In honor of the beginning of the blockbuster season, I am celebrating the merry month of May by watching and discussing a slew of summer blockbusters, both current and from years previous. We’ve already kicked it off with that fucking abortion Wolverine, and Star Trek is less than 24 hours away! Between the big-time releases this month, I’ll be revisiting old classics with my lovely wife, and hopefully grabbing some opinions other than my own to spew onto the interwebz. I always really love to get her take on the films that I subject her to, and she’s probably got more in the Snark Department than I ever hoped for, so it’s win-win, really. I haven’t decided what’s first, but it’ll be up shortly after my Star Trek review, so I at least know that much. There’s a weekend fast approaching, so signs are pointing to Escape From New York and a review within the next week. 

WOOHOO!!! IT’S MOVIE MAY!!!!!

If you decide to see Wolverine, get ready for a lot more sky-yelling.

     You know, nothing’s worse than having to really tear someone down that you respect and genuinely like. Actually, I mean, I guess there’s probably plenty of things that are worse. I’m pretty sure losing a loved one is probably worse. Rape is pretty terrible. Swine flu? No picnic. But I digress. It sucks to have to be so negative (and snarky) when you’re really just disappointed with the efforts of someone who you typically think is pretty tits. Now imagine that you’re in a room full of people who you genuinely like, and expect a lot from, and when it comes time to impress your other friends with their charming conversation skills, none of them can manage more than a “Rectum… DAMN NEAR KILLED ‘EM” joke, or calling someone a retard and hitting their chest with their hand. I mean, it’s enough to make you want to shed a tear, scrunch your face up, and yell at the sky in frustration. Well, that’s how I felt after watching this new Wolverine movie, and I wasn’t the only one. But on the bright side, if this is also your reaction, be secure in the knowledge that in this you will not be alone… Because Hugh Jackman can scream at enough sky for all of us. Apparently, it’s his mutant power.

     So, brass tacks, right? Is it better than X3: The Ratt Stand? Well, you bring up an interesting point, but shut up, because I’m getting there. The bottom line is that I’m not really sure. As frustrating, stupid, juvenile, insulting, poorly edited, poorly rendered, ham-fisted, dialogue-massacring, and fucktarded as this film is, I kept seeing this much better movie trying to get out. Unfortunately, the movie trying to escape this one’s clutches still suffered from being based on a script that was nowhere near ready to shoot, and likely was covered in Fox executive spooge when it was rushed into production. And yes, I am going right for the “it’s the executives’ fault” argument, because it’s Fox, and a part of me refuses to believe that the director and actors involved, especially those who were also PRODUCERS, set out to make such a focus-grouped and lowest-common-denominator affair as this. What really irks me is that for five, ten minutes at a time, the movie will start to do something right. And then as soon as you start to feel like it could turn around, it feels like you can almost see a dude in a suit with no soul literally pause the movie and say to the director/actors,

“OK, this is working. But is there any way we could work in a quote from Rambo? I think the 25-40 year olds will eat it up. And while you’re at it, throw in about 8-10 more mutants.”

"Yeah! But needs 20% more muscular doods yelling at the sky..."

     It’s so frustrating to be talked down to by a goddamn summer movie, to the point where plot elements and twists really don’t mean shit anymore, because everything is just spelled out boringly with trite witticisms or brain-dead expositional moments. I feel like I need to interrupt the screen to tell the movie that it’s ok, I don’t need the extra big text and the pop up cues to understand that, yes, they tricked the bastard. A bigger problem is that while almost every actor on screen is really going for it and working at finding a way to make this exercise worth your time, there’s no underlying reason for any of this to affect you. The dialogue isn’t engaging, so that’s out. Character interactions are matter of fact, and while they show you plenty of characters doing plenty of things, it never feels like there’s a genuine reason for any of them to do anything. Everything is either explained away with some piece of information that specifically exists to explain it, or you’re expected to know it because you already know the story. Yeah, that’s not why I paid the theater money to see Wolverine’s hackneyed backstory. If I wanted some hack just talking it out to me, I’d go hang out with some pimply dude with Magic cards and extra time on his hands.

