Shanejayell
Yuri Fan without a Pause
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I would STRONGLY suggest you go back and read the book, then. *lol*
Films that were better than their books
- Thread starter FractiousDay
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Castro-Trudeauist
The entire point of the squid is not just to shock and horrify the reader, but also to undercut everything about Ozymandias, how he presents himself, and how he thinks of himself. When he's shown to the reader in front of the TV screens he's a clean cut, dignified intellectual gazing mournfully at the things he was forced to do. In sort, he looks like the exact kind of person who does the Regrettable Thing That Must Be Done For the Greater Good™.
Then cut to fucking ugly-ass giant dead squid monster bisected in the middle of New York, thousands of mangled corpses, a city drenched in blood. It's pretty much the most horrifying event in human history. It's a symbol of how completely inhuman Ozy's actions are no matter how much he tries to distance himself from it.
With the movie his attack is exactly as clean and surgical as Ozy himself is. Everyone just gets vaporized. Poof, they're not around any more. It just doesn't have the impact and meaning and I don't care if it makes more sense, it's bullshit.
Distinct, interesting side characters to make a setting seem like it has people living in it? Oh, pish posh who needs that shit lol?
Then cut to fucking ugly-ass giant dead squid monster bisected in the middle of New York, thousands of mangled corpses, a city drenched in blood. It's pretty much the most horrifying event in human history. It's a symbol of how completely inhuman Ozy's actions are no matter how much he tries to distance himself from it.
With the movie his attack is exactly as clean and surgical as Ozy himself is. Everyone just gets vaporized. Poof, they're not around any more. It just doesn't have the impact and meaning and I don't care if it makes more sense, it's bullshit.
Distinct, interesting side characters to make a setting seem like it has people living in it? Oh, pish posh who needs that shit lol?
Yes, the movie throws out some of the more stupid Alan Moore-ism's and honestly it is better for it. And really could have gone for throwing out some more of them......
Did you actually read the graphic novel? Seriously?
There are over two thousand named characters in the "A song of ice and fire" novel series. The famous monkey sphere number (~150) means you are inherently incapable of giving a shit about them beyond vague group-based platitudes or for particular characters which stick in your memory.
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Sufficient Juice
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"Named characters" doesn't really mean much, though. The Iliad has an absolute assload of people who are just background filler or only show up in one scene to get owned, and nobody would say it's worse off because of it.
I seriously doubt the books are actually following two thousand different storylines.
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The movie version denouement is far more narratively elegant, however, I feel.
Did the movie have Rorschach's therapist getting existential? That was cool.
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Extended version did as I recall, but I don't think it was in the theatrical cut.
EDIT: Checking it, while he appears in a couple of more scenes in the Ultimate Cut (he's one of the pedestrians in New York that gets vaporised) it doesn't really go into his reaction to Rorschach in depth.
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Don't think so, I don't remember the therapist doing much in the movie.
Shame. Those scenes and the psychiatrist's final choice to it were the best parts of the original comic...
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The only thing I allow in criticism of Watchmen's ending is the sudden existence of a psychic. That's the only thing not foreshadowed or subtly implied, and came a bit out of nowhere as it wasn't established that there were other superpowers besides Manhattan's.
Other than that, complaints that the alien squid "came out of nowhere" or was "stupid" don't make much sense to me. Leaving aside the symbolic pirate comic and how its author disappeared being a huge clue, I distinctly recall many elements in the comic that led up to the Squid: you had the posters The Day The Earth Stood Still playing in movie theaters in the background, the surrealist painting by the Indian artist where you see the alien, the ravings of the drug addict girl before Nite Owl I is assassinated, the very existence of Busbatis and genetic engineering (which, if you think about it, makes its presence in the movie nonsensical), the Dimension labs in the background of the newspapers stand, and so on. I think there were also joking conversations about aliens and science fiction but I need to re read.
