The Watchmen

But if you want to make holier-than-thou claims about things you simply don’t like, then it’s…well, childish.

Apparently it’s a big enough deal for you take time and rant…blah blah

I did no such thing. I only respond to people who asked for clarifications. When somebody posts to me directly i will always return the favor. It is you that is ranting because you simply cant leave it alone. For me it would be just fine if you just left it alone and had your thread about how awesome the movie was.

If i was taking an opinion of yours and telling you it was stupid, you would very well post something back and you know it.

your utopian views.

I’m against Utopia. Add that to your list of things i hate.

Lastly, why is it so hard to just agree to disagree?  Its not that hard to have a difference in opinion is it?

Its also obvious to me that their is absolutely no reason to feel defensive about my opinion, unless you feel some truth to it on your own because in my experience when that happens it could mean that the value of this opinion is making some resonance. If it was false i suspect nobody would care to even discuss it. But i have to answer so many questions that i wonder.

Just like the mighty resonance the world takes toward bigots, fundamentalists, racists, and sexists just further validates the truth in their statements?  LOL.  They all make the same mistake of over-generalizing.  I’m telling you I worked at a comic book store that had over 200 subscribers between three locations and of those I met, which was over 80%, I would certainly not say the plurality of them still lived with parents, as you did.  I mean, all you did was throw this general blanket on the group and it isn’t backed up by any factual information of any sort.  My sample is small at 200, but from all the drivel and dregs you feel that are associated with the industry, I’m fairly confident my sample is close to 200 people larger.

If i was taking an opinion of yours and telling you it was stupid, you would very well post something back and you know it.

Kind of like when you tell people comic books are for children, right?  You’re just defending your position against my

1. The artistic value of these ‘comic book movies’ cannot conceive to produce anything but low level entertainment… the entertainment of popular culture which in this age is entirely commercialized to the point where its only sustaining public satiation for gluttony and not having much value in terms of sustaining more profound meaning and message.

I’m assuming you mean “for myself” at the end of that ellipsis there.  I mean obviously the opinion of “good” and “bad” art is just that essentially.  Don’t even get me started on art as a whole, talking about it is like dancing about architecture.  In any case, “meaning and message” is obviously profoundly different from person to person.  Doing more than discussing these things is akin to a “smash your fingers with a hammer” competition.  No one’s going to win.

2. Most of the people who like these movies are kids and young people, and the shear propensity of these movies in the last 10 years can modify behavior in people, because frankly movies DO influence people for better or worse. Most of these movies involve stories that involve somebody committing violence and lots of action and special effects. I just have the opinion that movies of this type cant possibly produce the types of feelings and emotions that can be evoked by a serious movie…“Lawrence of Arabia” the “English Patient”, because they are so contrived and contain so many situations that rely on action plot devices to keep kids and 40 year old adults who act like kids entertained.

This, however, IS a point we can debate a little bit.  This movie is not intended for kids, as it’s rated R.  The novel was rated R.  Watchmen, the novel, invoked many thought-provoking emotions inside of me.  It’s dark, gritty, and forces you to take a look at the human race as a savage species.  Its characters are complex and flawed, and the “superheroes” you get to watch clearly are not that.  Again, Time voted it one of the best 100 novels written in English in the past 83 years.  And it had the disadvantage of being sullied by illustrations  :roll:.  There’s a reason for that.

“shear propensity”  What does that even mean?  I mean I’ve laid off the poor vocab use for most of your responses because it’s really childish but I’m truly lost here.  It’s just jabbed in the middle of a run-on and you’re trying to say something about comics which I just can’t figure out.  I mean The tendency these movies have to cut has modified the behavior of people over the past 10 years?  shrug

Ok, now back to the overall thesis that you’ve turned the thread into.  While you believe that it’s comics and fantasy that have the propensity (check it out, proper usage!) to turn an otherwise normal child toward a life of failure.  Of which, I’d say success and failure is also subjective and only applicable on a personal level and thusly renders the discussion moot entirely.  What if the goal of the slothful comic-book reader is to spend as much time as possible in the depths of his imagination?  It would fail to define success for you, but not for him.  Still, I digress.

I’d point toward the general nature of the human race as the proper medium for your anger at sloth as it relates to not leaving your parents’ basement.  The Roman Empire probably barely saw comic 1, and in the end their citizens were among the most slothful in recorded history.  Why?  It’s human nature when you’re on top to get greedy and lazy.  When people are handed things in life (a comic could apply just as much as a pack of baseball cards, a video game, or a World War II board game when talking about hobbies) early in life, their disposition toward working for things is likely to lower.  I’m no geneticist, but I’d be willing to wager genes have more of a role to play in this than anything you’re talking about.

@Jermofoot:

I saw the movie today.  Not bad at all…I was entertained.  There are obviously omissions, and some changes (particularly at the end), but I was thinking about it and there is no way they could have kept the continuity intact without doing what they did.  Unless you were willing to sit through a 6 hour movie…it already clocks in at nearly 3.

SPOILERS!!!

I went last night. I too found it very entertaining. The end is very different and I’m still not sure how I feel about it.

