Comments on: Billy Cor Knows The Score: The Watchmen Trailer

By: Alan

Alan — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:43:12 +0000

that visual faithfulness in full

http://www.empireonline.com/trailer/breakdown/watchmen/

By: Pete

Pete — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:14:34 +0000

But for a superhero film about superhero films (and I don’t mean Superhero Movie) its timing will be spot on. Post over saturation and a few attempts at meta-commentary in Hancock, to a superhero flick which has been as lauded as, well The Dark Knight returns was (use the DK letters clearly when you want to seem grown up).

It will be hard to do a meta critique of superhero films and be a straight recreation of the comic (the one thing films have barely done is team comics and the gold/silver age split), but I will be interested to see the stab at it they are making.

Though I still think I would have liked Paul Greengrass’s version more!

By: Doctor Casino

Doctor Casino — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:20:55 +0000

I think all the concerns/challenges outlined above are spot-on, but in terms of “unfilmability” (as opposed to “can’t ever do what it’s trying to do, in any medium, b/c it glorifies that which it wants to criticize”), to me the problem is meta-ness. Watchmen is a superhero comic about superhero comics, and other kinds of comics as well for what matter (Black Freighter). To survive the translation it would have to become a superhero movie about superhero movies, which might be harder than it seems…

By: o sobek!

o sobek! — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 04:50:55 +0000

yeah the actual message vs. intended message of watchmen is one of art spiegelman’s main gripes w/ it right - that there are possibly unavoidable fascist overtones in any superhero enterprise (esp in the dc mold) and that gestures toward acknowledging or exploring this only tend to make matters worse, like struggling in quicksand. in my experience this was true, i was 12 or so when watchmen hit and at the time while yes yes we knew the ‘this is a commentary upon superheroes’ and esp knew the ‘this is a commentary on our times and america’ (’nixon is still president’ and ‘we won vietnam’ got alot of play at the lunch table, to what end i can’t remember) by far most of the watchmen discussion ended up in a round table ‘who is most badass? batman vs wolverine vs snake-eyes vs rorschach’ w/ maybe a side alley into ‘dr manhattan: has he rendered the superman vs. captain marvel (shazam) argument moot?’. the trailer looks fine. thought 300 was repulsive but ridiculous and in some way ‘fun’ and that nearly all of its flaws but not nearly all of its strengths came from the source material (thought the same of sin city also tbh). if there’s anything about the watchmen movie that disappoints me it’s that it lays low the ‘watchmen: UNFILMABLE’ myth that had been taken as certain since those same lunch table discussions. twenty years later and here it is.

By: james

james — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:00:59 +0000

isn’t scoring your superhero-movie trailer with a song from the “Batman&Robin” soundtrack pretty much asking for trouble?

By: Martin Skidmore

Martin Skidmore — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:44:48 +0000

I think that last guess is a good one. Also, 20 years on, Watchmen is much, much closer to being a mainstream superhero comic than it was then.