(And, if you want to be reaching, it may have been alluding to a speech in 1985 by President Ronald Reagan on how an alien invasion would unite the planet and all differences would be put aside to combat that threat.)
I have to wonder if people were paying attention to what they read when they say the squid is random. The art and the background told as much story as the actual text did, and paying attention to them makes the ending a lot less surprising. I did exactly that without being told when I noticed a newspaper in the first chapter announcing Vietnam becoming the 51st State, and it made reading Watchmen more enjoyable. You can read the story easily without paying attention to the background details, but then your complaints about the ending ring hollow to me to be blunt.
Thing is, the ending in the book was a masterful Chekov's Gun hinted at throughout and was firmly grounded in the time period the book was set in. The movie's ending was a bit of a Deus Ex Machina and a spectacle that is less and less appealing each time I rewatch the movie.
Other than that, complaints that the alien squid "came out of nowhere" or was "stupid" don't make much sense to me. Leaving aside the symbolic pirate comic and how its author disappeared being a huge clue, I distinctly recall many elements in the comic that led up to the Squid: you had the posters The Day The Earth Stood Still playing in movie theaters in the background, the surrealist painting by the Indian artist where you see the alien, the ravings of the drug addict girl before Nite Owl I is assassinated, the very existence of Busbatis and genetic engineering (which, if you think about it, makes its presence in the movie nonsensical), the Dimension labs in the background of the newspapers stand, and so on. I think there were also joking conversations about aliens and science fiction but I need to re read.
(And, if you want to be reaching, it may have been alluding to a speech in 1985 by President Ronald Reagan on how an alien invasion would unite the planet and all differences would be put aside to combat that threat.)
I have to wonder if people were paying attention to what they read when they say the squid is random. The art and the background told as much story as the actual text did, and paying attention to them makes the ending a lot less surprising. I did exactly that without being told when I noticed a newspaper in the first chapter announcing Vietnam becoming the 51st State, and it made reading Watchmen more enjoyable. You can read the story easily without paying attention to the background details, but then your complaints about the ending ring hollow to me to be blunt.
Thing is, the ending in the book was a masterful Chekov's Gun hinted at throughout and was firmly grounded in the time period the book was set in. The movie's ending was a bit of a Deus Ex Machina and a spectacle that is less and less appealing each time I rewatch the movie.
Today I learned that this is a thing that happened.
Nah, the movie was way more shitty.
I'm not sure I understand this. Do you mean the last Hunger Games movie (Mockingjay Part I & II) or the second movie?
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The ones that covered books 2 and 3
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First off. Two thousand named characters, the vast majority of these people are name drops. You're not expected to care about them, just know they exist and that there are people doing things that the protagonists never see because this is a "real" fictional world instead of an RPG setting.
Second. Who cares if you can't care about all of them? ASOIAF has a huge pool of minor characters you might possibly feel sympathy for, sure. This just means there are tons of opportunities for the reader to latch onto a character and feel a deeper connection with the setting. That's far, far better in my mind than having a delineation between real characters we're supposed to care about and walking props.
Maybe. But I also feel that if it's a choice between impact and meaning, and "narrative elegance" the former is the choice a writer who gives a damn about his story outside of utilitarian entertainment value will make every time.
How smooth and elegant the story is from a writing perspective is ultimately something that's just nice to have, and ought to be put on the back burner if it goes against what you're trying to do.
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The Englanderish
Schrödinger's Kuudere Kitty Caliph(a)
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I will now quote myself from the Marvel thread:
By a country mile.
Would it kill you to set a bar, rather than just laying it on the ground?
I should probably get around to watching it, but it was already beaten to the punch by MUA2, which also adapts the Civil War storyline and does a much better job than the original. There's also an Easter egg in it that has the Hulk doing Haiku.
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Sufficient Juice
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Both Eragons are bad and dumb, but only one has Jeremy Irons earning his paycheck.