     To sum it up, everything that happens seems to do so simply because it’s either expedient, or is what formula dictates should happen next. Why does Wolverine rescue a bunch of kids? Or Sabretooth kill an old teammate? Because that’s what the formula says happens next, dimwit. It’s all so empty that I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at how hollowly everyone reacts to the events taking place around them. The first time a character yelled at the sky (within the first five minutes, mind you) over the event that preceded said sky yelling, I fought the urge to think, “oh, it’s one of those movies”. And then amazingly, some genuinely good and interesting things started to take place on screen to help me get over the sky-yelling, but then characters would do and say stupid and lame things, or appear and disappear for no reason, and then by the time James “Wolverine” (explained by his poorly acted lady friend) Logan screamed at the sky for a second time, I had already laughed openly with my friends at several “serious” moments, and it was clear, before the third instance of heavens-bellowing had even occurred, that it was all devolving steadily into an action figure-on-action figure extravaganza that planned on ditching cohesion and reason as soon as humanly possible. Double crosses and redemptive actions come and go with such regularity in the third act that not only do you not know who’s side anyone is really on, but damned if you could pull it together enough to even give a shit. Once character’s reason for being a double-crossing enemy becomes the reason for 20 unnecessary cameos and another illogical action scene. I guess the problem is that, yes, there are exciting things happening. But with no semblence of story telling or weight it all just comes off as boring and trite, and one would really expect more from this creative team, especially the actors. To paraphrase Idiocracy, there was a time when people cared whose sky-yell it was, and why they were yelling.

     Which brings me to the good parts! Which will actually take me back to the depressing things, but still. Nearly every actor in the movie is really trying their best with extremely shitty pacing and story working against them. Liev Schreiber really stands out here as someone doing his best to avoid drowning in a sea of shitty lines. He’s actually just about totally fantastic in this movie, giving his all to portray a sense of sadism and wounded pride that isn’t given even a line to build on. It’s all just Schreiber, swinging for the fences and giving a really dark and kind of funny performance that the movie almost doesn’t really deserve. And believe me, he comes off the best. Many actors one could say were better than Liev Schreiber don’t fare half as well with more breaks than he gets. Danny Huston does his best, but you can tell he struggles with essentially being a goddamn plot device. He tries to give a bit of humanity to Stryker, who is written as your standard villain, but he just can’t seem to make the lines work for him the way that Liev does. Dominic Monaghan shows up as one of the most wasted assets of the film. A character with about three lines whom he injects with as much humanity and melancholy as you can when you’re given about three lines, none of them worth shit, story-wise. In order from best to least, Ryan Reynolds, Kevin Durand, Danny Huston, Daniel Henney, Will.I.Am, and dumbass Taylor Kitsch (based on watching him in an interview), then everyone else, everyone mostly does a pretty good job. Actually, better than pretty good, when you consider that they have to find a way to act around the movie’s singular motivation: if you can’t have a logical reason to fight this guy, or shoot these people, or break this sink, just make that shit up. As long as you blow something up when you enter and exit, you’re good! Hugh Jackman is basically as steady as always, but looks as if he wasn’t really given any direction and didn’t perform for alternate takes, just coasting on his own charisma to carry him through tepid emotional melodrama. It all leads me to believe that poor Gavin Hood set out to make one movie, continued trying to MAKE that movie, and was finally and embarrassingly made aware by the studio that he was expected only to nod and jump when asked, and keep the clichéd, puerile beats intact for the movie masses.

     If you believe the rumors, Gavin Hood and team had pretty much constant interference on their hands from the folks at Fox. Personally, after the way Fox treated Bryan Singer on the first X-Men movie and prior to the third movie, I believe every bit of it. There’s a reason Fox Is universally reviled by creative teams, and it ain’t just cause they ruin awesome franchises by consistently dumbing them down to the point of the surreal… Actually… that’s a pretty big part of why. Just figure that if you’re a director and you’re ever handed the fourth movie in a Fox-owned franchise, you should probably get used to the taste of studio dick. Alien V. Predator movies aren’t getting any better, and I’m even willing to only count them as two of one series on my generous days, instead of the efficient and brutal bleating death of two once great franchises. People who haven’t seen Wolverine usually seem to ask people who have, “how was Gambit?”, or, “Was the Weapon X stuff cool?”, or even, “C’mon, how bad was Deadpool really? He can’t be that bad”. And the answer is not easy to give, because the answer is simply that it doesn’t matter. In throwing ever approach possible at the wall and hopin it stuck, it just made everything tedious and boring. It doesn’t matter if Gambit is cool, because he’s not in the fucking movie for any reason at all. It doesn’t matter how bad they fucked up Deadpool, because in silencing Ryan Reynolds by taking his mouth and free will, and then turning him into a big super-villain macguffin, he’s no longer really a character after he becomes Deadpool. He’s just a reason for stupid shit to happen, like adamantium bullets, and 20 different caged mutants on screen at one time. It’s actually kind of amazing that everyone didn’t just know who Wolverine was immediately in the first film, considering that so many prominent mutants were rescued by him at one time, so you’d imagine gossip might have reached at least Professor X, and beyond that one of the X-Men was ACTUALLY FUCKING THERE! Oh, but he had a blindfold on… right. And Quicksilver is easily outmatched by rubber bands and a metal cage… Oh right, they show that… for no reason.

