The opening credits were most definitely the best part.
It was good, for a movie version of something that should never have been turned into a movie. But I'm not as adamant about it as most fan boys are because I don't think it really does the comic justice and it really won't inspire any new readers to pick it up. Alan Moore movies always seem to end up this way, they either suck or aren?t good enough. (I still refuse to see The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.)
First of all, I want to complain about what ended up on the cutting room floor.
I understand certain things had to be sacrificed to condense the thing into a three-hour movie (or honestly into anything other than possibly a sixteen hour movie), but why did they sacrifice a lot of the more honest dialogs and exchanges (for example Adrian and Dr. Manhattan's at the end) for the sake of more blood and tits?
Part of what is missing (and would have to be missing) are the awesome interwoven subplots, there're no lesbians quarreling in front of the lover?s shadow, no interaction between the newspaper seller and the comic book reader, no details about the psychiatrist's life and his decent into madness.
I knew that we'd lose "Under the Hood," and "Tales of the Black Freighter." I was prepared for that. However I wasn?t prepared to lose all the neat little self-references in the designs. I mean come on! A movie would allow them to add in all the subtle bleeding smiley faces and the frantic black shadows of the graffiti lovers. The only smiley face besides the pin and the line of ketchup on the t-shirt of the newspaper kid at the end was a rather obvious on Mars, which was made cheesier more than anything else. It felt like sort of a wink and a nod to the audience. It might as well have an arrow pointing to it reading, ?look, a smiley face, just like the comedian!)
But a lot of humanity was drained from it as well. They gave Adrian's back story a neat little touch that I worked out by being the character crazed nut that I am (that he's the son of two Nazis, whom he is extremely ashamed of it, so his ultimate rebellion is his pacifism. I liked that touch, a lot, although they don't explain the accent and it was completely lost on my brother and boyfriend. The boyfriend later checked an interview with the director who spelled it out.)
Adrian really gets the short end of the stick. Because this is a super hero movie (even though it shouldn?t be) they needed a bad guy so Adrian was the obvious choice because yes, he destroys a huge piece of New York. However in the comic he explains and defends himself to the point that even if you still think he?s wrong you at least know he?s sane and can understand where he is coming from. Adrian is a very powerful character and I don?t think they really gave him a chance to shine, relegating him to the role of super-baddy.
I didn't really care about how they changed the ending.
GASPSHOCKHORROR
Most people I talk to think it would be the first thing I complain about. But I understand why they changed it and they changed it well. They did a good job of tying it all together and matching the tone of the rest of the movie. It made sense for someone who has never read the comic. The squid ending would have been too cheesy on the big screen.
And, as I said, the opening sequence was amazing. I would watch that over and over again. They had a very comic-book-y feel as well as a nice retro touch that really set the mood. I really enjoyed watching the events of an alternative history playing out. The Times They Are a-Changin? was absolutely perfect for that sequence.
The movie itself was absolutely beautiful. And it was a fan boy?s wet dream to see the comic panels in action. I almost died in the movie theatre during the Mars sequence due to internal squee. Adrian attacking his assassin, Rorschach screaming for his face, Dr. Manhattan erecting his castle on Mars, Rorschach?s flashbacks through the ink-blots, Dr. Manhattan?s flashback, all gorgeous and so?there?s no other word for it?awesome, it?ll take your breath away.
But here?s where I get to my biggest complaint:
I would like to specify that I have a pretty strong stomach. But more than once I had to look away during the movie. The comic is infamously violent, yes there is rape, murder, broken bones, girls getting kicked in the stomach, faces being slashed opened with bottles, pregnant women getting shot, all that fun stuff. So why take something violent and make it forty times more violent? Why have bones shooting out of arms? Messy webs of skeletons and guts hanging from ceiling fans? Why show the convicted felon who Rorschach caught in the bars getting his arms cut off with a circular saw? Who thought that was a good idea???
