Watchmen cast reported

[Flexor the Mighty!]

*shrug*. I liked the movie of V for Vendetta better, to be honest. The graphic novel is well written, don't get me wrong. But a lot of the story there wasn't really relevant to the impact of the piece. The movie condensed down the central theme excellently, and made better use of the face, voice, and body language of the main character better than a graphic novel ever could. All, of course, IMHO.

To me there was no change that the Worshwhatski siblings made that wasn't negative. But as they say to each their own.

 

[Felon]

I've been reading a bit and apparently the director is using the Graphic Novel as a storyboard. Personally I'm fine with it being a period piece as well. How can you modernize without totally changing what its about. Sure the modern "war on terror" is one option but that doesn't have nearly the impact or potential of total Armageddon as two nuclear power blocs at the brink of total nuclear war.

Well, honestly, it amazes me that folks disregard the notion of a "cold war" with China, who have just as many ideological differences and just as many nukes. Things could get ugly pretty quick over some minor thing--like reclaiming Taiwan. But whatever, I guess that's a track we're not allowed to go down on ENWorld. Suffice to say, in the alternate history of Watchmen, China could take the place of Russia easily enough.

 

[mattcolville]

They'll have to change events. Keeping it an eighties story with Richard Nixon as the president, and America locked in cold ware with the Russians....that really won't work for a lot of viewers. Particularly the ones who weren't alive in 1986 and have now way to relate.

This is demonstrably untrue. Witness...every period piece ever produced by Hollywood. There was reportedly a lot of pressure from the studio to update it, but Snyder stuck to his guns and said no. He's also planning on filming all the Black Freighter stuff, even though he thinks it won't make the cut. He plans on putting it on the DVD.

So far I haven't heard any criticism leveled against this that wasn't leveled against Lord of the Rings and I'd say that adaptation managed to be a commercial and critical success and please most of the fans. Mind you, this is a different director and property, but it seems like Snyder has his stuff together and may turn this into something worth seeing.

Invariably there are changes in translation that I disagree with, but that's the director's job. To interpret the work his own way. Sin City was a very faithful adaptation. So faithful, I could see nothing of R. Rodriguez in it. I prefer stuff like Jackson's LotR that's obviously his take on it, with his stamp on it.

 

[mattcolville]

Well, honestly, it amazes me that folks disregard the notion of a "cold war" with China, who have just as many ideological differences and just as many nukes. Things could get ugly pretty quick over some minor thing--like reclaiming Taiwan. But whatever, I guess that's a track we're not allowed to go down on ENWorld. Suffice to say, in the alternate history of Watchmen, China could take the place of Russia easily enough.

It could, but only by discarding all the stuff that made the US v USSR so critical to the story.

As someone who, maybe like you, grew up in the 80s and read Watchmen as a teenager, it's hard for me to accurately describe to younger folks exactly how relevant Watchmen seemed. I grew up as part of a generation that accepted as fact the notion that there was going to be a nuclear war between Russia and America sooner or later. The paranoia, the cultural portrayal of the Russians in media. There's nothing like that kind of relationship and tension in the air now between the US and China.

Watchmen tapped into that and fed it and fed on it. It came out over the course of 12+ months and it really did feel like the actual world was moving closer and closer to nuclear Armageddon. There's no "Climate Change" clock, or "War With China" clock. But there is a real Doomsday clock maintained by the Atomic Energy commission that tracked how close we were to nuclear war.

You watch a movie like...The Right Stuff, or Apocalypse Now and you come away from it feeling like "that's what it was to live then and there." Switching Watchmen's setting, even it's fantasy setting, would not achieve that affect. "This is was it was like to be alive in the 80s when it seemed like everything was on the brink of exploding."

You might think we're close to war with China and that's all well and good, but certainly that notion does not DOMINATE the media the way it did with Russia in the 80s.

 

[Felon]

This is demonstrably untrue. Witness...every period piece ever produced by Hollywood.

Watchmen is not a "period piece". It is not a faithful recreation of historical events. It's a superhero story that took place in a fictionalized alternate history that never was, and is no longer relevant.

So far I haven't heard any criticism leveled against this that wasn't leveled against Lord of the Rings.

There was no Richard Nixon in the version of LotR I read. You're again applying notions about historical periods to fictional events. There is no option for updating LotR to correlate with current events. There is with Watchmen, as the only "critical" element the cold war supplied was a motivation for Ozymandius to feel he needed to save the world from armageddon.

It could, but only by discarding all the stuff that made the US v USSR so critical to the story.

As someone who, maybe like you, grew up in the 80s and read Watchmen as a teenager, it's hard for me to accurately describe to younger folks exactly how relevant Watchmen seemed. I grew up as part of a generation that accepted as fact the notion that there was going to be a nuclear war between Russia and America sooner or later. The paranoia, the cultural portrayal of the Russians in media.