I hated ‘old Sally.’ She barely looked old enough to be Laurie’s big sister and I REALLY didn’t like the gold digger/ trophy wife sort of thing they had going on. She wasn’t old and haggard and brass and bitter enough.

I really didn’t like how they shortened up the stuff with Rorshach and the psychiatrist. They didn’t tell how he got the mask and rushed right to how he became Rorshach as opposed to explaining at first he was Kovacs in a mask. But ditching a lot of the exposition around the Keene Act kind of required it I think. Also that chapter of the novel is my favorite part so I’m a bit biased. Haley though as Kovacs/Rorshach was excellent.

However it is certainly for the greater part a faithful adaptation and they put a lot of stuff in. It also stands on its own and does not require any particular knowledge of the comic. It moves pretty fast though so pay attention. However my girlfriend who had not read the comics had no trouble following along. She did have a sense that there was stuff left out.

Recommended for all who’ve read the comic but have some tolerance for cinematic liberties.  If you haven’t read it but caught a preview and thought it looked interesting you will likely find it was worth your time.

All viewers are advised the R rating is earned with full male nudity, female nudity, R version explicit sex, bloody violence and interesting ethical questions but not really all that much swearing.

SPOILERS

Regarding the ending.

The big thing with leaving out the Squid is that I don’t think I buy the idea that Jon becoming the enemy would really work. I think something Alien as opposed to something created in the US would make the US and Soviet Union change perspective enough to make peace.

I was reading an interview with the director and they’d have had an estimated 15 minutes of more stuff to get the squid in. From that perspective I can embrace the change.

But with the fey Ozzy instead of an All American Boy Ozzy and the change to it being all on Jon sort of took what I felt was the teeth of the ending away. Jon and Laurie looking at a big hole in the ground as opposed to walking through piles and piles of corpses felt like they’d wimped out at the end.

My girlfriend loved it so at must work on some level.

Were you raped as a comic book as a kid or something?

Yes jermo i was rapped by Batman and his boy wonder. And yes i was wearing my official Comic book costume while he was “doing it”

But lets just make it our little secret because it was a really embarrassing moment.

are you satisfied you uncovered the truth?

Ya guys, the book’s a masterpiece and the movie’s just ok.  An HBO miniseries would have probably been the best place to set this story… you could have made 4 1-hour long episodes and just churned out exactly what the novel put down on paper.

I find that most people who read the book back when it was released enjoy the book a lot more, and they were the ones seeing it as soon as they could.  Younger readers and people who didn’t read Watchmen until they were well into comics already tend to like it less because so many other comics have taken from this story over the years.  I ask them, “So did you like it?  Wait don’t tell me, it was a lot like other stuff you’ve read.”  Inevitably, that’s the case.  Considering everything, it’s about as good as this movie could have been, while staying faithful, without alienating everyone but the hardcore fan.  I still enjoyed it, and aside from the new Silk Spectre I thought the movie was acted and cast really well.

I have similar experience with folks ‘not seeing what the big deal about Watchmen’ or Dark Night Returns. They got to Watchmen after reading stuff that wouldn’t be without it. No sense of perspective.

Did you tell them to keep it in the mylar sheath?  evil

no. they told me they were catholic  said “we donn do dat”

ok, do i pretty much tuned out somewhere on the first page of discussion, crack about Star Wars explosions in space (made for the movie, not argued to be accurate), SW showing possible evolution (Long, long time ago…) and the Lord of the Rings (not a comic and created way back and in England no less, come on!)

anyhow, the argument about comics made into movies, reminded me of an interview I read with Alan Moore (watchmen), about his agreement with IL… how he doesn’t like comic book movies and isn’t going to see Watchmen.

http://www.totalfilm.com/features/exclusive-why-alan-moore-hates-comic-book-movies

i’ll leave the discussion to you guys…

Troll somewhere else,

@LuckyDay:

ok, do i pretty much tuned out somewhere on the first page of discussion… i’ll leave the discussion to you guys…

LuckyDay, we already have one under this bridge.

That was in response to IL stating he doesn’t “do” comic book movies because they aren’t real/believable

I didn’t just say this Jermo, I just doubt their value to convey anything but low level entertainment for mostly simple people ( no not you Jermo) and they are just a vehicle to market all sorts of specific kinds of commercial interests which to me at least encourages poor decisions making in personal life. It may seem very arbitrary to make this statement, but i have seen the pattern too many times in others and must tie these aspects together in some way.

Its not that they are not realistic, its actually that the story just seems really childish because its using the visual effects to direct the story rather than the story directing the action. I would rather see more serious movies, but by the same token the Star Wars story is quite involved and just uses the backdrop of the future to tell its story.

Bladerunner was an outstanding movie and concept, while comic book movies really just suck and yes both are unrealistic, but the first movie has an incredible story and didn’t rely on action to drive it. In Transformers all i can think is Chevrolet paying the producers a huge sum to get its cars shown and used to become robots so young dumb types will go out and by a Camaro or some other POS. The whole movie was a product placement excuse to sell various trash to poor people. It had absolutely no story and the worst acting possible.  But its the same thing we get in these movies all the time absolutely no high level art but digestible to perhaps only the Dorito and Slurpee crowd. I think these movies are dumbing people down.