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Watchmen (2009)
171 Plays6 years ago
Zack Snyder's Watchmen is one of the most controversial superhero films ever made, and in light of how much we're enjoying Daimon Lindelof's Watchmen TV series on HBO, this episode we decided to look back at Snyder's adaptation. Perry goes in-depth into the ways Snyder misunderstood Moore and Gibbons' classic, while Derrick offers a more sympathetic view of the film. Where do you stand?
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Transcript
Rorschach's Dark Observations and Society's Cynicism
00:00:21
Speaker
Rorschach's journal, October 12th, 1985. Dog carcass in alley this morning, dire tread on Burr's stomach. This city's afraid of me. I've seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters, and the gutters are full of blood. And when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown.
00:00:47
Speaker
The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up around their waists. And all the whores and politicians will look up and shout, save us. And I'll whisper, no. Now the whole world stands on the brink, staring down into bloody hell.
00:01:12
Speaker
and intellectuals and smooth talkers. And all of a sudden nobody can think of anything to say. Beneath me, this awful city, it screams like an abattoir full of retarded children. And the night reeks of fornication and bad consciences.
Introduction of Superhero Cinephiles Hosts and Health Update
00:01:32
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. I am one of your Watchmen hosts, Perry Constantine.
00:01:39
Speaker
And I'm your other Watchmen host, Derek Ferguson. And Derek, how are you feeling now? You were a little under the weather recently. Yeah, I'm feeling much better now as I was telling you and our friends on Facebook.
00:01:54
Speaker
in our Facebook group, I had some kind of nasty nasal, nasal infection or bacterial infection in my nasal passages, whatever you want to call it. I thought it was just a cold, but trying to be a little bit more serious than it was. But don't worry, folks, I went to the doctor. She gave me antibiotics and stuff like that. I've been taking them. And yeah, I've been feeling much better, much better. So
00:02:20
Speaker
Yeah, it's taken care of. Folks, if you're sick, go to the doctor. Yeah, we were just talking about that, how, you know, in America, especially guys, we're kind of indoctrinated to say that, you know, just write it out, you'll be fine. Yeah. And and trust me, folks, that kind of attitude will kill you. Absolutely.
00:02:40
Speaker
We were just talking about it. I mean, I've known people that have come to work and they said, oh, yeah, well, I feel a little dizzy, but I thought it turned out they had a heart attack and, you know, and all kinds of other nonsense going on. It's not worth it. Take care of your health. It sounds like a cliche, but.
00:02:57
Speaker
It's the truth. If you don't have your health, you can't do anything else because I was sick enough that and really, you know what? I was saying this to somebody else that if I'm going to be sick, I'd rather be sick for like two or three days flat on my back and get it over with because I was sick enough that I could still get around. But I wasn't enjoying getting around. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. You know, yeah, that kind of sick is no it's really no fun.
00:03:25
Speaker
Well, I'm glad you're feeling better. You sound a lot better, too. Like I was saying, I wouldn't know you were sick at all from the way you sound right now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I sound much better. You know, I feel much better. And again, thank you to everybody listening to this who was, you know, they communicated with me on Facebook and privately to ask about my health. Thank you very much.
00:03:48
Speaker
I appreciate your concern. I don't take it for granted. And yeah, I'm feeling much better now and I'm taking care of myself. So thank
Derek's Comic Collection Journey and Initial Encounter with Watchmen
00:03:56
Speaker
you. And we're going to give your voice a workout because I think today we're going to get some fireworks going because I think you and I have very different opinions on this movie. And that is Watchmen.
00:04:07
Speaker
Really? I think so. Yeah, I think it's pretty safe to say. Watchmen is a controversial property anyway. If you're talking about the movie or if you're talking about the graphic novel,
00:04:26
Speaker
or the various spin-offs that came out of it. So yeah, Watchmen is a pretty controversial subject anyway. I don't know anybody who doesn't have a strong opinion one way or the other about Watchmen.
