Watchmen movie

For those of you who have not heard graphic novel "Watchmen" is being turned into a movie. Admittedly I have not read the novel, nor do I intend to till after the film comes out. I want to be able to judge the movie for it's own merit and not hold it up to the standards of a book. After all Alan Moore, creator of "Watchmen" doesn't want a film adaptation to happen at all.

Alan Moore specifically expressed that he had seen 300, and said that the film adaptation only brought out the flaws he had disliked to begin with in the graphic novel. This is kind of a big problem for the creator seeing as Zack Snyder who directed "300", has also been hired to direct "Watchmen."

Lets face it most of us aren't familiar with the graphic novel "Watchmen," and even amongst those who love the graphic novel there are people who are willing to give the film a chance. Honestly I decided to see it as soon as I saw the first trailer, which played right before "Dark Knight."

In case you haven't seen it yet I give to you the first "Watchmen" trailer.



Like many I was completely blown away by this trailer. I mean it's two minutes long and is already better then a lot of full length films. With Zach Snyder directing crisp visuals, dynamic action sequences, and all around badassitude are to be expected. Honestly that alone is enough to get me to see a movie. "300" wasn't the best movie ever made by anyone's standards yet it was entertaining, had amazing cinematography, and a lot of really good one liners.

I think at this point the real question is how will the director deal with the story. I never read the graphic novel "300" so I don't have much for comparison, yet I thought "300" was pretty well told. It focused on a very tough society that was not into sharing their emotions, but even within those confines we still got to see a lot of emotion from the characters.

Yesterday I finally saw the second trailer to "Watchmen" and I have to say I was underwhelmed. The first trailer was honestly one of the best most captivating trailers I have ever seen, so anything would have had a hard time living up to that standard.

Before I go any further here is the second trailer for "Watchmen."



The second trailer tells us a bit more about the story, but it is infinately less fascinating then the first trailer. I think a lot of it has to do with the editing style and music choice. This was shot almost identically to the way a trailer for any other superhero movie would be. The problem is, that from what little I know about the plot, this is far from an average superhero story.

First off, only one of the "superheroes" has actual powers. If you guessed the shiny blue guy you are correct in guessing he is the one with powers.

Side note: did you know Dr Manhattan (aka shiny blue dude) it is the same actor who played Russell Hammond in "Almost Famous" I totally never would have guessed that.

Anyway, from the trailer it's pretty obvious that some of the heroes aren't so keen on saving the world anymore. This is a pretty brilliant twist on the traditional superhero genre. However presented as it is in the trailer, it makes you not care as much about the heroes themselves.

If your trying to build interest and get someone to watch a movie you want to make people like the characters. You can do awesome montage of clips set to good music like in the first trailer, you can have a trailer that looks like a typical superhero movie only to leave people shocked and pleasantly surprised when they get to the theater, or you can have something at the beginning which establishes the watchmen as the good guys before explaining why they no longer care about saving humanity. You never want to give the whole story away with a trailer, but the second trailer just seems messy.

The beginning is good, it sets up the entire purpose of the plot. A superhero has been killed, and one of his friends seems to think it's part of a government cover up. After that it's like they didn't know what to do. The visuals don't match the story thats being told all of the time, point and fact sometimes they almost detract for the story they are trying to tell. While they had a voice saying "The watchmen are over" they show the hot chick descending the stairs. I mean it throws you off, why not have the blue guy screaming leave me alone, and then say something about how the watchmen are done, after that close off with Rorschach saying you attack one of us you attack all of us. that makes more sense then what they did.

I'm still going to see the movie, I still encourage others to see it. But seriously fire the dude who made the second trailer.

Watchmen comes out on March 6th. I am positive that the film will be visually stunning, and filled with some really cool stunts and effects. Let's just hope the plot of the film is better pieced together then the second trailer.