     So, Is it better than X3? Well, as my friend Jeff put it, “a cry is equal to two sky-yells” so technically speaking you’d have to give it to Wolvie. But, and I never thought I’d say this, at least X3 tried to hold some semblence of story, or drama, or meaning for scenes and characters to exist. I’m going to say that X3 and Wolverine are equal, with one of them winning over the other alternately every time I think about it.  Any way, We’ve started Movie May by posting yet another TL;DR essay bitch-fest, so I’m simply going to leave this at the statement that I’m glad I saw this first, because now Star Trek and Terminator are going to be even better than they already would have been. PEACE OUT!

P.S. If you want to just throw as many mutants as possible at me, at least give me Havok. Shit, ALPHA FLIGHT would have been ok. At least it’s better than a bunch of lame nods to the comics they obviously didn’t care about.

No pictures, no images, no funny captions or hyperbolic nerdgasms. Just a little bit of disappointment for a weird turn of events that I think might actually be a little damaging overall to whatever those involved were actually hoping for. So as many of you may already know, David Hayter (one of the writers on Watchmen) recently made a little statement about the reaction so far on said film, which I find a little premature and possibly damaging… You know, scratch that. I’m not really going to parse words here. This was a stupid and actually kind of childish jump-to-conclusions response to a middling level of controversy that was handled with all of the tact of a rampaging 11 year old jerk. You heard it here first, folks: David Hayter is a fucking douchebag. Wow, it’s kind of funny that when I decided to jump in and post this entry, I meant to be a lot more understanding and kind of analytical about it, but there really is no excuse for this amount of arrogant grandstanding. Especially by one of the people who should kind of be relishing the sheer amount of uproar his work has created in the geek world as a whole. Look, I’m not saying that a public statement for the purpose of addressing the differing opinions and urging a second look was a bad idea at all. There were probably about eleventy different classy ways to attempt such an idea, however, and David Hayter told those approaches to shut the fuck up. At every level I really hope that this cat simply took the initiative to be a jerk on his own, without any corporate urging for marketing purposes. Because if Warner Brother’s had even a little bit of sign-off on this little tirade, and decided to just let it roll, I’ve just lowered my estimation of that company to nearly what I think about Fox Studios.

As I said, I really don’t oppose the idea of addressing the controversial difference of opinion outright in an effort to generate more buzz at all. In fact, I can think of half a dozen ways in which an action such as this could actually have been quite a coup. But by essentially telling people that they should be grateful for the opportunity to see a violent, odd film that apparently doesn’t “puss out”, and that they are assholes for bitching about it… and then to tell them that you “get it” if they just don’t like it, but that they don’t have a reason to call the film out… What the fuck was this guy thinking? Dude, just tell the people that whatever their opinion, the movie is causing a stir and it needs to be caught on the big screen. Tell the people that the only way to have an adequate leg to stand on is to judge it for themselves, and that anything being talked about this much clearly deserves to be judged objectively. But don’t you fucking dare tell people that they don’t have a right to their opinion just because people put a lot of work into something. And definitely DOUBLE don’t you dare act like a manipulative kid who wants a toy by BLAMING the fans for a possible lack of nerd-film in the future, all dependent upon whether they get the stick you seem to think they have in their ass, immediately out. You can’t just threaten people into changing their tune on something you created by setting up the logical fallacy that it’s so good, they’re just not getting it. But they damn sure better if they ever want to watch anything they like again. That is purely calculating, manipulative HORSE SHIT. And David Hayter (and anyone who signed off on this statement) should be fucking ashamed of themselves. Have a little integrity, for christ’s sake. This is some pretty low-down dirty pool, even for people in the movie industry. Let the work stand on it’s own if you respect it so much. This little rant just sounds like desperation, and strengthens your case not one iota. If anything, this simply gives lots of credence to those who do their level best to tear the film down no matter what, and alienates people who might otherwise have been on the fence because the first association they have with the film will forevermore be some douche with a goatee threatening their film-viewing future with a bullshit argument. Yeah, I don’t know about you, but I don’t really have fond memories of things I was threatened into. People don’t need to be hit with a stick right off the bat (hur hur hur). Especially when they aren’t even yet aware that there is a carrot out there for them, or that there was even something they were doing which would necessitate guidance by either method. Way to poison the well, asshole. And this is coming from someone who spent a lot of time trying to find a way to tell people that, yes, they need to experience it for themselves. Maybe more than once to grasp the whole of the heady mixture that has been thrown together.