00:04:41
Speaker
Good place to start off. So What is what was your history coming into? Watchmen the the property in general like because I know you were collecting comics back then Did you read it in real time or was it something you picked up later? What was your experience with it? No, I picked it up in real time I got the individual issues as they came out and
00:05:03
Speaker
You know, I was. Yeah, folks, I'm that old, you know, and and later on, I purchased a graphic novel, of course. But yeah, I read it in real time and.
00:05:16
Speaker
Didn't know anything about Alan Moore, you know. That was gonna be my next question if you were a Moore fan going in or not. No, no, no. My knowledge of British comic book writers is woefully lacking. Mostly I know them through recommendation from people like you and other people who are, oh, you ought to read this guy, you ought to read this guy, you ought to read that guy. So I didn't know anything about Dave Gibbons. I didn't know anything about Alan Moore.
Watchmen's Charlton Comic Roots and Moore's Character Creation
00:05:44
Speaker
So I went into the property cold, not knowing anything about the characters at all. Matter of fact, I didn't even learn until after I had read the complete miniseries, or maxi-series rather, because it was 12 issues when it first came out, that this was originally supposed to be a property about the Charlton comic book characters, such as The Question and Thunderbolts and a whole bunch of other characters that DC had bought from Charlton Comics.
00:06:14
Speaker
Yeah, DC had acquired all those rights, and Alan Moore came up with this proposal about using Charlton characters, and DC really liked the proposal, but as they developed it further, they kind of realized, well, wait a second, this is going to pretty much render those characters unusable going forward, and we kind of still want to be able to use them in some way.
00:06:40
Speaker
So based on that, they decided, you know what, let's just, they went more and they said, hey, how about you just create new characters based on the Charlton characters and then you tell your story that way and then we'll keep the Charlton characters because we want to use them in other stuff.
Dr. Manhattan's Superpower and Its Global Impact
00:06:56
Speaker
Yeah, which actually I can understand from a business standpoint because they probably paid a lot of money for those characters. Yeah. And yeah, you know, OK, well, you know, we really don't want to just use up these characters all in one shot. Right. Rather, you know. And actually, since Moore was now able to create original characters that were analogies characters, he had more freedom to do what he wanted to do. Yeah. You know, now these were more or less, you know,
00:07:23
Speaker
These are new characters. And yeah, but when I was reading it, and like I said, it's a different experience when it was coming out every month because yeah, you're on the edge of your seat because Watchmen truly was something new. It was something different. It was an adult mature look at superheroes. And when I say adult mature, I don't just mean sex and cursing and violence, which is usually, unfortunately,
00:07:53
Speaker
what adult and mature has come to meant when we're talking about superheroes, whether it be on TV, or in the comic books now, or in the movies. That's what dissociates me when you talk about mature adult themes in superhero cinema or literature. Boy, we're
Misinterpretation of Mature Themes in Superhero Media
00:08:14
Speaker
awful hive-minded here. I tend to think that things like, okay, yeah. You know,
00:08:24
Speaker
Okay, so when you talk about dealing with mature adult themes, I'm thinking about stuff like politics, I'm thinking about psychology, I'm thinking about finances, medicine, how the concept of superhero beings affect
00:08:43
Speaker
everything in the world not just oh yeah well he can you know punches fist through this guy's chest and oh isn't that great you know no no no no and showing all the gore and everything in graphic detail right yeah exactly no no no well well no so i guess if you're 12 years old that is adult and mature but that's the thing i mean that's that's kind of the idea that a lot
00:09:08
Speaker
of creators took from Watchmen as they took the wrong idea for it. Because yeah, Watchmen is violent, but looking back, it's not as violent as you might have expected from its reputation.
Critique of Miller and Moore's Influence on Dark Superhero Narratives
00:09:20
Speaker
But it's also, again, it's not as dark as, again, from its reputation, you might think. These are not characters who are grim the entire time. There are some pretty funny moments in Watchmen, actually.
