{"id":65,"date":"2011-02-01T14:47:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-01T20:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/friedyoda.com\/noisecast\/?p=65"},"modified":"2023-12-02T07:30:37","modified_gmt":"2023-12-02T13:30:37","slug":"vitto-reviews-watchmen-and-talks-too-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.friedyoda.com\/noisecast\/2011\/02\/vitto-reviews-watchmen-and-talks-too-much\/","title":{"rendered":"Vitto reviews Watchmen and talks too much"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been a lifelong fan of comics. When I was growing up one of my favorite things to do was go to the comic shop and carefully flip through all of the old issues wrapped neatly in their Mylar bags while I wondered what it would be like to work in a place where you were surrounded on all sides by the collective imaginations of Marvel, DC, and their ilk. Most of my life was spent just barely above the poverty line, so my mother wasn\u2019t able to afford anything for us beyond the necessities. I got my fix by reading my friends\u2019 comics. I always enjoyed Marvel comics a lot more than DC because they had the \u201creal\u201d superheroes. Then one day in 1988, my friend\u2019s older brother was reading an issue of Watchmen. I had never seen that one before and even though it was DC, I asked if I could read it. He handed me issue number 1 and told me to be careful with it. I didn\u2019t realize it at the time, but that flimsy little book would seal my love of the graphic novel for the rest of my life. When I heard that Watchmen was being made into a movie, my first thought was that another director was coming along to take a steaming dump on a beloved part of my childhood (I\u2019m looking at you, Michael Bay). I\u2019m happy to say that I could not have been more wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The story of the Watchmen takes place in an alternate reality 1985 and it asks \u201cWhat if superheroes were not only real, but they were real people with real problems?\u201d Nixon is still the president of the U.S. and not only do superheroes exist, but they assisted American troops in winning the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For someone that has read the novel numerous times, it is clear from the beginning how much Zack Snyder loves the story that he is bringing to life on the screen. Tiny details from the books are in every shot. He takes great pains to recreate nearly every panel as accurately as possible. The signs on the streets, the costumes that the extras are wearing, and even the window decorations in storefronts are meticulously modeled in such a way that this isn\u2019t simply a movie adaptation. The only way to accurately describe it is \u201cbringing the books to life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cast of the movie follows this as well. Each of the actors looks exactly like the characters they are playing. Malin Ackerman is<\/em> Laurie Juspeczyk. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is<\/em> Eddie Blake. Jackie Earle Haley is<\/em> Walter Kovacs. The entire cast is so talented that as you are watching Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, Comedian, and Rorschach struggle with balancing life as a superhero and a regular person you never once think \u201cThe acting is incredible\u201d because they don\u2019t feel like characters. These are real people, with real problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore created the original serial, they placed in its pages another comic book with a story that paralleled that of Adrian \u201cOzymandias\u201d Veidt. The comic-within-a-comic was called Marooned. Moore and Gibbons decided to use a pirate theme to tell the story because in their thinking, superhero comics probably wouldn\u2019t have been all that interesting in a world where real superheroes were all around you. In order to fully tell the story the way that it was told in the original books, Zack Snyder had Marooned animated and hired Gerard Butler to provide the voice for The Sea Captain. The only way to see this part of the story inside the movie is to watch the Ultimate Edition, as the Tales of the Black Freighter segments were inserted into the movie at the appropriate times only in that version due to time constraints. This is, in the humble writer\u2019s opinion, the only way to watch the movie. If you are looking for the most authentic Watchmen experience, the Ultimate Edition is the way to go. The animation itself has the dark serial comic feel, and the voice acting by Gerard Butler is perfect for the tone. It is definitely good enough to stand on its own, so if you want to see Black Freighter but you don\u2019t want to sit through another 3 hour Watchmen session you can do so. But if you do that, isn\u2019t it a bit like eating the ketchup without the burger?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As close as Snyder kept the movie to the original books, there are some mild differences between the comics and the movie. There is a scene where Laurie sets Dan\u2019s equipment table on fire using Archie\u2019s flame thrower. In the books, Laurie was searching for a lighter for her cigarette. In this situation it makes sense for her to push the red button with a flame on it. In the movie, however, she presses the button just because she\u2019s in the ship messing with things that she doesn\u2019t understand. I understand why she presses the button in the comic. She needs some fire for the cancer stick, and that button has a flame on it. In the movie she\u2019s just jerking around inside the ship. Why, of all of the buttons to press, would she choose the one with the big flame on it? The biggest difference is in the ending. Near the end of the comic series, Veidt uses a giant octopus to make people believe that they are being attacked by aliens so that he can unite the warring countries against a common enemy. In the movie, there are explosions all over the world, made to look as though Dr. Manhattan had caused the devastation. While I didn\u2019t much agree with blaming Dr. Manhattan for the mass murder of millions of innocents, the movie ending makes a lot more sense than the comic book ending. Detonating the energy reactors and blaming it all on Dr. Manhattan, who has already decided to exile himself on Mars, is infinitely more feasible as a devious plot than a giant octopus materializing and eating the city. The common enemy is a known entity, not just an abstract \u201caliens did it\u201d. The detonations had Dr. Manhattan\u2019s energy signature all over them, and after that he mysteriously (to people other than the Watchmen) vanished. I never liked the ending of the books and I thought that it was a cheap Deus Ex Machina that didn\u2019t fit properly with the rest of the series. Of all the changes I have ever seen between a book and its movie adaptation, that is one of the few that I believe actually was for the better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watchmen. A movie that is just as much a love story to an amazing piece of literature as it is a wonderful bit of cinema. If you have the time, sit down with some friends and watch this one. If you\u2019ve already seen it (and I hope you\u2019ve seen it by this point because I kind of ruined the ending for you) sit down and watch it again. If you have seen it and you didn\u2019t like it, you should tell me who you are right now because I\u2019m taking you off of my Christmas card list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watchmen on IMDB<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A lifelong fan of comics reviews the Watchmen movie, praising its attention to detail, casting, and animation. The reviewer also discusses the differences between the movie and the graphic novel, and they believe that the movie’s ending is better than the graphic novel’s ending.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":366,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[318],"tags":[354,109],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-movies-tv-shows","tag-watchmen"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.friedyoda.com\/noisecast\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/watchmen.jpg?fit=400%2C209&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pelghY-13","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.friedyoda.com\/noisecast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.friedyoda.com\/noisecast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.friedyoda.com\/noisecast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.friedyoda.com\/noisecast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.friedyoda.com\/noisecast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.friedyoda.com\/noisecast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20543,"href":"https:\/\/www.friedyoda.com\/noisecast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions\/20543"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.friedyoda.com\/noisecast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.friedyoda.com\/noisecast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.friedyoda.com\/noisecast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.friedyoda.com\/noisecast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}