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My ‘proper’ Watchmen review. Kinda more negative than my inital reactions were…
watchmen
30 Women
Okay, this is a challenge antistar_e is doing, and it’s a wonderful idea and I want to do it too. :p
The challenge is to write 30 ficlets for 30 women. (I believe orginally it said fabulous women…but some of these people are downright nasty characters.)
(Doctor Who)
1. Martha Jones
2. Donna Noble
3. Rose Tyler
4. Nancy (from The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances)
5. Francine Jones
6. Sylvia Noble
7. Jackie Tyler
(Star Wars)*
8. Beru Lars
(Spider-Man movieverse)
9. Mary Jane Watson
10. Gwen Stacy
11. Ursula Ditkovich
12. Emily Osborn**
(Holes)
13. Kate Barlow
14. The Warden
(Watchmen)
15. Laurie Juspecyzk
16. Sally Jupiter –kindle a light
17. Gloria Long
18. Rorscarch’s mother
(Atonement)
19. Briony Tallis
20. Grace Turner
21. Cecilia Tallis
22. Fiona
(Batman Begins/The Dark Knight)
23. Rachel Dawes
24. Barbara Gordon
(Harry Potter)
25. Dolores Umbridge
26. Hermione’s mother
(Lord of the Rings)
27. Eowyn
(Blind Faith)***
28. Sandra Dee
(V for Vendetta)
29. Evey
30. Evey’s mother
*Not including Leia or Padme because I’m no good at writing them.
**Okay, she’s not actually in the movies, but she’s mentioned. I wrote her in Faith In Humanity and I like my version of her.
***This is a Ben Elton novel. It’s probably not that good a novel but I like it all the same.
Watchmen the movie: very long review/rant
It’s not bad, really. Just not quite what I’d call great.
General
The film starts off well. I love the opening sequence, as it very nicely introduces us to all the characters and has a great song over it. I’m not too bothered about the big plot change (Veidt making out that Dr Manhattan is the one responsible for the destruction), in a way I kinda like it.
The one and only improvement over the book is that Dan is there when Rorscarch is killed: nice to know the poor guy won’t go completely unmourned.
Dan/Nite Owl II
Patrick Wilson’s great, no complaints there. I also love the ‘snow owl’ costume- okay, that’s the only other improvement over the book, as the one in the book looked a little silly.
Laurie/Silk Spectre II
Laurie’s pretty much my favourite character in the books: the film didn’t even come close to doing her justice. I always thought Alan Moore was good at creating female characters, and the Laurie of the book is bitter, firey, compassionate, bad-tempered…she always felt like a real person. In the film, she’s mostly just kicking butt and looking sexy.
Malin Akerman delivers her lines like a particularly wooden tree, as well. I haven’t seen any of her other movies so I have no idea how good an actress she actually is, but she’s miscast here, I think the role’s too big for her. She doesn’t even look that much like the Silk Spectre.
Walter/Rorscarch
But I am awestruck by how much Jackie Earle Harley looks like Walter Kovacs. It seriously looks like he just stepped out of the novel. So much that it’s almost disconcerting. His performance was great too, absolutely nailed Rorscarch’s complex nature.
Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias
I liked how they made Matthew Goode look. He looks sort of…like a puppet. Yeah. He doesn’t look a thing like Adrian in the books, but it works anyway.
When Dan and Rorscarch are going through Adrian’s files, there’s a file on is computer marked ‘Boys’. Considering that in both book and film it’s implied that Adrian is gay, I really hope they’re not hinting at the ‘homosexual = pedophile’ thing, which I thought everyone except possibly the Daily Mail had grown out of.
Edward Blake/The Comedian
Yeah, he was well cast. Can’t think of much else to say here really…
Jon Osterman/Dr Manhattan
He was also well cast…the voice is perfect.
Other characters
I don’t like the way Carla Gugino played the older Silk Spectre, but I can’t really put my finger on why. I liked that Malcolm (the prison psycharist) was included, and I love that Bernard and Bernie (the newsvendor and his customer) were in there even if it was only for a few seconds. I loved them in the book.
The Vast Amounts Of Blood Spattering All Over The Place
This is my main complaint with the film. I don’t think all the gore was needed, you know? Maybe this is just me, I’m very squeamish (there’s a reason I hardly ever watch horror films) but there’s just something…off-putting…about seeing the Comedian flinging Sally all over the place and punching her and kicking her, you know? I just can’t see how anyone would really want to watch that. Same as I don’t know why anyone would want to watch a living man’s arms being chainsawed off, or bones being broken graphically, or any of that stuff. Can someone explain it? So yeah, didn’t like that at all.
Other Stuff
Nite Owl I doesn’t die in the movie…in a way that’s sort of a pity, because his death led to one of my favourite scenes in the book. His death in the book is pretty sad though…
The special effects were brilliant, but I don’t think anyone was expecting anything else.
I’m glad they ended the movie pretty much the same way as they ended the book, I love that ending.
The soundtrack is EXCELLENT. I want it.
Watchmen the movie
I always wanted to make the Watchmen movie. Probably I knew all along that the chances of me becoming a film director and getting to direct Watchmen were slim, but I always hoped it would stay in development until I grew up and went to Hollywood. But someone beat me to it, and now it’s about to come out and I feel, I don’t know, that it shouldn’t have been a movie at all. Now whenever anyone talks about Watchmen, they’ll talk about ‘the blockbuster movie’, and not the book, and the movie will be the first thing many people think of when Watchmen is mentioned. I’m excited to see the movie, I truly am, but…the awesomely cool and clever graphic novel is now The Movie, and it probably will eclipse the book, and I’m kinda sad about that.
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Watchmen trailer has hit the internet
It looks beautiful and I love that song they chose. But…it has always been my not-so-secret dream to make the Watchmen movie. Not long after I read the book for the third or fourth time I got a new folder and started making storyboards in it. I secretly hoped that the film would stay lost in development until I was old enough to learn to direct and shift myself to Hollywood. Still, now I technically am old enough to learn to direct, and I haven’t yet. Sigh.
Please at least make it good, production team. Don’t change the ending like I heard you were going to. That’d just be stupid.
In other news…have all you lot got The Dark Knight already? I’m sure we don’t get it for another few days! :o
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