In closing: Does anyone remember when a little film called HULK (2003) came out, to a similarly mixed level of reviews? Yeah. At least then the people involved embraced the controversy. Take a fucking page from the book you puppet tool. Have just a little grace and dignity next time, and maybe realize the difference between sticking up for your work, and calling people ungrateful when maybe they’re not as into it as you might like.

Hey, if they’re talking about you, you must be worth talking about. Better luck next time, dickhead.

Taken OUT, BEEAHH!

Uh, yes please. And thank you. I don’t know where it originated from, uh, originally, but GeekTyrant once again bitchslapped the internet by being the first person I know of to talk about it. And once again, it was DeekGeek who brought it to my attention. I’m not only slipping, but DeekGeek is getting better, because I knew it from her before twitter said anything to me. Regardless how many people are now better than me, the news is good indeed. Taken was a hell of a lean little brutality machine that managed to get by on PG-13 simply by the fact that it didn’t give a damn about titties or cgi blood-splatter, and just went right after what all of us really want, deep down. And that is to see a man who is roughly twice the size of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and who just happens to be one of the more respected actors of this generation, literally carve his way through a crowd. I think there were more kills than minutes in this film, as a matter of fact. There was something refreshing in the way that the character played by Liam Neeson (who you may remember will play Lincoln soon), simply stated a goal (rescuing his daughter no matter what within 86 hours) and then does exactly that, with not a bit of character growth. And the movie makes not one excuse for this. There is no conflict in Neeson’s character, other than how quickly the next motherfucker needs to be strangled, shot, stabbed, or beaten to death on the path to the next guy. Simple? Yes. Entertaining as Hell? If you don’t like Taken you’re wrong. Bet you didn’t know you could be wrong about an opinion, but you are. Deal with it. Or Liam Neeson will kill your ass in less than 90 minutes.

Anyway, as I said GeekTyrant has the scoop on the fact that they are at this moment writing a sequel. GT makes a good point that I can literally think of no reason for a sequel, especially one not involving Liam Neeson. However, the singular only reason Taken was good at all was Neeson. There’s not another piece of the pie that saves or invigorates the original, which is admittedly a mish-mash cliche of about 79.4 billion action flicks before it, save for the fact that… IT’S FUCKING LIAM NEESON REMORSELESSLY KILLING SWATHS OF BASTARDS! And damn he sells it well. I think if it’s just some new story involving Neeson’s character Brian Mills finding himself in some new clusterfuck, possibly involving his old team that we barely get to meet in the first one, it could really be awesome. In fact, I just wrote it. Brian is getting ready to spend some time with his daughter abroad when, all of a sudden, his old mercenary buddy contacts him from the middle of an op-gone-wrong. The team’s cover has been blown and they’re being picked off for capture or death one by one. Only Liam Neeson can kill enough people to stop… well, whoever. That’s the thing here. Do any of us really care as long as it delivers even just as much as the first? I leave it to the masses. BRING THAT SHIT ON.

Thanks again to GeekTyrant, who are awesome. I don’t know how many folks they are, but they’re some cool folks. Follow them.

The Dark Knight in 8-bit glory? I think I would literally eat a baby for a shot at playing this on my Korean NES knockoff box. If you can see the words “8-bit” and “The Dark Knight” and not immediately throw a fit like a little girl, I’m not sure how/if you actually found this webpage you’re apparently on. Thanks to the lovely DeekGeek for bringing this to my attention, and our lovely friend Rosie for being WAY ahead and sending it to her in the first place. 

