So, I am the last person on the Internet to have seen Watchmen.

[eiviiaru]

Capsule review: pretty good! Certainly, probably the best adaptation of the material we could get in film form, and I definitely applaud it for not feeling its length at all. It was long, but it felt like it was for a reason, as opposed to so many New Zealand landscape shots!! a lot of other recent long-runners.

Comments

[swagmonkey]

No you aren't. I haven't seen it yet. Also, not reading the above while commenting on the subject... La, la, la, la.

[kouaidou]

In the comic book, I believe, the reason they don't kill Ozy is basically because they can't. They make several attempts (Rorschach in particular) and he basically no-sells them all with his personal l33t. Doc Manhattan probably could of course but I believe he basically is convinced by Ozy's logic and decides there's little point in it. (Also he seems to like the guy as much as he is capable of liking someone.)

I haven't seen the movie but based on what I've heard from others, this does seem like an instance where the directorial choices are subtly hurting the finer balance. Among other things, I heard one person comment basically to the effect that when Ozy catches the bullet, in the comic it's a "wow, this guy is unbeatable" moment, but in the movie it doesn't feel like anything important... because it's the sort of thing that all of the characters have been doing throughout the movie.

[eiviiaru]

Yeah, that was basically what I told my dad -- that they weren't actually capable of it, given that he could outfight them and Dr. M was on his side. I think his real question, though, was why the writers didn't kill him off, and that was harder to explain without getting into Deep Thoughts.

I do agree with you on the undermining of theme via gratuitous badassery, though -- it really is a problem, and the bullet-catching scene ends up feeling less like "holy shit, he just did that!" than "okay, Laurie's good, but we know he's better, so how does he get out of this?"

[flashneko]

Another reason they decided against trying to kill Ozzy in the comic (or at least for Doc. Manhattan) was the realization that if Ozzy just vanished and/or turned up dead somewhere, there would be an investigation into his company to try and turn up a reason and would make it very likely the truth would come out.

And... as for the changed ending, I have to admit I mostly liked it too.

[bensanaz]

The big reason they don't kill Ozymandias in the book is because even though they don't agree with him, Dan, Jon and Laurie all realize that at this point killing Adrian won't undo the damage he's done and will only prevent him from going forward with the part of his plan where he actually helps people.

[paul_stansifer]

I'm a big fan of that song, and it seems totally out-of-place for a sex scene. I'm led to believe that it's overused in soundtracks in general as a sort of "Congratulations! You've entered the fifth stage of grief!", but at least it's appropriate for that. If somebody decided to use it because it contained sexual imagery, they really need to listen to the rest of Leonard Cohen's discography... Thinking of which, do you know whose cover they used?

[eiviiaru]

They used the actual Leonard Cohen version, shockingly enough -- a pretty good choice, and one that fit given that the rest of the soundtrack was all period-appropriate music for a movie set in 1985.

To their credit, they did use the two verses most suitable for a romantic sex scene (the first one and Cohen's last: "And even though it all went wrong, I'd stand before the Lord of Song..."), but I do think it wasn't a perfect choice, and they could have staged the scene better to capitalize on the natural bittersweetness of the encounter at that moment. Had I been forced to put a Cohen song to that scene, I probably would have used "Suzanne," but that might not have the proper iconic heft they were going for.

[imperatorr]

I am sort of curious as to what your parents made of the movie.