tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5190627334056603500.post2420094013733425506..comments2023-10-19T05:36:56.844-07:00Comments on "Let's Not Talk About Movies": WatchmenUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5190627334056603500.post-7693472651864166452009-03-14T14:17:00.000-07:002009-03-14T14:17:00.000-07:00Boy did I have a brilliant reply that Blogger lost...Boy did I have a brilliant reply that Blogger lost!<BR/><BR/>Let's sum up: Agreed.<BR/><BR/>But if he had a difficult task crowding in 3-5 rounded characters, "Watchmen" has many more than that and so "Silk Spectre II" (Laurie) was the one to come off uni-dimensionally (save the adolescent joke).<BR/><BR/>But that's the way it's always been, both in this instance and comics in general. Comics just don't know how to handle a woman.<BR/><BR/>In this instance, in Moore's story, Laurie's Charlton comics inspiration was "Nightshade," a shadow mage. The only thing the two characters have in common is they're both girl-friends to the atomic-powered character, a kept woman, not a lot of depth there. And as Moore is a kink-meister, he made Silk Spectre more in line with 40's characters like Phantom Lady and The Black Canary, who were basically ass-kicking Petty girls in bondage gear (There was recently a hue and canary-cry from parents' groups over the Barbie/Black Canary doll over the leather and fish-nets costume).<BR/><BR/>Laurie is more of a plot device than a character: she's the audience surrogate giving us a look inside the super-group, as well as being the binding character through the plot, and the Reason To Believe. On a character level, she, like Nite Owl are legacy characters who, because the've come to The Cause second-hand, do it for the dress-up and the action: they're power and adrenaline junkies. And Laurie, growing up in a super-hero household, doesn't know any different.<BR/><BR/>But women are notoriously badly-written in comics. In the Silver Age, women were ball-busters, harpies, villainesses or insane--in Jean Loring's case, all four. And she was a lawyer. Read a Silver Age "Lois Lane" comic, it's like reading "I Love Lucy The Sociopath." And things have gotten only marginally better. As we've discussed, no one knows how to write Wonder Woman and she's one of DC's "Big Three" heroes. I think the day will come when they write her like an individual, as opposed to Representative Of The Gender."Yojimbo_5"https://www.blogger.com/profile/12791996320278381516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5190627334056603500.post-12404917115307026942009-03-13T16:08:00.000-07:002009-03-13T16:08:00.000-07:00Jim,I like the review, and your conclusion that it...Jim,<BR/><BR/>I like the review, and your conclusion that it's a full-price ticket. I think you're spot-on with your take on the acting, the directing and the source material. I saw the film twice, and am considering seeing it a third time. <BR/><BR/>One thing that you didn't write about is the obscenely difficult task that Snyder tackles with Watchmen. He's created the super-hero group film that DC and Marvel have been hemming and hawing about for years. While Justice League and the Avengers are likely to happen someday, I haven't seen anything yet... and what I've heard sounds unpromising. <BR/><BR/>It's incredibly difficult to have 3-5 well-rounded characters that all have different sub-relationships, are all designed to look cool, and are all cast with believable (if not outstanding) actors. The Watchmen absolutely rocks on this front. Haley and Crudup are outstanding. I even got chills the second time during Rorshach's final scene. And the rest of the cast fill in admirably. I actually found myself liking NightOwl quite a bit more in the film than in the original book.<BR/><BR/>The biggest knock I've heard (that I agree with) is that the subplot with Silk Spectre I and II wasn't fleshed very well. It leaves the daughter seeming like a vapid sex-pot in typical Hollywood fashion... rather than a confused woman with very little core of self-identity and serious problems with her mother.Johnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14226555790210323906noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5190627334056603500.post-74046332091425787022009-03-08T12:46:00.000-07:002009-03-08T12:46:00.000-07:00(This is my comment to Jon, encouraging him to rep...<I>(This is my comment to Jon, encouraging him to replace his (I thought)very valuable comment--with some editorial futzing, taking pity on the poor cob-webbed slob I was when I wrote it last night at 2 am)</I><BR/><BR/>"I wish you'd left this comment up, because you bring up a lot of good points, some of which I agree with, especially the one concerning the "mystery-men." They are all vigilantes beating up people. They always have been (in the comics). They're all fascists. That's the point. Fascists with good intentions are still fascists. And (to quote Richard Dreyfuss about Oliver Stone) you can be liberal and still be a fascist.<BR/> <BR/>They always were, even the smiley-faced Batman and Robin of the Golden Age (joyously) clobbering thieves (they're just being portrayed more realistic and efficient about it now). Even Superman is the benign Overman who'll still violate your rights at the drop of a reporter/colleague from a 12th story window. <BR/> <BR/>They always were. That was Moore's point back then, and as he says, (his portrayal of super-heroes as if they lived in the Real World) destroyed everything he loved about the comics he loved as a kid, the whimsy, the sense of wonder and the wild imagination. Every kid's Power-fantasy is just another thug now. <BR/> <BR/>But these characters <I>are</I> different from each other while representing facets of the varous super-hero archetypes. Ozymandias is an amoral puppet-master Super-Genius who wants to save humanity from itself by any means necessary, Rorshach is a believer in Absolute Truth-a combination of