NOW YOU’RE PLAYING WITH POWER.

 PS. No, it’s not real. Until some badass makes a ROM of it. In which case I’m commissioning old 8-bit cartridges to make it real. If you think I wouldn’t be rich, you don’t know shit.

ACTING!

On the tail end of the news that Marvel Studios decided to stop fucking around and wasting everyone’s time by actually offering Samuel L. Jackson a real salary (not a bad idea if you want to rope someone into 9 fucking movies), comes the very recent news that they also decided against trying to screw over a resurgent Mickey Rourke to the tune of $250k, and offer him some respectable scratch as well. Look $250k is a lot of money to you and me, but you don’t fucking toss what amounts to a Hollywood tip to a veteran in the middle of reclaiming all his glory if you hope he’s going to help carry a franchise entry as a big time supervillain. Also, you don’t fuck with Samuel L. Jackson. Period. I have to say that Marvel was on the fast-track to squandering a lot of the goodwill they generated last summer by showing faith in creative teams to handle their properties with guidance and care. In a span of what seems like months they essentially followed up a bunch of deserved hype by doing their level best to undo every step they’d made in the right direction. Lucky for us, I guess someone beat the shit out of Joe Quesada before he could continue to posses the living and influence the studio into more Quesada like blunders. Granted, Quesada probably had nothing at all to do with this, but I think he’s a tool and the studio’s crappy decisions seemed very much in tune with his own terrible ideas for the world of Marvel. So the day is saved for now, and Marvel can get back to making a bad ass set of flicks to wow us with until Iron Man 2 comes around. In less pleasant news, it seems that through no fault of Marvel’s (STRANGE, I KNOW!!!), those rumors about Emily Blunt being replaced with Scarlett Johannson are no longer rumors, but sad reality. Apparently, Blunt was forced to fulfill a previous contract obligation elsewhere, so they had to go with ScarHo, who apparently they originally turned down. If it weren’t for the fact that ScarHo apparently got absolutely shafted in the deal, and that there are so many good pieces of geek stuff floating around like the new Terminator and Star Trek trailers, I think I’d be even sadder about this. Oh well. Back to the grind.

I'LL SWALLOW YOUR SOUL!

Sideshow Bob references out of the way, Good God, y’all. I forgot how much I miss Sam Raimi directed horror! I forgot how much I miss Sam Raimi anything other than Spider-Man films in general, for that matter (though I still love those). Though I’m still utterly tired of everyone’s endless bitching about what movies are rated and what that will inevitably mean for movies they haven’t even seen yet, I’m still taken aback that they went and made a PG-13 horror flick with Mr. Raimi at the helm. Taken aback, but nonetheless committed to seeing this frakking movie post-haste. I mean it just looks like the master is on form here, and he’s pulling out all the stops. What I love about Raimi is that no matter what he’s doing, you never have to see more than a few seconds of footage for this guy’s love of movies, and the process of making them, to spread to you like syphilis from a stripper. I just get amped every time I see this trailer. Pure anticipation for what looks to be mainlined fun at the cinema. CHECK IT OUT, YO!!!

Uh... I got nothin'

Okay, so it’s been nearly a week to the day that I saw Watchmen at the beloved Alamo Drafthouse Enema, and I’m typically late to weigh in. I won’t go into the bugfuckery of litigious paperwork which has kept me away, but rather cleverly disguise my unreliability with some comment on how this film will likely affect all who endeavor to see it. I’ve been thinking about Watchmen a lot since I saw it. I’ve spoken to a lot of people from a pretty big cross-section of society who’ve seen it as well and all of the input kind of brings me back to my initial feelings on it. Without self-editing or over-framing (but with over-hyphenating), I’ll boil it down. It’s an imperfect mess that I think everyone really should see.

On the face of it, Watchmen hit and didn’t hit an equal amount of notes for me, as a film. It’s funny just how muchof my initial take from my earlier Watchmen post was dead on concerning my feelings on the film once it was over. I would choose now to kind of reference specific points made in that post regarding both the problematic nature of adaptation from one medium to another and how obvious it is just how much the filmmakers seem to get Watchmen on every level. Without going too far into self-plagiarism, you could use my earlier post as a preamble to this review, such as it is.

