Daredevil Message Board

[Stanley]

What did everyone think?

I thought it was a complete exercise in hit-and-miss. I don't know that I'd recommend it to a moviegoer.

Hits:
**Jackie Earle Haley was an AMAZING Rorschach. Hard to believe he was the bike-riding juvenile from Bad News Bears.
**The opening credit sequence was top-notch. I'll see the movie again just for that.
**Malin Akerman nekked (I mean, why lie).
**Several visuals directly lifted from the comic; some visuals not in the comic but interpreted looked good (the swinging door/Big Figure sequence comes to mind).
**Jeffrey Dean Morgan was serviceable as Comedian. Delivering lines was okay enough, but the emotional delivery was solid.

Misses:
**The music was okay, but horribly misplaced at points. It was like they were trying to get across that this was Super Forrest Gump.
**It was unnecessarily graphic. I don't ordinarily have a problem with this, but the graphic detail took valuable screen time away from other plotlines or visuals. (For example: Dr. Manhattan vaporizing three gunmen in Moloch's den was necessary, but lingering on the blood on the ceiling and on the women for 10 seconds served NO purpose. The crowd reaction was plenty. Also, the henchman's arms being cut off at Rorschach's cell. WHY?! Just stab him in the throat! Isn't that far enough?)
**It hit people over the head with a hammer. Instead of letting Laurie piece it together that Eddie Blake was her dad, she does 3 seconds of flashback that almost gets you there, and then Doc says "He was your dad." ...Great. In an almost 3 hour movie, why cut THAT scene down?
**The movie does such a poor job getting the point across that Dan feels impotent (and IS impotent) in response to the situation, that when he DOES have sex, that scene loses all meaning. Instead, it's like a superhero movie paused and gave way to Cinemax--which isn't what the original intent was.
The explanation of how the Comedian stumbled on the plan and had to die was tenuous.
**In the movie, it makes even LESS sense that Dan and Laurie should be allowed to leave the Antarctic base.
**Ozymandias was HORRIBLY miscast.
**I didn't mind that the ending was changed, but I DID mind that the ultimate conflict that really makes the reader wonder if Ozy did the right thing is trivialized in the movie--in the movie, Ozy OBVIOUSLY is crazy and OBVIOUSLY did the wrong thing. But in the book, nothing is that obvious.


This is just the stuff I can think of off of the top of my head. I didn't hate the movie, and I understand how things have to change in order to make this into a movie.

BUT

My problem is, why did they take the stands they did? Some choices made no sense, others played perfectly...it just felt like this thing was helmed by a 15 year old. Yes, true fans were gonna bellyache, but why change things that worked and didn't need any tweaking?

Yes, there'll be an extended version, but what's it gonna change?

I didn't hate it. It just wasn't everything it could've been.

[james castle]

Yeah, apparently we saw exactly the same movie. Let's get ready for an agreefest.

[Dash]

I thought it was pretty faithful to the comic.

True they did add alot of blue penis, but hey...it happens. And as for the sex scene with the Nite Owl and Laurie, that was mostly in the comic as well. So I didn't feel they added nudity and sex for nudity and sex sake. But yeah, they could have used the black underwear for Manhattan a little more.

As for the ending, I would have preferred one closer to the original, but it would have taken too long.

What this movie will come down to is the fans.

I really don't think that movie could have been done much better. Yeah it was long, but they couldn't have cut out or added much more.

I also think they did a decent and responsible job filling in the blanks on scenes that weren't in the novel. This can usually be a bad thing for a movie like this, but they made it work.

So will the people who liked Spiderman 3 like this? Probably not. Watchmen isn't a "super hero" movie. Nor do I think it should be grouped in with the rest of them. There is no clearly defined "evil" to fight, no arch enemies, nothing that a normal super hero movie usually has. And this is what made Watchmen what it is.

[Dave Wallace]

I saw this on Wednesday and still feel like I'm digesting it. I liked it, but with reservations.

I'm writing up a full review for posting at ComicsBulletin on Sunday, so I'll post a link here once it's up.