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oh good, I was having anxiety attacks wondering what would be left to fetishize after tomorrow. bebe provides the answer. You owe it yourself to watch the big flashy Apple version, or better yet, go see it sprawled wall-to-wall before The Dark Knight tomorrow.
Avatara, slow motion in itself isn’t bad or good. It’s just a filmmaking narrative device.
What we’re bitching about is how one USES it. I mean, are guns inherently evil? No, just criminals or dumbasses make them a lethal threat.
The way I see it, slow motion works when it’s limited in its use. If its over-done, like say 300, then the visceral impact from the device is dilluted.
I mean, look at the climax. The idea of the slow motion device is to squeeze some juice out of an existing visual or motion, right? Well the last soldier throwing his spear and bitchsmacking the Persian Drag Queen…that’s good cinema shit.
But because we had slow motion up the ass for about 2 hours, that symbolic power lacks the muscle.
Bebe, if you’ve read WATCHMEN….remember how BIG of a book it is? 12 issue mini-series, and you think Snyder can go “panel 2 panel” all that within 2 hours?
For a 3-4 issue jobber like 300, or the short stories of SIN CITY, that approach works fine but unless I’m mistaken, if we go “totally faithful” to the novel, it would be about 4 hours this side of ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA.
Or maybe I’m wrong, I don’t know.
All I know is, Snyder’s “creative writing” inclusion to 300, that whole domestic subplot with the wife….was a fucking disaster. I have yet found anyone who liked that, and I mean even among the 300 fanbase.
Again, I rather be wrong, eat crow to the supporters who were right, and get a GOOD movie, than get a misfire and be correct.
Ok, first ever comment for me to this site (didn’t even realise it existed til recently!), but anyways, @ Tufas, I fully agree with you for your first 3 paragraphs. What confuses me is just _WHY_ is everyone throwing their hate at slow motion? Slow-mo provides an edge to the action in movies instead of having a movie camera basically being thrown around and trying to make it look like its fast and furious fighting, or just staying on a single area so its basically a kung-fu movie! In my opinion, slow-mo = good stuff for feeling how the characters of the movies feel, in a really strange way. Just don’t use it to the point where a 2 hour movie becomes a 6 hour movie, eh?
RRA, no doubt Alan Moore is no walk in the park. Terry Gilliam famously called Watchmen unadaptable and it very well may be. And I’m not comparing 300 with Watchmen. I’m saying Zack Snyder’s treatment from book to screen of that property bodes well for what he is likely to do with Watchmen — make a movie that is as true as possible (within a 2-hour live action format) to what Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons put to paper.
now THAT is a trailer.
trailer editors please take note and learn, ffs.
genius choice for background music.. a slowed down version of The Smashing Pumpkins “Batman & Robin” main song (The End Is The Beginning Is The End) – and a trailer that does NOT reveal any crucial plot lines or gives away the story – like most, if not all, trailers seem obligated to do nowadays (apart from Vicky Christina Barcelona)
Watchmen has always been a favorite of mine (like Arkham Asylum and The Dark Knight Returns) but as much as I love 300, I fear this movie adaptation will be ruined by slow motion abuse – Zack suffers from the same Ridley, Pete and Mel curse… enough with the slow motion, guys….. ENOUGH
oooh… I am so ignorant about this source material…
I hide in shame.
Looks cool. Not sure tho.
Zach Snyder is a visionary? bit of a stretch, maybe..?
Bebe, its one thing to use Miller’s action storytleling…..Alan fucking Moore is a whole other ballgame, a more cerebral drama narrative.
Zack Snyder showed loyalty to Frank Miller and therefore will probably hew pretty closely to Alan Moore’s great work. That, and the imagery and feel of the trailer, make me hopeful.
I’m sorry, but you can’t call someone a visionary director when their track record includes “Dawn of the Dead” and that other awful film that isn’t even worth mentioning.
The trailer is ridiculously well put-together and kick ass (just like 300), I just hope it doesn’t dissapoint like that movie did. I’m hopeful that Snyder will put forth a better movie here because his source material is so much stronger than his latest graphic novel effort.
Dr. Manhattan looks very good, I wasn’t sure how it was going to look, but I think that’s the best they could have done.
The film looks good (one of the aspects of it I was most worried about) but I was hoping for something a little more imaginative for the first trailer. Like a teaser of a close up of the smiley face button slowly zooming out or something.
Went to go see The Dark Knight at midnight. My lone disappointment (aside from a couple minor quibbles)? No Watchmen trailer on the big screen before the movie, at least at the theater I was at. You know what I saw in its place? Bangkok Freakin’ Dangerous. The crowd actually burst into unanimous laughter when the title for the film came up. I wanted to see this trailer on the big, big screen so badly, too.
The Watchmen film may well do justice to the wonderful source material. But Synder at the helm worried me from the outset. I can live with homo and heteroerotic fetishizing of the human figure, but the 300 slo-mo stuff is visually tired and uninspired. The genre is SciFi/fantasy, but it needs a look and style that makes it as real as possible.
Looks like Zach Snyder might be letting a little of his trademark homoerosion corrode the souls of impressionable fanboys too. Not that I have any problem with that.
btw, metacritic update:
17 perfect scores of 100 for TDK
(and one 95… wtf’s up with the 5-point penalty?)
20 perfect scores of 100 for WALL-E
RRA Speaks the Truth Ruth, agree with you 100%
WATCHMEN, the greatest graphic novel ever penned, and TIME even named it one of the Top 100 Novels, yes NOVELS, of all time.
And its being shot by the slow-motion-holic that is Zach Snyder.
Hey God, why couldn’t you have let Paul Greengrass shoot this? I would have given up my right nut for it. OK OK, Left! Don’t leave!
DAMMIT!
good catch, bebe! the first version I saw earlier tonight was a flawed youtube with a montage of still shots cut to match the rhythm of the music. It was screwy idea, but still mesmerizing.
My fetishize remark was meant to encompass the entire project and concept, but there are clearly plenty of specifics for fetish focus — some not-so-obscure objects of desire. Had been worried how the blue men would translate to screen. No longer a cause for concern.
LOL Ryan. Srs, I can’t stop watching this. It’s f*cking mesmerizing!