus far Zach Snyder seems to be hitting all the markers. He is not changing the ending (which all of us apparently know, despite never finishing the comic), and his attention to detail is amazing to the point of OCD. Whether or not the finished product will do the comic justice remains to be seen, but the production blogs that have been released thus far have gone a long way in allaying my fears.
At this point the only thing any of us can do is wait out the armageddon clock, and put on your tinfoil hats to protect your brain meats.
01:09 Sat Aug 9th, 2008
"But it was not lauded for how it looks. Which, really, is WHY Alan Moore has said it's unfilmable [or maybe he's just an old curmudgeon]."
He's certainly got a curmudgeonly thing going on, but if I understand things correctly, the look of the comic has nothing to do with why Moore thinks it's unfilmable, unless you're referring to the look/layout of the pages.
Basically, Watchmen uses several techniques that, if not unique to comics, then at least more easily managed in comics form. Images are loaded with details that seem to mean nothing that pay off later, with the deliberate intent that readers be able to consult the previous images relatively easily. Text and images are juxtaposed on the page in a way that will be very hard to duiplicate faithfully in a non-static, non-readable form, even with voiceovers. And Ozymandias' costume has no nipples in the comic.
A big concern for me is that the violence in the comic is going to be made palatable via slow-mo and acrobatics in the movie. Moore was very blunt about the depiction of violence in Watchmen being brutish and ugly, and I just don't see that in the trailer.
Honestly, I didn't really see the point of the 300 or Sin City films (other than making Frank Miller a lot of money and giving him the clout to do...whatever it is he's going to do to The Spirit), and I don't see the point of this one, either. Which doesn't mean it won't be successful or even that I won't go see it.
It just seems to me that slavishly recreating something in film that was deliberately designed for a static medium that combines text and image is an odd thing for supposedly creative people to commit their energies to. To me, it's almost as strange as supposedly intelligent people completely ignoring those elements of, say, Catwoman that make the character work in the source material in favour of the crap I saw in the five minutes of the Catwoman film I actually managed to watch before feeling nauseous and leaving the room.
Here's hoping movie folk learn the lessons of Dark Knight, and pick and choose from previously established elements those that will make for the best film.
Also, Rorschach's voice in the trailer is terrible. It sounds like Michael Keaton's Batman voice. Come to think of it, if they were going to go with that voice, they could do worse than having Michael Keaton play Rorschach. Spray his hair red and you'd be ready to go...
01:41 Sat Aug 9th, 2008
There is a video online of Alan Moore reading from Rorschach's journal while giving him impression of Rorscharch's voice. Surprisingly similar.
I personally have no problem in translating, rather than adapting, comics to the movies "as is". It gives more credibility to the artistic work in the eyes of the mainstream. It is surely not the way studio execs see it, but I don't expect them to work in favor of my chosen field, either. I just happily observe the effect the positive fallout has on comics as a whole, be it through marketing, sales or just plain public appreciation.
09:37 Mon Aug 11th, 2008
That quite was sorta out of context, Foley. Or at least it was just poorly written on my part. What I was implying generally is that the "gravity" and complexity of the story is what makes it unfilmable. The "less focus on literal art style" thing was a throwaway comment made at an inopportune time.
And as for public appreciation, poo movie or not, I have to admit that the frequency of seeing a goofball indie kid feeling self-consciously cool while reading Watchmen on the subway has quintupled over the past few weeks. So at the very least this movie does seem to be getting more people to read the book. So there's that.
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WillGibson
10:30 Fri Aug 8th, 2008
I feel somewhat ambivalent towards the film. I mean, maybe it's sacrilege, but I've never ever read the comic. I got about halfway through at the local Chapters, but that's about it. Still, I can't help but fight the feeling that this movie is an exercise in futility. Zack Snyder has made a name for himself, essentially, for making a photocopy movie of a hyper-stylized comic. Or at least he did that with 300. But, as you say, stylization is the POINT of 300. But here we have a movie who's point is that it is deep and rich and heavy and real, WITH what is apparently a fantastic, mind-crushing ending. [Not that I've read it]. But it was not lauded for how it looks. Which, really, is WHY Alan Moore has said it's unfilmable [or maybe he's just an old curmudgeon]. But still, if Snyder does what he did on 300, and brings us an extremely faithful adaption... then what's the point? We all know how the book ends, so we know how the movie ends, or at least the hardcore fans do. And if he changes it, well, the hardcore fans'll hate that too. And as for everyone else, this is a comic about characters they've never heard of, and if he maintains even half of the complexity of the comic, it'll lose 'em, so making THEM happy is pointless. So who are you left with? No one. And that's just the story. If he goes ahead with goofball ramping and silly slo-mo, it's totally NOT in keeping with the sould of the comic, which was it's essential "realism." The whole thing is a sloppy vanity project, a minefield that should have been left the hell alone.