A good example of the amped up violence and how it doesn?t fit at all is when Dan and Laurie are beating up those thugs in the alley. I liked this sequence in the book. I liked the juxtaposition between Dr. Manhattan under attack during the interview and Dan and Laurie under attack in the alley. In the comic they merely beat them into unconsciousness and leave them to wake up with bad headaches and/or behind bars. You know, the Batman thing.
In the movie it turns into a knife fight in which more than one person dies and several are crippled for life. In the comic they are able to shrug off the fight as ?all in a day?s work? a habit they still haven?t shaken after their days as a ?mask.? In the comic they have a good laugh about it. They are invigorated and reminded of the thrill of crime fighting. It causes emotions in them both to reemerge, emotions both good and bad. Emotions that are made evident without words and that stir inside the reader as well.
In the movie Dan and Laurie look like psychopaths as they can walk away from a man with a knife through his neck. They call to mind not so much the traditional super hero but the super-hoods that the titular super hero has to come and beat up.
I'm pretty sure Dan would go over the edge if he actually caused some random thug's death. And Laurie, already ambivalent about her lot in life, would just phone it in, burn the costume, and start smoking more, hoping to give herself cancer.
For the movie they butched Dan up so he could be a more archetypal Hollywood hero. Dan was a fan boy, a nerd; he was someone I always related to. He wanted to be a "mask" he wanted to fight crime and he wanted to do it with owls! He was sweet, unsure of himself, and generally cautious. He wasn't ready for all this and almost every decision he made (with the exception of "let's spring Rorschach") had some hint of self-doubt.) But he got the girl in the end so he had to become macho for the movie.
The movie had this preoccupation with breaking people's faces with stuff (a lot of heads are slammed into a lot of hard surfaces) and BLOWING PEOPLE UP! Apparently everyone in fictitious New York has more blood than an anime character and leaves a horrible grizzly collection of blood and pulp whenever Dr. Manhattan looks at them funny. Holy sh*t, you'd think people would be way more terrified of him because of what he does to people long before the whole cancer thing.
But then again people in this movie don't seem to mind being showered in an obscene amount of blood.
I loved the actors. I think Rorschach was my personal favorite. His last few lines literally gave me goose bumps (his monologues were perfect, the way he moved, the way he spoke, the way he reacted, all true to the comic and true to the character.) But back to those "last few lines,? I have a question, WHY THE HELL DID HE EXPLODE INTO A RORSCHACH MARK IN THE SNOW??? It isn't artsy when you've done the same f*cking thing before and it doesn't make his death anymore poetic than it already was.
The movie also loses a lot without Dr. Manhattan and Adrian talking at the end. As I said Adrian is left too much the villain, it's not the actor's fault by any means. He was brilliant too, very talented and very good at his role. The script just left him too... reasonless. Too evil. His monologue was obviously cut short because this is a movie not a book and Hollywood seems to think that Americans can't deal with something without tits, blood, or dinosaurs for more than twenty seconds, so a lot of Adrian's reasoning and rationalization was lost.
Also, NO on the nipple suit. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Like I said without the senseless additional gore you'd have an extra 20 minutes I bet and if you cut out the random I-swear-to-God FIVE MINUTE sex scene you'd have almost a half hour to fill with Adrian goodness and maybe even an entire subplot (although that might get confusing.)
Here's what I think happened. They wanted to make the movie vague enough that anyone could enjoy it, so they lost a lot of the philosophy and side stories, they wanted to attract teen boys so they had an attractive young woman take her shirt off and rub her breasts all over the camera, they knew that fan boys (myself included) would watch anything so they cut whatever the hell they wanted. In conclusion the guy from 300 has serious issues pertaining to blood and slow motion. And Alan Moore was not involved sucking a lot of the original vision from the movie.
Hence, you have a good movie, not a great one, and one that will almost certainly be banned in Utah.
I say see it and make your own decisions but READ THE BOOK FIRST.
