Trailer Park Jul 20 2008 @ 01:45 pm
TRAILER PARK: Watchmen
A landmark film like The Dark Knight (supposedly … I’m waiting two more days to see it) deserves to have some big-money trailers preceding it. There’s one I especially have in mind: Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Alan Moore and David Gibbon’s Watchmen. Just in case you don’t know, Watchmen is, as the trailer suggests, “the most celebrated graphic novel of all time.” Its true: Moore and Gibbon’s superhero fantasy is one of the most sweeping, complex, pieces of literature to be written this century. If you haven’t read it, well, consider this an order. You’ll probably find it in a used book store for a good price. Hit the jump for further comments.
If you have read it, the trailer is jam-packed with glimpses of key plot points. The transformation of Dr. Manhattan opens the trailer and from there … phew … its enough to make a rabid fanboy go wild. Some of it is pretty dang hair-raising. Me? Yeah. I’m excited about this one, but the trailer just didn’t jive with my reading of the graphic novel. Perhaps it looks too … hip? I imagined a grittier version of Watchman and have a feeling this sleek and stylish Hollywood production might mute the pathos and profundity of the novel.
But this is just a teaser. Check it out in glorious HD over at Quicktime or crappy YouTube down below:
on Jul 20 2008 @ 4:32 pm 1. Ryan Dunlap said …
I saw it in front of The Dark Knight… twice… the projection bulb blew, so they started all over about 15 minutes into tDK…. so, it was neat to see again, but I also had to sit through a dancing Geico caveman commercial…
on Jul 20 2008 @ 4:38 pm 2. Phillip Johnston said …
Yeah. I saw it online, but the sound was off when I saw it in the IMAX screening. The images were still pretty awesome on the big screen though.
on Jul 20 2008 @ 6:11 pm 3. Cinexcellence said …
I just keep thinking about WalMart for some reason…
on Jul 20 2008 @ 6:27 pm 4. Whitney said …
You’re completely right. Too hip. And too fucking young, right? Weren’t most of those characters far more washed up than these younguns’ they have running around here. I’m setting myself up for a huge disappointment….and I love this book so much…
on Jul 20 2008 @ 9:55 pm 5. G said …
I dunno if hip is necessarily the right word.
I’d say too shiny or polished. It doesn’t look that hip to me – but everybody looks way too good. None of them had powers, and most of them sucked. I mean, the Nite Owl and…body thong chick were, in the comic, not very good at or very interested in being superheroes. So to have them look more polished than the Dark Knight is just weird.
Mostly, it just looks bad. But still cool to look at. Like something else I seem to remember…
http://dearjesus.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/300-is-an-a-plus-world-class-totally-amazing-film/
on Jul 20 2008 @ 10:39 pm 6. Luke Harrington said …
In any case, I’m not sure that directing 300 earns you the title “visionary director.” It may take skill to replicate the look of a a Frank Miller graphic novel…but “vision”? Not so much.
on Jul 21 2008 @ 2:04 am 7. Craig Kennedy said …
I’m skeptical, yet hopeful about Watchmen. I don’t see how they can cram all of that into a two hour movie, but I’ll give them the benefit of a doubt.
on Jul 21 2008 @ 8:40 am 8. G said …
They are cutting out the pirate stuff, if you’re wondering about time constraints. They’re going to do it as a separate animated movie, and release a DVD with a like 3 hour version of the Watchmen that intercuts the live action movie with the animated pirate movie as they were in the comic.
on Jul 21 2008 @ 12:33 pm 9. Maurice said …
Too hip? What, is 1970 back already? Do we start to wear our love beads and say “Far out” and quote Laugh-in? If you are willing to mouth archaic venacular, then I’d look for someone to beat you with it like you’re the pinata at Kevin Buckman’s birthday party. ‘It’s sock it to me time!”
There is no way that any film could convey the volume of ideas, emotions and metaphors that the comic series does. There are way too many characters, plots, subplots and dynamics to cram into 120 minutes. God knows there are few films that have the balls to do another “Kill Bill” fix. Which may be too harsh of a statement because I doubt I could hold my interest in the series of three films over an extended period of time. I’d need all of this in one shot.
Warning: SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER!!!
I surmise that this film will mainly cover the “action” plots of this films. The whole asassination plot, Dr Manhatten’s origin, the rape of Silk Spectre and why Rorshach wears a panty on his head. What will be missing is the scope of this titanic story that cover the gamet of nuclear war to colonizing Mars. There is more information in this series than any 10 films you could name and I have no doubt that much will be left out.
I have little doubt this film will be a sucess, if just from the number of nuts that want to see this brought to life. Personally, I’m more interested in seeing which Avenger series that Marvel will go with for their big film four years hence. I mean, do I want to see Tony Stark as a sucessful, charismatic, lippy hero or as a drunk, pathetic genius that smell like a chemo ward? Such choices are the little things that spice up my day to day grind.
It will be a stylish film and a fun film that anyone can watch, even if they’ve never read a single issue of the comic. And as for Zach Snyder, if you cannot watch the first battle scene in “300″, the unique use of camera’s, the meticulous choreography of the combatants and not consider using the term “visionary director”, then here is my challenge to you:
Name for us the first three films that utilized filming the SAME scene with 3 different cameras and then editiing all of that into 1 seamless segment. Please.
Don’t overthink “Watchmen”, do what the rest of us are doing. Buy the Smiley button and start wearing it now. Let’s don’t make it a film event, let’s make it a movement. And, if you don’t know what that word means, just look that up in your Funk-n-Wagnels.
Peace, man.
on Jul 26 2008 @ 8:00 pm 10. David said …
Okay, we finally got watchmen. Now where’s Maus?
on Jul 26 2008 @ 8:02 pm 11. Luke Harrington said …
Last I heard, Art Spiegelman nixed that idea.
on Jul 27 2008 @ 9:15 am 12. G said …
So, I just read an interview with Snyder where he said his cut of the film is 3 hours right now, even without the Pirate animated movie.
I’m going to with Whitney (again) and say: take out all the slow motion, and you’ve got youself a 70 minute movie. That would be way less painful
on Jul 27 2008 @ 1:49 pm 13. Evan said …
Ok, I’m going to go with Maurice on this one and not with the naysayers. Although its been years since I read Watchmen, the trailer ‘felt’ right to me. Obviously its an ambitious piece of work, and Moore himself has gone on record as saying its unfilmable, but I think it can be successfully tackled and that Moore is a crotchety old cynic who has been burned one too many times by Hollywood and now hates every adaptation of his work on principle (which he has every right to do…it is his work, after all). However, I also don’t have serious codependency issues with Watchmen like so many of its fans seem to have, so my expectations are not nearly as astronomical as everyone elses seems to be. I’m expecting the best and looking forward to it, although I don’t have a little clock on my desktop counting down the days until the premier.
on Jul 31 2008 @ 11:38 am 14. Film-Book dot Com said …
I remember Nite Owl 2 with sort of a pot belly. I doubt he will have that in this film.
I wonder who they got to play Big Figure? He was definitely one of my favorite sub-characters.
Everything does have a polished look to it but who knows how “shiny” things would be in real life from the graphic novel. Plus the Minutemen costumes are kept exactly the same as in the graphic novel. I did get the impression that the Watchmen world was dirty like in Blade Runner. From the pics, it looks like it is.
@David. I’d like to see Maus brought to the screen as well.