Alan Moore knows the score

[craigoxbrow]

Well, that was probably the most expensive stage adaptation of a comic ever filmed.

It's better than From Hell, anyway.

Could have clocked in at two hours ten if they didn't use so much slow motion.

Nite Owl wasn't nearly schlubby enough, but Patrick Wilson managed the core of the non-asshole non-monster hero well.

Chris noted that Ozymandias gets German as the film goes on.

Between the lean look, twitchy glare and hyper-gravelly voice I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone offers Jackie Earle Haley a Dirty Harry remake, or indeed a Clint Eastwood biopic.

All the non-super-heroes could still fight like Spider-Man.

Did make one change that I like.

I think the audience as a whole laughed three times.

Our token representative of not having read it yet (hello out there!) was able to follow it and felt the story interesting enough, although he thought it was a bit bitty in the middle and was curious about the lack of major setpieces. I'd point to Mars, but that's pretty rather than active. And yeah, it is pretty bitty, and not all of those bits are actually necessary.

I'm also aware that seeing it cost me about £2.00 less than buying the book back in the day. Oy.

Star Trek trailer looks like huge silly fun. Something this evening at the cinematograph rather lacked, all told.

Comments

[dalziel-86.livejournal.com]

I think the audience as a whole laughed three times.

Count yourself lucky. I mean, Australian culture as a whole is pretty into black humour, which this had in spades. But that still doesn't excuse the giggling fratboys we saw it with, who guffawed at every appearance of Big Blue Wang. It certainly doesn't explain the guy in front of us who laughed DURING THE RAPE SCENE.

[craigoxbrow.livejournal.com]

Bloody hell.

(For the record, the three times: The Comedian in 1963, the Captain Carnage story, and "you're locked in here with me!")

[dalziel-86.livejournal.com]

After seeing it a second time now, I can't really agree with the 'fight like Spider-Man' part.

[craigoxbrow.livejournal.com]

They certainly don't seem like "normal people in costumes" as they demolish a dozen rioting prisoners or an entire street gang, snapping bones casually as they go. Rorschach doing this feels fine, Nite Owl less so.

[dalziel-86.livejournal.com]

Oh sure, it's not like normal people. It was the Spider-man comparison that seemed a bit off-the-mark to me.

The bone-snapping brutality seemed to me like an attempt to do something different from the standard superhero movie fair, where people get beaten up but the process is usually relatively bloodless. It's one of a number of very minor ways in which the movie seemed tailored towards an audience familiar with superhero movies rather than one familiar with superhero comics.

[burgonet.livejournal.com]

Well I liked it.
Surprisingly Prue did as well - while she felt their world was a 'alternate reality and not our own like most superheroes movies' she nevertheless liked that the film was smarter than most of its costumed sort.

And the scene where the pyschologist sat down to talk with a certain someone 'without his face' was utterly engrossing.

[craigoxbrow.livejournal.com]

Fair call. There's a good Rorschach film in the running time.

[sje2.livejournal.com]

I liked it- thought it was very faithful to the comic (and the planet uniting against a brutal over-god makes more sense than throwing in Cthulhu for the hell of it). Jackie Haley as Rorshach was pitch perfect and looked the part. In fact, most scenes and shots were lifted straight from the book, but given an impressive physicality by the actors.

My major disapointment was Ozymandias- I still think it should have been Jude Law, and the actor lacked the panache and delivery to really sell and impact me with "I did it 35 minutes ago".

SJE

[xnbach.livejournal.com]

Saw it at the Cinerama this weekend, and there were Seattlites who would also giggle everytime they showed godwang.

The one really odd thing was that someone brought their seven year old to see it, probably assuming a "comic book movie" would be safe without bothering to notice the rating or anything else about the movie as far as that goes. So the poor person in our party who ended up sitting next to the child felt pretty awkward and uncomfortable for the tyke during the extended Superhero On Superhero Hot Sex Scene.

Noticed the same kind of thing when I ended up seeing The Passion (my Pagan Wife-like Girlfriend at the time wanted to see it, go figure). The audience was full of four year olds whose parents probably thought, "Jesus movie, it's got to be good for the kids" without thinking it through and coming to the realization that they just brought their kids in to watch torture porn.

[craigoxbrow.livejournal.com]

It does seem strange to me that kids can get into anything except an NC-17 with adult supervision, so a film which rates a legally-enforcable "18" cert here is, effectively, a kind of PG.