It was good, for a movie version of something that should never have been turned into a movie. But I'm not as adamant about it as most fan boys are because I don't think it really does the comic justice and it really won't inspire any new readers to pick it up. Alan Moore movies always seem to end up this way, they either suck or aren?t good enough. (I still refuse to see The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.)
First of all, I want to complain about what ended up on the cutting room floor.
I understand certain things had to be sacrificed to condense the thing into a three-hour movie (or honestly into anything other than possibly a sixteen hour movie), but why did they sacrifice a lot of the more honest dialogs and exchanges (for example Adrian and Dr. Manhattan's at the end) for the sake of more blood and tits?
Part of what is missing (and would have to be missing) are the awesome interwoven subplots, there're no lesbians quarreling in front of the lover?s shadow, no interaction between the newspaper seller and the comic book reader, no details about the psychiatrist's life and his decent into madness.
I knew that we'd lose "Under the Hood," and "Tales of the Black Freighter." I was prepared for that. However I wasn?t prepared to lose all the neat little self-references in the designs. I mean come on! A movie would allow them to add in all the subtle bleeding smiley faces and the frantic black shadows of the graffiti lovers. The only smiley face besides the pin and the line of ketchup on the t-shirt of the newspaper kid at the end was a rather obvious on Mars, which was made cheesier more than anything else. It felt like sort of a wink and a nod to the audience. It might as well have an arrow pointing to it reading, ?look, a smiley face, just like the comedian!)
But a lot of humanity was drained from it as well. They gave Adrian's back story a neat little touch that I worked out by being the character crazed nut that I am (that he's the son of two Nazis, whom he is extremely ashamed of it, so his ultimate rebellion is his pacifism. I liked that touch, a lot, although they don't explain the accent and it was completely lost on my brother and boyfriend. The boyfriend later checked an interview with the director who spelled it out.)
Adrian really gets the short end of the stick. Because this is a super hero movie (even though it shouldn?t be) they needed a bad guy so Adrian was the obvious choice because yes, he destroys a huge piece of New York. However in the comic he explains and defends himself to the point that even if you still think he?s wrong you at least know he?s sane and can understand where he is coming from. Adrian is a very powerful character and I don?t think they really gave him a chance to shine, relegating him to the role of super-baddy.
I didn't really care about how they changed the ending.
GASPSHOCKHORROR
Most people I talk to think it would be the first thing I complain about. But I understand why they changed it and they changed it well. They did a good job of tying it all together and matching the tone of the rest of the movie. It made sense for someone who has never read the comic. The squid ending would have been too cheesy on the big screen.
And, as I said, the opening sequence was amazing. I would watch that over and over again. They had a very comic-book-y feel as well as a nice retro touch that really set the mood. I really enjoyed watching the events of an alternative history playing out. The Times They Are a-Changin? was absolutely perfect for that sequence.
The movie itself was absolutely beautiful. And it was a fan boy?s wet dream to see the comic panels in action. I almost died in the movie theatre during the Mars sequence due to internal squee. Adrian attacking his assassin, Rorschach screaming for his face, Dr. Manhattan erecting his castle on Mars, Rorschach?s flashbacks through the ink-blots, Dr. Manhattan?s flashback, all gorgeous and so?there?s no other word for it?awesome, it?ll take your breath away.
But here?s where I get to my biggest complaint:
I would like to specify that I have a pretty strong stomach. But more than once I had to look away during the movie. The comic is infamously violent, yes there is rape, murder, broken bones, girls getting kicked in the stomach, faces being slashed opened with bottles, pregnant women getting shot, all that fun stuff. So why take something violent and make it forty times more violent? Why have bones shooting out of arms? Messy webs of skeletons and guts hanging from ceiling fans? Why show the convicted felon who Rorschach caught in the bars getting his arms cut off with a circular saw? Who thought that was a good idea???