00:09:35
Speaker
Yeah, there actually is I mean and um Okay, one thing that I wanted to say and just get off my chest right away is that Watchmen and Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Okay, these are two
00:09:53
Speaker
properties that have been criticized and maligned and people have said, oh, well, you are Frank Miller and Alan Moore. They had to blame for the way the superheroes are now. No, they're not. Right. Because Frank Miller. OK, Frank Miller is turned into a crotchety old man. We all know that. And he's gone half cracked. I don't know what shit he's on these days, but he needs to lay off of it, whatever it is. But when he created
00:10:20
Speaker
his version of our beloved Batman. That's what he was doing. He was just creating his version. He didn't intend for that Batman to be the Batman for the next 40 years. And in fact, I just went through because I reread Watchmen when we planned on doing this episode and because of all the hype going on around the TV show. And so I bought the book from Comixology and I reread it for the first time in like I think 10 years and then
00:10:49
Speaker
I also, you know, decided, I'm like, well, you know, while I'm at it, why don't I reread Dark Knight Returns again?
Satirical Nature of Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns
00:10:54
Speaker
So I reread that as well. And one of the things that struck me, and we can talk about this more in detail when we eventually get to the Dark Knight Returns animated movie, is that the Dark Knight Returns, it's very satirical.
00:11:11
Speaker
It is! It's a satire! Yeah, he was not intending for that thing to be taken seriously. In fact, he was using it as a commentary, which Moore and Gibbons were also doing with Watchmen. It was more a commentary on the comics industry itself than it was an attempt to create a new way of telling superhero stories.
00:11:30
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So it's really not fair to blame Frank Miller or Alan Moore because creators who followed after them totally misunderstood the point of what they were trying to do with the material.
00:11:44
Speaker
You know, they just said, oh, OK, well, all superheroes now. OK, this is how they should be. And, you know, OK, well, Batman, this is this is why we have had a Batman who has not been a detective in 40 years. Right. Which is what Batman actually was. He was a detective. Now he's a guy that just beats the piss out of, you know, his opponents. And he went through superior firepower, which is not what Batman is supposed to be all about. But that's what we got.
00:12:11
Speaker
Thanks. Thanks to people reading just the same way that we got Frank Miller's Daredevil was regurgitate for the next 30, 40 years. Right. People, you know, they looked at, OK, well, that's Daredevil. That's who he's supposed to be. And they and nobody didn't want to do anything else.
Praise for Mark Waid's Unique Daredevil Run
00:12:26
Speaker
I mean, I think the only one since Frank Miller who has tried to do something different with Daredevil was Mark Wade. Yeah.
00:12:34
Speaker
Which, just a brief side note, but if you guys haven't read Mark Wade's Daredevil, it's amazing. It's not at all like the type of Daredevil you'd expect. It's very unique.
00:12:47
Speaker
And again, there was nothing wrong with Frank Miller's Daredevil. No, no, it was wonderful, especially at the time. He completely revitalized the whole character, who most people had just written off. They said, yeah, Daredevil. Yeah, OK. Oh, hum. Big deal. But he just completely transformed that character.
00:13:06
Speaker
Again, that was his version of Daredevil. He never said that, okay, well, you have to come after me and for the next 40 years, this is the only Daredevil that you're supposed to do. He never said that. And as someone who was living in New
Renewed Appreciation for Watchmen's Layers and Subtext
00:13:20
Speaker
York at the 70s, you can probably attest to how much what was going on outside his window he basically replicated in the comic.
00:13:27
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that cracked me up about the Daredevil TV series on Netflix as much as I loved it. Don't get me wrong. Now, if we're talking about the gold standard of superhero TV shows, the Daredevil is up in the top 10. But it always cracked me up in that even though it was set
00:13:51
Speaker
in modern times, in other words, in the 21st century, it was portraying a Hell's Kitchen that hasn't existed since the 1970s. As a matter of fact, it hasn't been called Hell's Kitchen in like 20 years, I don't think. No, it's called Clinton now, isn't it? Yeah, it's been totally gentrified. It's nothing like that anymore. But yeah, but basically that's what Frank Miller did. He was just portraying
00:14:16
Speaker
the neighborhood as it was at the time that he was doing it. So yeah, but I mean, you know, times change and I don't know. Me as a creator myself, if I look at something, I look at how I can make it different. I just don't want to just regurgitate what the guy before me did. Otherwise, what's the point in me doing it?