That said, Zack Snyder really, really loves Watchmen. From every perfect interpretation of a visual progression in a graveyard, to all of the parts of the story that he fought to keep in despite studio hesitance, it’s clear this guy is as obsessed, if not more-so, than every fan-boy (or girl) ripping him a new one or praising the sanctity of his sack for such a literal translation. This slavish love is so represented onscreen that it clearly separates those who’ve read the beloved source from those who haven’t immediately as the final credits begin to roll. If you see this in a theatre (which I desperately encourage you to do, despite any misgivings), just listen to the conversations occurring around you as it ends. Depending on whether or not the people discussing it have read it, you will hear a vastly different conversation about what just unfolded. The one difference of opinion you likely won’t find between these camps however, is the culmination of how it all worked for them as a whole. What everyone is likely to agree on is that to a larger degree this thing is bug-fuck nuts insane and none of us really knows what to make of it. I am amazed on a lot of levels that this film was ever made. When you think of the level of commitment and involvement necessary, both financial and creative,  to produce film at this scale it’s pretty hard to grasp. I both love and am confounded by this film in probably the exact degree of certainty as nearly everyone I’ve spoken with. I’ve learned to take both dissent and praise with an equal level of salt, but I’m still left with a schizophrenic adoration for this project, and I have to say that on some levels it’s refreshing to be this engaged with a major release film (biggest R-rated opening ever, if I’m not mistaken), and that I can love something and still destroy it on such a cerebral level. It’s almost critic-proof since nobody but the viewer can judge it in any personal way without first-hand exposure. Simply put, Watchmen is both brilliant and misfire all in one, and everyone needs to see it for themselves. 

For the meat of it, then: The acting in this film is phenomenal almost to the person. Nearly every actor just kills it. Jackie Earle Haley’s work as the deadly, uncompromising Rorschach here is simply unmissable. You will not be able to take your eyes off him at any point at which he is onscreen, mask or no. He got this property on the same level that Snyder did, and it’s plainly obvious every time you watch him interact as this character. Mix that up with a really perfect and initially pathetic performance by Patrick Wilson as Nite Owl II (who Haley shares the most screen-time with), and one of the biggest problems with this film becomes readily apparent. That problem being that for every expertly crafted sequence that Zack Snyder creates, there are moments when the wonderful cast, who give it everything they can in nearly every scene, are badly in need of a director more capable when it comes to editing. Scenes where Wilson and Haley are both eating up dialogue and oozing chemistry sorely miss an attention to pacing that is replaced with slavish devotion to literary beats that maybe shouldn’t have been so strictly adhered to. The pacing throughout is nearly totally consistent but the natural gravity of moments with these actors, and those of Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the Comedian, often suffer due to the fact that the movie somewhat resembles a balanced wave. Artistically, I think this is one of those confoundingly endearing aspects of the film that will one day be dissected as both detriment and perfect choice, which matches the progression to the detached way in which Billy Crudup’s Godlike Dr. Manhattan (more on him in a moment) views the world around him. But the structural narrative cannot hope to engage a larger audience at such a robotic gait, especially when such a character driven movie must sacrifice character-driven beats. On the same token, this kind of cements my weird relationship with the film and why I think that it will find it’s audience in years to come, if maybe not with the immediacy which the creators might have hoped. In being so devoted to preservation of source, Snyder both triumphs victoriously and shoots himself in the foot, as just when the wave upon which the movie could be structured hits a trough with an awkward scene, it then crests magnificently with another. Just for example: Any moment when Carla Gugino hits flat note after flat note as the elderly Silk Spectre I in age makeup, she has already nailed another scene perfectly as her younger self opposite a truly fantastic Jeffrey Dean Morgan in Comedian garb. For the one awkwardly spat line about the American Dream that Morgan gives, Billy Crudup delivers an expert and glorious rumination on his life as it happens, past, present, and future, right in front of his lonely eyes and with simultaneous immediacy. Crudup as Dr. Manhattan is this film’s secret weapon in more ways than one. Crudup’s soulful, yet detached voice and mo-cap work in this film sells all of it’s big ideas and small human touches as the perfect vehicle for exposition. To be this underrepresented physically on screen, and yet still so utterly present in the performance of a literal God-made-atomic-flesh really shows the level of imagination and understanding that this actor is capable of, and it’s slightly telling that Snyder seems at his best when dealing with the themes of the film in a manner relying on Manhattan’s visual-heavy narrative plot points to get across very human concepts and struggles that are just as easily flubbed in a different scene with a couple of actors working on a set.

