Posted on 03/05/2009 2:01:47 PM PST by a fool in paradise
Snyder enriches the mix by riffing on alt '80s periodicity — a simulated McLaughlin Group with Pat Buchanan opining on the nature of Dr. Manhattan is particularly funny — and a strategic '60s soundtrack. Indeed, the credit sequence which scores a frozen tableaux history of the Watchmen and their precursors the Minutemen to the young Bob Dylan declaiming "The Times They Are A-Changing" is far wittier filmmaking than any of the movie's excessively juicy fisticuffs or the escalating pandemonium Snyder orchestrates as Watchmen staggers toward its climactic Armageddon.
Shouldn't they be playing Hendrix's cover of All Along The Watchtower? That song factored into the plot more than The Times They Are A Changing...
I have a ticket for the first IMAX showing here in DALLAS. I will not read a review until I have seen the movie....
LMAO!!!!
“and a strategic ‘60s soundtrack”
Let me guess. “All Along the Watchtower”?
Weird. Didn’t see your last line...
“I have a ticket for the first IMAX showing here in DALLAS.”
don’t drink anything before you go or while there. It’s a THREE HOUR movie. It’s also much darker and more violent than the comic.
Actually All Along the Watchtower comes at a critical point in the movie, and it is perfect.
The music integration is perfect in my opinion.
Actually the right wing Rorschach is the only character whose integrity is remaining at the end (in spite of his hang ups).
Moore did not intend it, but I see the alternate 1985 as what the U.S. would have been like if Reagan had not been elected. Boy he would have a cow if he heard me say it to him in public.
The source material is not perfect, but it is the first comic to really go after the violent underside of masked vigilantes.
I got to say that I loved the movie. Not as good as Dark Knight of Spider-Man II, but comparable to Batman Begins and Spider-Man I.
In the comic book, the bad guy is a leftist, while the heroes are mostly right right-leaning. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I’m expecting Hollywood to turn this around and cast the bad guy as a right-winger or, at least censor the fact that he’s a leftist as it clearly states in the comic.
Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns came first.
And Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams sort of hit on that territory with some of their work in the early 1970s.
A three hour movie deserves an intermission. The old epics had one. They’d even have a 3 act story arc.
Theater owners don’t realize that they will sell MORE snacks if people realize they are going to be seated there another 80 minutes watching the conclusion of the story.
A Leftist? How so? He’s a Capitalist with megalomaniac tendencies. I’d expound further, but it’d be a spoiler.
My source is directly from the graphic novel where it is explicitly stated that he (the bad guy) is a leftist and that the other heroes are right-wingers.
Being wealthy doesn't exclude one from being a leftist. It's all about control and centralization. The leftist elites are all wealthy. What they're interested in is control. That comes from centralization. They're the ones who think 'the little people' can't think for themselves and need the enlightened ones to guide them.
I'm re-reading the GN right now. I'll have to pay closer attention to it...
Well, I thought the first hour or so was painfully slow. It played like a narrated docudrama. The last hour or so picked up. The movie was good — not great — but good. I will give 3.5 stars out of 5.
Saw it yesterday, I’d give it a 9/10. Beautiful visuals, awesome characters, and an engaging, detailed story. I particularly liked the combination of camp and nihilism, especially the comic-like portrayals of public figures. Didn’t even notice the slo-mo action, it all seemed fluid.
Only three small complaints though—
1) Scene by scene the movie is perfect, but the pacing between the events prevents an emotional climax where it is needed in several places.
2) The soundtrack could have been more original. I liked the use of Philip Glass/Koyannisqatsi though.
3) Anti-Americanism goes with the territory with this kind of movie. But the green Kool-Aid about free energy— the writers must know nothing about physics (conservation of energy, thermodynamics) along with economics (opportunity costs, economies of scale, etc). This stuff made me cringe, not the buckets of blood.
Considering when this was written, the gas crunch of the late '70s would have been still clear in everyones mind.
The idea is that John breaks the rules. Things that used to be impossible, aren't any more. This scares the bejeebers out of most folks.
Positives: The soundtrack was spot-on perfect, the characters were true to the graphic novel, and the visuals were fantastic.
Negatives: They wasted a lot of time trying to up the sex-and-violence factor. I really didn't need the five-minute porno between Nite Owl and Silk Spectre dropped into the middle of the movie--especially when so many other sequences actually critical to developing the story felt rushed.
Oh, and I was sad that they dropped the faux-Cthulhu from the climax--that was my favorite part of the original story.
Shalom.
Watched it. Nothing else looked interesting. In a word... pointless.
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