00:14:42
Speaker
not a lot i came to watchmen and a little bit different because you know i started collecting comics in the late nineties and and back then you know they had we had wizard magazine so you know i've read wizard every month and one of the things that they talked about is that that was my entry point to a lot of stuff and they talked about things like watchmen in the dark night returns so that's how i eventually came to discover those books but
00:15:08
Speaker
I was like 16, 17 at the time, so I took the wrong message from it as well. And in fact, when I read Watchmen, my thought going in was, okay, that was interesting, but I didn't really understand why it was so great. And...
00:15:27
Speaker
And I kind of took the wrong message as well. It's like, okay, well, you know, you've got these dark heroes and, you know, Rorschach is the hero of this story and all that. And then later, like when I'm looking back at it now and, you know, I just said, I reread it. And one of the first things I didn't do the first time, which I did this time, was I read all the supplementary stuff, you know, all the excerpts at the back of the issue. So the excerpts from Hollis Mason's book, the, um,
00:15:57
Speaker
the excerpts from the new frontiers behind the mask behind the mask yeah all that stuff i read through all of that this time and it opens up a whole new view of the world that you're reading in the comics and i also at the time i didn't understand the point of the the black freighter uh... interludes and
00:16:15
Speaker
And again, this time, you know, I paid more attention to them, and it makes so much more sense. It all fits together. And you start, when you come back and you're looking at it from a different perspective, and when you already know the whole story, and you're able to pay more attention, you notice so many, so much stuff going on.
Watchmen as a Game-Changer in Comics
00:16:32
Speaker
Like, every single panel is filled with subtext in that book. And it's, I gained a whole new appreciation for it, and I'm reading it, and I'm just like,
00:16:42
Speaker
Yeah, I can see why people say this is the greatest comic book ever created. Well, yeah, I mean, I mean, to me, this is like the Citizen Kane of comic books, right? I mean, this is one of the things that you could point to and you could say, OK, this changed the game forever because, yeah, comics was never the same after that.
00:17:03
Speaker
Because again, as you said, and you said it so accurately, it was all that supplementary stuff that came along with it that added and gave weight and depth and texture to this world. I mean, with these extraordinary beings, who, who, who?
00:17:21
Speaker
who, okay, and here's the funniest thing about Watchmen. They really aren't superheroes. They wear costumes and stuff like that, but they're more like Daredevil or Robin or something like that. They're costume acrobats and martial artists. The only real person who, well, Ozymandias, he does have kind of like superpowers, but the only person who is really a super power. But even still, those powers, they're gained through just regular human activity, like just extreme.
00:17:50
Speaker
Exactly he's like a super Bruce Lee, right? Exactly. That's how I've always seen him. You know, he's like a super Bruce Lee, you know The only guy is the only super being who we have is dr. Manhattan,
Dr. Manhattan's Influence on Vietnam and Global Politics
00:18:04
Speaker
of course, you know, which again since because he's the only one that's really got superpowers and
00:18:12
Speaker
that makes a greater difference than if everybody has superpowers. Because now we're seeing how all of these different characters interact with him. And as a matter of fact, we see how the whole world is changed because of him. One of the best things that I love about the movie and the book, in that we see how he wins the Vietnam War, practically single-handedly.
00:18:40
Speaker
You know, and that changes things because, you know, then Vietnam, of course, becomes things like the 52nd state of the first year, the first year of the United States, you know. So, yeah, just the fact of one super being so completely changes.
00:18:59
Speaker
the course of this whole world that when you read that and then you go back and then you look at, okay, you can't go back and look at the Marvel and DC universe in the same way because now you've just seen how one super being
00:19:15
Speaker
so totally changes what what how come in the dc universe with a million super beings and you know everything is pretty much everything is everything. Well you know that's one of the things that i've realized about it going back is it's not just vietnam but it's so many other things like there's a ripple effect with the and he creates electric cars. There are no gas powered cars in this universe.
00:19:39
Speaker
And you realize when you go back and you look at it, you're like, oh, that's not a fire hydrant. That's an electric car charger. Yeah, that's a car charger, right. Or there's the restaurant that Dan and Lori go to where the waiter is serving a four-legged chicken.
