Brief Watchmen Post
March 8th, 2009 by Esther Inglis-Arkell | Tags: DC comics, movies, watchmenSaw it. Liked it. Was rather surprised at that.
At first I thought the style would knock me out of the picture. I was wrong. There were some sequences, especially at the beginning of the film, that made me roll my eyes when they started but turned out to be strangely affecting.
Also, I think that my earlier concern that the overall darkening tone of comic book movies would take the edge off of this one was incorrect. Obviously, this would be more of a shock if it were compared to the early Superman movies instead of The Dark Knight. But Watchmen isn’t so much about shocking us as it is showing us these wacky people with certain power levels and certain senses of responsibility, and never quite the right balance between the two.
Which is why I kind of wish that the movie had focused more on the screwed up people and left out the attempts to shock the audience. Although I was interested all the way through the movie, I was exasperated by some of its excesses, and by the end I found that my ears were ringing and my ass had fallen asleep. The best thing for this movie, I think, is an editor with a riding crop, a distinctly ungenerous spirit, and a motto that goes along the lines of ‘No more than one.”
ONE meat cleaver to the head. No more than one.
ONE verse of Hallelujah. No more than one.
ONE slow, slow, slow, superfast cut, meant to show the brutality of a well-placed blow, per fight scene. No more than one.
ONE crank of the volume dial for action sequences. No more than one.
ONE shot of the human face of mass destruction. ONE pause to show a shock wave. ONE emotional exchange between two superheroes who are resigned to irreconcilable differences. ONE spurt of blood from a badly broken limb. No. More. Than. One.
“Can it be four?”
Crack goes the riding crop!
No. No it can not be four.
Of course, one person’s needless excess is another person’s glorious fun, and yet another person’s barely adequate action movie. So what do I know, except that my editor’s version of the movie would only have been two hours long.
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ONE meat cleaver to the head. No more than one.
This is why you should never be in the movie business, Esther. God, that scene ruled.
I saw the movie twice. I’ll probably write up a review, but it’s better the second time around just because you aren’t thinking “Oh, I hope they don’t leave out that one scene/line!”
@Gavok: All right, if there was any scene I’d relax the ‘one’ rule for, it would be that one, but –
*sigh*
(fanboy)
I preferred the Mad Max rip-off of the original comic.
I dug it, but I have no clue whether it was a good flick or not. I just know it as a fantastic adaptation.
The best review I’ve read said that a lot happened which we watched with interest, but we cared little for the characters, if at all. In my case, I cared most for Rorschach (of all people). He was best without the mask. That little (Bad News Bears) actor really impressed me.
That shouldn’t come as a suprise. Rorshach was the best character in the comic, too.
He might’ve been interesting in the book, but he was a character I really felt for in the movie. I found that surprising.