OK, first off, that's rather melodramatic. I was a teenager in the eighties in the USA. Nobody I knew felt any paranoia or felt that nuclear war was a simple matter of fact. We weren't all expecting to be dead before we turned thirty. People just went about there lives and hoped for the best as they always do.

Second off, it's not that hard to express cultural paranoia to younger folks. We have it in spades today. Scenarios abound for terrorists sneaking a WMD into the U.S. through insecure borders and making some kind of coordinated detonation. And that's an even worse scenario, because there is no cold war to wage on an economic or diplomatic front. It's either lock down the borders or accept the risk.

There's nothing like that kind of relationship and tension in the air now between the US and China.

I said that. Not sure what you could have misread.

And as I said, there's nothing like that kind of tense relationship between the US and the non-existent-for-close-to-20-years USSR anymore either. So, in both cases, you're talking about stuff that isn't relevant. Could just as easily make up a ficitional country and achieve the same result as far as the average viewer would be concerned.

 

[satori01]

There's a reason this movie has had an extended stay in development hell. They can't really do the Watchmen justice as a movie. The enitre idea behind it---the deconstruction of the superhero genre--means nothing the typical moviegoer.

One word: Unbreakable.

I know, I know still not standard moviegoer fare, but a good deconstruction of the superhero genre. I loved that movie when I saw it in the theatre, and I appreciate it more today after reading the Watchmen.

As for changing the universe in which the story happens, I think that would be a mistake.
First off given the Constitutional issues being brought up between the current assertions of Executive Privilege and the interplay of said claims with the investigative mandate of Congress; an allegory with Nixon as president is apt, as issues like those, have not had the attention of so many since the 70s.

Secondly, setting it in the Cold War gives the movie a distinct flavor. James Bond movies have suffered since they have moved away from the Cold War & the Russians. I ,(like I would assume most of the readers of this board), never went thru the Battle of Britain, or had relatives that experienced being bombed as civilians, yet that lack of "reference" does not hurt me in identifying with characters in movies that have.

That said I think it would be a Miracle to get a well done Watchman movie that was also a commercial success. Much better as an HBO Series or Mini Series.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

I would assume most of the readers of this board, never went thru the Battle of Britain, or had relatives that experienced being bombed as civilians.

[sblock]THREADJACK: My grandmother was in her late teens during the Battle of Britain, Ironically she was Welsh and was sent into London where she joined one of the various programs recruiting women for I think the WLA. She only occasionally talks a little about it when she's been drinking but it sounded fairly bad. She was with one of the groups that documented the Death Camps during the advance across Europe. As a historian I've tried to get her to record her memories about what happened because that entire generation will be gone so soon but she won't. My grandfather remembers seeing cargo ships burning off the coast of Florida in sight of Daytona beach before he went and joined the British Army since America hadn't declared war yet.[/sblock]

ON TOPIC: I agree it would take a miracle for a Watchmen movie to be a success. But if there's any time it could be done it would be now with the current events creating a resonance with the setting elements. Now if they focused more on the conflict of a single person attempting to do good in a world dominated by soulless organizations that seem to want nothing more than drag everyone down below them rather than the genre conventions it might be more successful

 

[Felon]

One word: Unbreakable.

I know, I know still not standard moviegoer fare, but a good deconstruction of the superhero genre. I loved that movie when I saw it in the theatre, and I appreciate it more today after reading the Watchmen.

Great movie. And the typical moviegoer just did not get it.

I ,(like I would assume most of the readers of this board), never went thru the Battle of Britain, or had relatives that experienced being bombed as civilians, yet that lack of "reference" does not hurt me in identifying with characters in movies that have.

Big difference there. The cold war doesn't have big battles and bombings and prison camps and similar movieworthy events--that's what made it "cold", after all. There is no putting yourself in the shoes of people living in that era, because the people living in that era just got up and went about their daily business hoping there would be no big events. And guess what? It was kind of anticlimactic.

 

[satori01]

The point being you do not have to have lived through the Cold War to be able to understand the concept of: 2 Powerful countries that are mutually antagonistic but refrain from open warfare because of fear of blowing each other off the map.

People did not have to live thru the Greek/Persian war to understand the politics of the 300. The movie import Hero is a popular film for fans of martial arts, and I find people can follow the politics of that movie, even though it is mythologized, ancient, and from the a cultural perspective that is not native to (and I will italicize this word since people seemed to have missed the word when I used it last) Most of the film going audience of North America.

 

[qstor]

I've been looking forward to the movie coming out for a LONG time. I think Zack Synder will do a decent job. Although I'd strongly prefer they NOT use the grey screen and use sets like in a normal movie. Also I would have liked to see a few bigger named actors in some of the roles. I think Keanu Reeves might have been willing to work for scale pay. How knows? I think I'll check it out and see.

Mike