00:19:55
Speaker
Yeah. And just like all these little things, plus, you know, because of the success of Vietnam, Nixon was able to get term limits, presidential term limits, abolished. So now he's in his third or fourth term as president. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there was no Watergate. It wasn't impeach. You know, everybody loves him. In fact, in the comic, there's a reference to that when the comedian makes a joke about Woodward and Bernstein were easier than this.
00:20:23
Speaker
Yeah. So you get the feeling that what happened was the comedian was sent to kill them. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, we see that he was the guy that killed John Kennedy. Right. That's something that I'll get into when we start getting into the movie, because
00:20:40
Speaker
Well, I'll touch on it now, just so I don't forget, but one of the things I liked about the comic book is they never explicitly mention things like this. Like, the comedian, he makes jokes about Kennedy, but it's never directly stated that, yes, he killed Kennedy. But here in that opening montage, which in some ways it's a really cool montage, I think it's very stylish, it's very well shot, I like the use of the Dylan music with it, but yeah.
00:21:10
Speaker
One of the problems I have with it is that scene of him killing Kennedy because it shoves it right in your face and it spells it out clear as day, which is one of the, and this kind of sums up one of the big problems I have with the comic versus the movie is that the comic trusts you to figure stuff out on your own. The movie shoves it in your face.
Challenges of Adapting Watchmen for Screen
00:21:34
Speaker
Okay, I see what you're doing with this and I understand we're going this but again I have to go back as I always do what I have to say they making this movie for a general audience Yeah, you know and a lot of people didn't read a lot of people I remember when I went to the movies to see this and a lot of people like as usual in these superhero movies You know when they come out I have friends and family who?
00:21:58
Speaker
called me and said, well, who are these people? Where did they come from? How come I've never heard of them? Because most people hadn't heard of Watchmen. And they didn't know. And I understand what you're saying. I'm not disagreeing with you, but I'm just saying that they put that scene in there so people will know, OK, we don't care how we portray this guy to you in this movie. He is not a nice guy. They're letting you know right off the bat.
00:22:26
Speaker
that he's not a nice guy and now that's just that's just one minor pet peeve in like a whole list of things i have uh... with this movie but before we start getting too much into that uh... what was your feeling when you saw the movie when it first came out because i know with me when i saw it it'd been a while since i'd read watchman so and i even at that point i had really picked up on all this stuff but i watched it and i thought okay
00:22:52
Speaker
That was alright. There's a lot of stuff they seemed like that was missing because it was the theatrical cut. And then later, when the ultimate cut came out, which is what I watched for this, and the one I own, it had the black freighter stuff in there, and it had the whole director's cut, and I watched the whole thing, and after I finished watching it, I'm like...
00:23:11
Speaker
All right, it's okay, but it felt like there was something hollow about it. There was something that was just missing for it, which I kind of realized after I read the book and then reread the book and rewatched it again this last time. But at the time, I did feel like it was good, it wasn't bad. I don't think it was terrible, but it felt like there was something off about it. What was your feeling?
00:23:40
Speaker
when you saw it the first time. When I saw it the first time, I actually, when I was talking about it with friends of mine, including Tom DJ. Oh yeah, I think you guys did an episode on this on Better in the Dark, didn't you? Yeah, we did, we did. Matter of fact, I was thinking about digging it out and after you put this one up and we'll let people listen to this and then I'll go back and I'll find that episode and I'll put it up.
00:24:05
Speaker
and people can't compare the two and see how much shit I was talking back then as opposed to now. But. And then in another 10 years, we'll do it again and then we could see how much shit you're talking now. Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Actually, watching the movie reminded me a lot of the movie L.A. Confidential. OK.
00:24:32
Speaker
Okay now have you ever read the book LA Confidential? I've never read the book but I love the movie. Okay now people okay those of you who are out there who have read the book and seen the movie right now I know you're nodding your head because you know where I'm gonna go with this. LA Confidential book and the movie they cut an extraordinary amount
00:24:56
Speaker
of that book. There's a whole ton of subplots that never made it to the movie. However, you talk to somebody who's read the book and seen the movie. The weird thing is, when you watch the movie, it doesn't feel like that at all. OK. You look at it and you say, OK, I know shit was cut out of here. A lot of stuff was cut out. But it doesn't feel like it. I got the same feeling when I watched Watchmen for the first time. I knew there was a lot that had been cut out, but it didn't feel like it. OK.