Private Eye and Masked Man-who wants to preserve the truth he's worked so hard to uncover, Nite-Owl and Silk Specter are legacy heroes: he's a techno-whiz with too much time on his hands and a desire to do good, she's a woman who's still operating on her girlish fantasies (and frankly she doesn't know any other life given her background)—they're both adrenaline junkies and closet-fetishists who haven't seen action in too long and get carried away. The Comedian is American foreign policy made flesh (a necessary evil in the 40's, which wraps itself in its own self-interest and seemingly-earned entitlement to be World-Cop). Dr. Manhattan is the logical extension of the God amongst Men: at some point he loses touch. Superman isn't Superman without growing up with the Kent's and the Daily Planet Staff (You need to have the "man" in "Superman" as comics writers like Alex Ross have written about).<BR/> <BR/>The Full-Price Ticket stands. You won't get nearly enough out of this movie on the small screen, and it's a great interpretation of a seminal work of comics fiction, one that has been the blue-print for Super-hero interpretations ever since, for good (and) ill. And "Watchmen" is as cinematic a construction as can be--it's very much a movie-storyboard ready to be filmed. Not only did it need to be done--it would be stupid not to."<BR/><BR/><BR/>Jon was quite vocal about his dis-like of the major superhero movies of last year--specifically "Iron Man" and "The Dark Knight." Condensing his argument to the unfairly restricting nut-shell, he objects to the over-violent portrayal of these "Super-men" (not just because his kids want to go see them and he's a concerned parent, but..) because they're mindless, interminable ugly slug-fests without much point.<BR/><BR/>Yup. My point is that that's usually what they are--"When Titans Clash" is the slammed-into-the-ground cliche that Marvel uses.<BR/><BR/>Even when they're not extended cage-matches (ala "Superman Returns" which a lot of "fans" of comics grumbled about), there's that creepy notion that "Supes'" thinks nothing of spying and listening in on his lady-love's intimate bickering with her new lover. Ewwww. (And Jon, I have to replace those screen-caps, the review stays).<BR/><BR/>These guys are creeps. Rights-crushing, bone-breaking overlords. They came into literary being when Hitler came to power, and they mushroom-clouded on screen during the Bush years. A helpless people feeling powerless welcomes benign Over-people. <BR/><BR/>But there's no campy "Zap!" "Pow!" censoring the fist-fights anymore. We see the contusions, hear the bones breaking, as close to movies come to making you "feel" it on a visceral level and without the hospital bills. I see nothing wrong with that, frankly. Anything else would be (can I say this now?) "Putting lipstick on a pig." And it calls into question just what these "heroes" are. <BR/><BR/>I think that's healthy.<BR/><BR/>(Of course, with the crowd I saw the movie with Friday morning--I'm surprised they were up and around--those subtleties might be lost, although I heard some sympathetic "Ooooh's!" and "Yowtch!"--the real world equivalent of "Zap" and "Pow"-- during the fight scenes. They felt the pain.<BR/><BR/>This would be a good writing assignment: "What sort of Super-hero movie would Jon like?" I thought of one scenario: the hero who wants to do good works in order to make himself obsolete--but then, that's Ozymandias...in "Watchmen.""Yojimbo_5"https://www.blogger.com/profile/12791996320278381516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5190627334056603500.post-10389749377873244162009-03-08T08:15:00.000-07:002009-03-08T08:15:00.000-07:00They all dress in the spandex kicking heads for di...<I>They all dress in the spandex kicking heads for different reasons and their very differences in attitude, sense of justice and heritage are what make the characters interesting, not the justice dispensed.</I><BR/><BR/>Having not read the book and not being a great fan of the 'lets' show as much mindless violence in as much grotesque detail as we can' genre, I am probably supremely unqualified to talk about this movie other than I paid for a ticket and spent 2 hours 45 minutes wanting my money back. <BR/><BR/>Oh, it was fun to try to spot all the historical recreations (Is that supposed to be Annie Liebowitz etc?) but that is just like reading an Umberto Eco book and thinking you get all the allusions. <BR/><BR/>I even liked the opening fight when the Comedian is killed because it seemed to me to be recreating the frame by frame way the fight would appear on the pages of a comic book. <BR/><BR/>But I have to disagree with your comment about how the characters are differentiated - maybe in their level of self-awareness but little else. They are all vigilantes who seem to enjoy violence for the sake of it because they are the uber-people. The Nite-Owl and the Silk Specter II's idea of a date is to go to a maximum security prison and kick the shit out of people. It got so old - kind of like the Anakin vs Obi-Won at the end of Episode 3.<BR/><BR/>It would have been interesting to have seen more than intermittent flashbacks to the things that made them what they were.<BR/><BR/>Then there was the dialog, and the bad sex, and the cutting. No it may be a flawed masterpiece but I don't think you should give this one a full-price ticket. I think it is an example of someone needing to tell a director that just because you can do something, it doesn't mean you should. <BR/><BR/><I>My original comment (deleted for technical not editorial reasons).</I>Jon Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14818994066905620457noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5190627334056603500.post-3248764015815981302009-03-07T08:43:00.000-08:002009-03-07T08:43:00.000-08:00This comment has been removed by the author.Jon Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14818994066905620457noreply@blogger.com