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Forums - General - Well, I'm off to see the watchmen.

The_vagabond7 on 07 March 2009
CAL4M1TY said:
I watched this movie yesterday.

I can only give the opinion of a movie goer, as I have not read the comic books.

I must say, this movie is basically a thank you to those comic book readers, because if you haven't read it (like me), you won't understand a thing for the first hour.

The movie's main fault is definitely that it assumes that you know whats going on and that this movie is just a chance for you to see it in motion. I think IGN's review put it best when it said that(paraphrase here), in trying to recreate the comic book exactly, the makers forgot the fact that the readers had 1 month to digest the information and go over it again before the next issue, in this 150 minute movie it doesn't give you that luxury. It's artistic style is pretty awesome, and the characters are odd in that they are either awesome or fall flat.

POTENTIAL SPOILERS FROM HERE ONWARDS:

The best character in the whole film is Rorschach, easily. He's the only character you feel empathy with in the entire movie. Comedians a cold bastard, Nite Owl seems like a selfish douchebag (stealing a fellow team mates girl and all), Silk Spectre a bit of a sl*t, Dr. Manhatten is probably the next person closest to achieving empathy with (which, if you've seen the movie/read the comic, is laughable given his character) and Adrian just seems like the actor didn't know the character (and this is coming from someone who hasn't read the comic and doesn't know the character either!).

HUGE SPOILERS HERE:

Similarly to the IGN review, I find the ending a bit ridiculous. Dr. M is an American Weapon, I don't really get how the world is able to unite when America's weapon caused the devastation (or at least they think so anyway). I would have thought the deaths in New York would have been more viewed as America getting a taste of their own medicine (or at least realistically thats what the other nations should have thought I felt).

Apparently the original ending is that it's blamed on Aliens? I thought that would have been a far better ending, as it would have made more sense then blaming it on Dr. Manhattan (in the sense of the reaction of the nations).

Also, What the HELL was up with that weird tiger thing? Similarly to the weird monsters in 300, it really put me off the movie, it really broke the realistic feel of the movie (aside from Dr. Manhattan of course).

In the end, it was a good movie that doesn't fair to well because it seems as though the makers were so hell bent on making this faithful, that they forgot the difference between comic books and movies. I enjoyed it, but it's not one of the best comic book movies of all time

I actually thought the same thing for the first bit of the movie, that for somebody that didn't read the comic book this might seem confusing. Namely the opening as it's quickly running through history without ever telling you that it's running through history, or what that history is entailing.

And just as a side note, I think it's interesting you found rorschach the only one that was empathizable. Not saying you're wrong or anything like that, I just think it's interesting. Dreiberg (Nite Owl) is meant to be the only semi-sane reasonable person of the bunch that is a genuinely heroic good guy with some sexual issues. And Rorshach is meant to be a crazy murderous right wing psychopath. But even in the book I did empathize a bit because of the occasions where he did exibit some kind of emotion. But I just thought that was interesting is all.

 

SPOILERS

 

Well the Ending thing was that unlike in the comic book, Dr. Manhatten destroyed cities all over the world in the movie. In the comic book it was just new york being destroyed and blamed on Aliens. In the Movie numerous cities around the world were destroyed, Tokyo was mentioned but I can't remember the others.


Bubastis the cat would be wierd without explanation. In the comic book the cat was a genetically engineered Lynx. Adrian had a whole team of genetic scientists working in the antartic to manufacture what would appear to be an alien, but also spent tons of money on his own little "pet" projects (sorry for the pun), such as his faithful cat bubastis.



You can find me on facebook as Markus Van Rijn, if you friend me just mention you're from VGchartz and who you are here.

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BringBackChrono on 07 March 2009

A friend just sent me the link. One of the better laughs ive had in a while



"The accumulated filth of all their sex and murders will foam up about their waist and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!"...

 ....and I'll look down and whisper  "no."  

                                                                   - Rorschach

The_vagabond7 on 07 March 2009

That is freaking hilarious, Chrono. I love the part where Rorschach is petting the dogs, and juggling pies. Or when Adrian catches the comedian falling out the window. You gotta love 80s cartoons. That's gold right there.



You can find me on facebook as Markus Van Rijn, if you friend me just mention you're from VGchartz and who you are here.

CAL4M1TY on 07 March 2009
The_vagabond7 said:

I actually thought the same thing for the first bit of the movie, that for somebody that didn't read the comic book this might seem confusing. Namely the opening as it's quickly running through history without ever telling you that it's running through history, or what that history is entailing.

And just as a side note, I think it's interesting you found rorschach the only one that was empathizable. Not saying you're wrong or anything like that, I just think it's interesting. Dreiberg (Nite Owl) is meant to be the only semi-sane reasonable person of the bunch that is a genuinely heroic good guy with some sexual issues. And Rorshach is meant to be a crazy murderous right wing psychopath. But even in the book I did empathize a bit because of the occasions where he did exibit some kind of emotion. But I just thought that was interesting is all.

 

SPOILERS

 

Well the Ending thing was that unlike in the comic book, Dr. Manhatten destroyed cities all over the world in the movie. In the comic book it was just new york being destroyed and blamed on Aliens. In the Movie numerous cities around the world were destroyed, Tokyo was mentioned but I can't remember the others.


Bubastis the cat would be wierd without explanation. In the comic book the cat was a genetically engineered Lynx. Adrian had a whole team of genetic scientists working in the antartic to manufacture what would appear to be an alien, but also spent tons of money on his own little "pet" projects (sorry for the pun), such as his faithful cat bubastis.

I think the thing about Rorshach is that he wants to avenge his team mate, which I'm sure most people can identify with (heck, we go to war most of the time because of that). You also feel sorry for him, his situation wasn't his doing and he's just making the best of what he can (which, is being a masked vigilante). I think the end bit was really what made this character great (and easily the best in the movie). It's similar to why I like Batman as a character so much (which is why Rorshachs killings in the movie, whilst semi-understandable, is the only part of the character I found iffy).


Also, the movie portrayed (in my opinion) Rorshach to be a much more stable character then the Comedian (minus the bit about the missing girl of course), so he felt more stable then he actually was next to the Comedian.

The thing about Night Owl is, there's not enough detailing about who he is and what's going on through his head. For me, the only admirable quality he had in the movie was that he understood why things had to happen the way they did. Aside from that, he felt like a character that follows what others do (i.e Rorshach brings him into the investigation, Spectre pushes him to spring Rorshach from prison and he follows Rorshach to antartica), it didn't feel like he had any intiative as a superhero. On top of that, he stole Dr. Manhattan's girl, which is a dog act in most peoples books.


Yeah I'm still not sure how I felt about the cat, its so random that he/she pops up in one scene right at the end like we were supposed to know she was meant to be there the whole time. But I guess the same criticism can be made of the Transformers movie with the cheesy one liners ("You're more than meets the eye").