00:25:26
Speaker
It did feel like a whole complete story was there, not the story as presented in the graphic novel, which of course you got to go get the graphic novel because like you said, there's all that other material that goes along with it.
00:25:40
Speaker
but I didn't feel like in other movies, like other movies I've seen that have been adapted. I said, okay, I can, yeah, okay. They chopped that out and they cut that out and yeah, they really should have left that in. I didn't get that feeling with this. I knew that there was stuff that had been left out and changed and moved around, especially the ending, which really pissed off a lot of people. But I didn't feel cheated. I felt like, yeah, okay, I got a complete story.
00:26:07
Speaker
Okay. You know, even though I read the, you know, the source material and I knew everything, I said, okay, you know what? I'm cool with this. I think that this is probably the best version of Watchmen.
00:26:22
Speaker
we could imagine that we was not matter that it was a lot better than most people thought we were going to get to be honest yeah it was a lot better than i think uh... i think i i i was a lot better than i expected there's still that that feeling of hollowness to me and i i kind of figured out why this was last time and i think what it is is
Director's Influence on Film Adaptation
00:26:45
Speaker
both Alan Moore and Zack Snyder are coming at this from two very different ideas and um because Alan Moore one of the reasons he wanted to use the charlatan characters is because Steve Ditko you know created or co-created a lot of them and uh for anyone who doesn't know Steve Ditko um
00:27:08
Speaker
was, because I think he passed away recently, he was an avowed objectivist. You know, a big follower in Ayn Rand's philosophy, which also fuels like a lot of libertarianism and all that, and it's detailed in books like Atlas Shrugged and The Foundation and all that kind of stuff. Now Alan Moore is a very left-wing anarchist.
00:27:32
Speaker
who practices magic so he's very much like he's like pretty much as opposite of an objectivist as you can possibly get and one of the things that he was trying to do with the book with watchmen was he was criticizing objectivism and he was doing it through the characters that's one of the things is that a lot of people take the wrong message from this uh... including you know comic creators who followed after what became the
00:28:00
Speaker
in the industry after Watchmen, whereas they looked at Rorschach and they saw a badass action hero who they should base their characters on. But when you read the book and you read it closely, you realize that the book is not praising Rorschach. The book is saying Rorschach's a psychopath.
00:28:21
Speaker
Anybody and i had plenty of people that was saying oh man he's you know he's cool he's the he's the best character in the movie if you thought he was the best character in the movie you need to go check it out of staying told this story about how you know the famous song.
00:28:41
Speaker
watching you or every breath you take yeah every breath you take that was it and he told this he tells this story where this couple came up to him and they said oh we love your work we love that song it was the song we the first song we danced to at our wedding and Stink said that is mine he was thinking that songs about a crazy stalker it's like I'm kind of concerned that you're using that at your as your wedding song
00:29:03
Speaker
which only goes to show you how in this country we don't pay attention to shit because nobody ever sat down and actually listened to the lyrics of that song. Yeah.
00:29:14
Speaker
That's a, you're gonna sit and tell me that, okay, what's the other song? See, this is why I get so wound up. Everybody was going on and on and on about that Christmas song. Oh, that's a date rape song. That's a date rape song. Oh, Baby It's Cold Outside. Yeah, Baby It's Cold Outside. Oh, that's a date rape song, but you're playing with every breath you take at your wedding.
Misunderstanding of Rorschach's Character
00:29:40
Speaker
This is a song that the man who wrote it is telling you. Yes, it's about a creepy stalker, but oh, but to you, oh, we love that song. Seriously? Okay.