Some of what I’m saying may seem like backhanded praise, or even a mixed bag of connections with the film, but I meant it when I said that I think people are really going to devote some study to this thing. I truly do appreciate all of the things this film did and chose not to do, no matter how mystifying the end-product can be. In a lot of ways I think that actually works, or will eventually work, to the film’s advantage. In staying so slavishly devoted to Alan Moore’s classic cold war experiment, all of the ideas that made that work so important have been translated to screen intact, if sometimes muddled or crammed together. The mechanical, translated structure of the film manages to throw just about everything it can think of at the viewer, sometimes in near shot-for-shot imaginings of the very symmetrical nature of the book’s imagery. But in staying with that structure, sometimes perfect, sometimes empty revelations between all of the major characters have to conform themselves to that framework rather than inhabiting and driving the structure with the truly awesome range of human concern which is attempted. Everything here from a man’s inability to have a natural relationship without the need for fetish, to the unanswered question of how far we’re willing to go for peace is explored to varied success in Watchmen, just as in the book. And despite the fears of faithful fans about how the changed ending would compromise the story, the opposite turned out to be true for me personally, as I felt the film was never more alive than when Snyder was able to play with new elements and forge his own path through this diamond-dense exercise. When allowed to take new material, and use his own instincts to craft an interpretation more Snyder than Moore/Gibbons, there’s an almost audible shift while the characters step into our consciousness and the events are driven more by their actions and reactions and less by a fatalistic script device meant to show utter fealty to another’s work. (SPOILER) Even though we miss the private triumph and brutal realization by Ozymandias of just what it is he’s done to the world, and Dr. Manhattan’s arc is realized by having another character tell us about it, the end result is that I don’t think this movie could have been made by any other director in such a devoted fashion. This of course begs the question of whether it should have been attempted at all, but in the most realistic sense, and given the fact that graphic novels and comics are still being bought up and sold like crack to the movie industry, there was no way this property wasn’t going to be made into a film eventually. With that in mind, I am thankful that the movie that we finally got is at least as provocative as the source, if perhaps for different reasons. I think that this is specifically because this director was able to helm Watchmen, and the lack of compromise apparent is obviously to be praised, despite any of the possible missteps that it may have necessitated. It will be left to the audience who finds this film to interpret whether the flaws in the final film overwhelm it, or if they actually enhance its beauty as a whole, such as with films like Blade Runner. Oddly enough, while watching Watchmen it was Blade Runner that came to mind most often. Now, this is not to immediately throw these films up together (and hey, it could have been the Vangelis-like scoring at points… and all the rain) in a real comparison, as Watchmen will have to earn that right when it earns an audience. With all honesty I expect it to find one, too. I may not be sure of who this film can really be geared toward or recommended to specifically, but I do know that I’ve really been desperate to hear all new viewpoints on it, and I am actively campaigning everyone I know to see it. Here’s hoping, but my dearest desire right now is to get DeekGeek to post her somewhat uninitiated (she hasn’t read most of Watchmen) perspective up here ASAP.

‘Inna final analysis’, Watchmen is near impossible to be ambivalent about, as per my previous statements likening it to a signal wave with equal parts engaging and momentum-crushing. Here’s hoping they never attempt a sequel, but actually deliver on that (so often promised with these types of projects) DVD version of the film with the original, comic book ending and Tales of the Black Freighter reincorporated. That would just be impossible to resist in so many ways. Hope you all enjoy it, and please, feel free to hit me with your views. When it comes to the nerd discussion (and to a larger extent, my reviews), ‘nothing ever ends’. Peace out, y’all.

PS. GeekTyrant alerted me to a very funny take on Watchmen by Patton Oswalt, which I suggest you all check out, HERE.

I was looking around at The Nerdist when I saw the funniest goddamn thing I’ve seen in ages. If there were any justice in the world, we could pull these two actors back in, de-age them, and have this scene play out exactly like this. Actually, you could probably just get Doc Brown to rerecord some dialogue, do a little Blade Runner with the editing him back in, and just use one of the MANY shots of Marty reacting to stuff. In fact, if I were smart at all, I’d have already done this. I love that this takes one of the most glaring things about a film I love and just tears it a new asshole. Perfect.