Also I think I gotta defend the Watchmen movie here. A lot of the comic's foreshadowing did not make it into the movie in the first place, so it would have been even more out there. Pinning the attack on Dr. Manhattan, on the other hand, is the conclusion of things that were happening throughout the movie, directly removes the biggest obstacle to Ozy's plan of world peace, and subtly criticizes the American government for bringing the world almost to destruction. It is their decision to turn Osterman into a tool of foreign policy (more bluntly, a weapon) that escalates things in the first place.
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Your complaint seems to mainly be that the fulfilment of Ozy's plan in the movie wasn't ugly enough to undercut his clinical idealism.
I mean, they could have had everyone in range go the way Rorschach finished, as an application of Dr Manhattan's powers, sure, but I don't know that it would have added much in itself. One man we've been personally committed to following through the narrative being instantly turned inside out in close-up at a peak of emotion is huge in its impact - thousands of faceless civilians suffering the same simultaneously in a wide shot would very likely verge on the comedic.
And, I'll repeat, the movie is far more elegantly drawn narratively, as @Sufficient Juice already laid out, intertwining as it does Ozy's campaign to sideline Manhattan with his peace plan, rather than having them run on largely independent tracks.
Sufficient Juice
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Ozy's plan is presented in accordance with the modern idea of warfare. It is this clean, tidy, eminently controlled thing. Like, don't worry it isn't messy, we have the technology now, we just need to use it in the right way etc. It could easily be Tony Stark in his place, deciding that he now has the technology to ensure world peace (under his leadership). Watchmen presents the attacks as Ozy would have imagined them, so that we can see his vision as hollow bullshit; it adapts the comic, and at the same time offers an interpretation of it.
The majority of superhero movies operate exactly on this logic of controlled war and minimal casualties. The obvious counterpoint is Man of Steel, where even taking the fight to space is not enough to stop the destruction.
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Sufficient Juice
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Yep. No mangled bodies, no blood, just disintegration. Clean and efficient, and also mass murder.
teslashark
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Taking a break from Watchmen: as someone who played the original Need For Speed through Undercover very sparingly, NFS's movie is pretty good.
teslashark
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That will be Big Heroes 6. Yes, BH6 rips it off.
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Well, to start with, Guest from the Future is a great movie based on an okay book. To a lesser extent, the same applies to Mystery of the Third Planet. (Raise your hand if you have ever heard of either before.)
From what I've heard, The Colour of Magic is an okay movie based on a meh book. But I hadn't actually seen the movie - maybe it's not really as good, anyway.
And, of course, the Lord of the Rings film trilogy somehow managed to stuff a lot of events into very little space (um, time) without feeling overloaded. The book trilogy has a lot more random stuff, is a lot longer, and somehow still ends up a lot slower.
I've heard that a very similar thing happened to ASoIaF/GoT - can't comment much on that one, having never really seen much of either.
Oh, almost forgot, if your definition of "movie based on a book" is pliable enough (no pun intended) to view Plasticine Crow as a movie based on the original fable of the Crow and the Fox - it's definitely better.
From what I've heard, The Colour of Magic is an okay movie based on a meh book. But I hadn't actually seen the movie - maybe it's not really as good, anyway.
And, of course, the Lord of the Rings film trilogy somehow managed to stuff a lot of events into very little space (um, time) without feeling overloaded. The book trilogy has a lot more random stuff, is a lot longer, and somehow still ends up a lot slower.
I've heard that a very similar thing happened to ASoIaF/GoT - can't comment much on that one, having never really seen much of either.
Oh, almost forgot, if your definition of "movie based on a book" is pliable enough (no pun intended) to view Plasticine Crow as a movie based on the original fable of the Crow and the Fox - it's definitely better.
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Politicians promising something they can't feasibly deliver on!?!
Dream Logic
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The princess bride movie certainly.
While the book was great by itself the movie makes the book rather then vice versatile.
While the book was great by itself the movie makes the book rather then vice versatile.