Easy Bake
Watchmen (2009)
directed by Zack Snyder
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on Blu-Ray at Stealth's
Steve and I agreed that the Ozymandias/Dr. Manhattan team-up at least makes sense in the context of the considerable power the film invests in Manhattan himself. The problem with the movie's final act is less its faithlessness to the original giant squid than the bloodlessness of fifteen million vaporized bodies. Without corpses in the street and guts on every storefront, the emotional and strategic impact isn't quite the same.
The more relevant question at the front of my mind throughout the 3-hour director's cut was what, exactly, this particular adaptation adds to the source material. Steve said that, if nothing else, it inspires more people to read Alan Moore's book, and I guess that's true. The infamous superhero sex scene between Nite Owl and Silk Spectre might have been ridiculous, but no more than anything else. I don't know what I was expecting after everything I'd heard, but it wasn't what I got.
Again, it's nice to see actors I don't recognize in big movie roles. In comic book pictures especially, it makes the fictional universe seem less like a "franchise" and more like a world unto itself. Then again, Watchmen is a book without a sequel. But good for Zack Snyder, whose great credit sequence here suggests it's time to finally make a movie of his own.
directed by Zack Snyder
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on Blu-Ray at Stealth's
Steve and I agreed that the Ozymandias/Dr. Manhattan team-up at least makes sense in the context of the considerable power the film invests in Manhattan himself. The problem with the movie's final act is less its faithlessness to the original giant squid than the bloodlessness of fifteen million vaporized bodies. Without corpses in the street and guts on every storefront, the emotional and strategic impact isn't quite the same.
The more relevant question at the front of my mind throughout the 3-hour director's cut was what, exactly, this particular adaptation adds to the source material. Steve said that, if nothing else, it inspires more people to read Alan Moore's book, and I guess that's true. The infamous superhero sex scene between Nite Owl and Silk Spectre might have been ridiculous, but no more than anything else. I don't know what I was expecting after everything I'd heard, but it wasn't what I got.
Again, it's nice to see actors I don't recognize in big movie roles. In comic book pictures especially, it makes the fictional universe seem less like a "franchise" and more like a world unto itself. Then again, Watchmen is a book without a sequel. But good for Zack Snyder, whose great credit sequence here suggests it's time to finally make a movie of his own.
posted by NPK at 5:59 AM
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