Watchmen

Saw it tonight, really enjoyed it. I liked the change to the ending, the giant squid would have been a bit too WTF, really, coming completely out of nowhere. Wasn't bothered by the violence, I think it was needed to show that these people are. not. heroes. (Rorschach killing the kidnapper was the only thing that made me look away for a second.) And holy crap, it looked beautiful.
 
The Cineworld in Glasgow is showing Watchmen Thur night at 11.45pm.

I'd love to go but i think it will be hard to get anyone to come out so late to watch it. The film won't end till around 2.30am.
 
I think the issue here is the structure of the contract Moore & Gibbons signed when they produced Watchmen...

Initially, M & G were told that they would retain the intellectual property rights to the characters they created for Watchmen as they were the adaptations/extrapolations of the Carlton Comics characters (Dr Manhattan was Captain Atom, Rorshach is The Question, etc, etc) then owned by DC.

Once they had finished, DC started talking about doing a second series without M & G - Moore pointed out that they were "their" characters and so DC couldn't do that without M & G's permission. DC then reneged on the IP part of the contract, saying that because they were analogous to the Carlton Characters, they owned them.

At this point, DC had done a similar thing with the name Captain Marvel when Marvel used it, resulting in the renaming of the Marvel character as Mar-Vell.

However, a legal battle ensued when M & G weren't paid according to the contract - they were paid on a flat fee basis with a percentage of all future royalties from subsequent reprints of the series. When the TPB version came out, DC never ponied up the cash, resulting in the lawsuit that was settled out of court.

I also think that there's a common misconception amongst the general public that comic book writers & artists get paid huge sums for their work. The big two only offer flat rate deals these days that work out to be based on overall projected sales of the books they are working on & companies like Image & Top Cow offer 3/4 cents per issue sold to writers & artists.

When you consider that the best selling comic last quarter was X-Force with only 250,000 sales worldwide, that's not alot of money. Then when you look at the independent companies, IDW's The Transformers only sells about 25,000 copies a month, you're looking at around $750.00 per issue for the writer & the artist each...hence the reason virtually every book these days outside of the Big two are looking to be optioned as films...

And we all saw the abortion that was Wanted! Well, actually, I didn't on principle...
 
Is that all it was? Just because it has an 18 certificate, what a ridiculous reason not to show the film there!:mad:

It's an Imax cinema, therefore it should show Imax films no matter what certificate the films are!
 
Just returned from seeing it tonight. First impression: pretty (and) soul-less. I think visually it's a faithful adaptation, but there was no "beating heart" to it. And some of the dialogue (that I guess is lifted straight out of the GN, it's been a while since I read it) just flat out didn't work, I was cringing for the actors as they were saying their lines.

I can see why people weren't happy with Malin Akerman's performance, but I honestly think it's the script. (And Matthew Goode was just miscast.)

Anyway, if it was any other superhero film, I'd give it a 6/10, but seeing as its Watchmen, let's call it a 7.
 
If there is only one real super hero in the movie with super powers, how come in the preview i can see someone punching through a concrete wall whilst beating another guy up.
I wonder just how faithful to the graphic novel this movie will be.
I'm still looking forward to it, but i got a feeling they'll alter it to suit the American film audience.
 
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