A good example of the amped up violence and how it doesn?t fit at all is when Dan and Laurie are beating up those thugs in the alley. I liked this sequence in the book. I liked the juxtaposition between Dr. Manhattan under attack during the interview and Dan and Laurie under attack in the alley. In the comic they merely beat them into unconsciousness and leave them to wake up with bad headaches and/or behind bars. You know, the Batman thing.
In the movie it turns into a knife fight in which more than one person dies and several are crippled for life. In the comic they are able to shrug off the fight as ?all in a day?s work? a habit they still haven?t shaken after their days as a ?mask.? In the comic they have a good laugh about it. They are invigorated and reminded of the thrill of crime fighting. It causes emotions in them both to reemerge, emotions both good and bad. Emotions that are made evident without words and that stir inside the reader as well.
In the movie Dan and Laurie look like psychopaths as they can walk away from a man with a knife through his neck. They call to mind not so much the traditional super hero but the super-hoods that the titular super hero has to come and beat up.
I'm pretty sure Dan would go over the edge if he actually caused some random thug's death. And Laurie, already ambivalent about her lot in life, would just phone it in, burn the costume, and start smoking more, hoping to give herself cancer.
For the movie they butched Dan up so he could be a more archetypal Hollywood hero. Dan was a fan boy, a nerd; he was someone I always related to. He wanted to be a "mask" he wanted to fight crime and he wanted to do it with owls! He was sweet, unsure of himself, and generally cautious. He wasn't ready for all this and almost every decision he made (with the exception of "let's spring Rorschach") had some hint of self-doubt.) But he got the girl in the end so he had to become macho for the movie.
The movie had this preoccupation with breaking people's faces with stuff (a lot of heads are slammed into a lot of hard surfaces) and BLOWING PEOPLE UP! Apparently everyone in fictitious New York has more blood than an anime character and leaves a horrible grizzly collection of blood and pulp whenever Dr. Manhattan looks at them funny. Holy sh*t, you'd think people would be way more terrified of him because of what he does to people long before the whole cancer thing.
But then again people in this movie don't seem to mind being showered in an obscene amount of blood.
I loved the actors. I think Rorschach was my personal favorite. His last few lines literally gave me goose bumps (his monologues were perfect, the way he moved, the way he spoke, the way he reacted, all true to the comic and true to the character.) But back to those "last few lines,? I have a question, WHY THE HELL DID HE EXPLODE INTO A RORSCHACH MARK IN THE SNOW??? It isn't artsy when you've done the same f*cking thing before and it doesn't make his death anymore poetic than it already was.
The movie also loses a lot without Dr. Manhattan and Adrian talking at the end. As I said Adrian is left too much the villain, it's not the actor's fault by any means. He was brilliant too, very talented and very good at his role. The script just left him too... reasonless. Too evil. His monologue was obviously cut short because this is a movie not a book and Hollywood seems to think that Americans can't deal with something without tits, blood, or dinosaurs for more than twenty seconds, so a lot of Adrian's reasoning and rationalization was lost.
Also, NO on the nipple suit. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Like I said without the senseless additional gore you'd have an extra 20 minutes I bet and if you cut out the random I-swear-to-God FIVE MINUTE sex scene you'd have almost a half hour to fill with Adrian goodness and maybe even an entire subplot (although that might get confusing.)
Here's what I think happened. They wanted to make the movie vague enough that anyone could enjoy it, so they lost a lot of the philosophy and side stories, they wanted to attract teen boys so they had an attractive young woman take her shirt off and rub her breasts all over the camera, they knew that fan boys (myself included) would watch anything so they cut whatever the hell they wanted. In conclusion the guy from 300 has serious issues pertaining to blood and slow motion. And Alan Moore was not involved sucking a lot of the original vision from the movie.
Hence, you have a good movie, not a great one, and one that will almost certainly be banned in Utah.
I say see it and make your own decisions but READ THE BOOK FIRST.