00:29:52
Speaker
uh... okay great over back to watch so that was and that was the wrong message a lot of people took from it was they thought that and when you look back at the book rush acts a pretty shitty detective when you think about it because a lot of people they think all he stumbled on this whole conspiracy is like well no he was kind of
00:30:12
Speaker
bad at his job because he goes and he finds out eddie blake is the comedian and then he immediately jumps to someone is killing uh... costumed heroes when there is no evidence for that whatsoever and then what is he doing he goes to a bar he starts breaking fingers but that that has nothing to do with eddie blake's murder and so it just shows that
00:30:33
Speaker
He's just a paranoid psychotic and he's paranoid. That's all it is. Yeah. Oh, well somebody's trying to kill. He's trying to give himself some kind of purpose to justify the violence he's going to commit that he wants to do. So if there's this conspiracy to kill superheroes, stuff like that, Oh, okay. Well now I can go out there and I'm justified in breaking necks and you know, killing people and throwing them off of rooftops because I'm trying to prevent this massive conspiracy. That's going to kill me and my friends.
00:31:03
Speaker
I think it also has something to do with his mental state because you see what is the first thing he does is he goes back and he looks up all his old contacts who were heroes like himself. And so it's kind of like he's using this as an excuse for social interaction as well on a subconscious level.
00:31:24
Speaker
Well, yeah, there's a scene and it's kind of poignant where, um, he goes and he confronts, uh, what's his name? Dan Drieberg, the night owl. Yeah. Yeah. And they have a conversation down in his secret layer down there. And Rorschach kind of admits that he kind of misses the days when they were partners. Right.
00:31:47
Speaker
And they were going around, they were crime busting and beating up the gangs and stuff like that. And it's the closest that he comes to expressing, you know, real feelings. Well, I think the closest, I think he goes further at the end because after they break him out of prison, you know, Dan dresses him down and he says like, this is why nobody likes you. And then Rorschach apologizes for probably the first time in his life.
00:32:10
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And as a matter of fact, he actually says to him, you know, I know it's not easy being my friend. Yeah. I know that, you know, and, you know, and that's one of the things I do like about the movie is that if there's any two people that as crazy as it sounds, if there's any two people that are real friends in this movie is those two, these completely opposite men who have nothing in common except the fact that they like to put on costumes and go beat up on people, you know, but in a weird way,
00:32:40
Speaker
They have the closest relationship of anybody in the movie, really. Right. Now what I think the movie does is I think it also takes the wrong lesson about Rorschach because it portrays Rorschach as a heroic character in this movie. And it gives weight to his conspiracy theories and his paranoia. And one example is
Snyder's Overt Portrayal of Watchmen Characters
00:33:05
Speaker
So in the book, when Rorschach is talking about, is writing about Azimandaeus in his journal, Adrian Veidt, he writes in his journal that Adrian is a possible homosexual, right? And there is nothing to support that in the book whatsoever.
00:33:22
Speaker
Yeah, so it's just it's just a way of saying like look this guy's a crazy. You know right-wing lunatic That's all he is and he thinks Adrian Veidt is gay because Adrian is cosmopolitan And that's really the only reason yeah, that's all yeah
00:33:38
Speaker
But the movie justifies his paranoia because Adrian Veidt, like Ozymandias in the movie, his costume was purposely modeled on the Joel Schumacher Batman costumes, which, you know, got a lot of criticism for homoeroticism. And also, you know, he's standing outside Club 54 in that opening montage. Yeah, yeah. And the village people are behind him. He goes over there and he's shaking hands.
00:34:05
Speaker
uh... yeah matthew good is you know he's he's a very uh... effeminate actors you know he plays it very effeminate me he's very aloof but if you go back the comic especially the interview adrian did in one of the back matters is adrian is is very charismatic you know he's he's a very what he's got a very warm personality he's able to interact with people very well uh... and also he's not uh...
00:34:33
Speaker
a lean guy, he's a big guy, he's a built guy, they show that scene of him, which they cut out of the movie I noticed as well, when Dan and Laurie are first trying to have sex on the couch, and on TV is Adrian going through his, going through this display of his physical prowess. He's very, he's much more of a Robert Redford type, or a Brad Pitt type, to put it in more recent terms.
00:35:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Also, when they're on, when they go to Adrian's office and Dan's looking on the computer, there's one of the folders on his computer that's labeled boys.
00:35:14
Speaker
So basically, I think this kind of goes to something that Snyder has an issue with, which I think he kind of has an issue with gay people in general, because you also saw this in 300, where he portrays Xerces in this very kind of like homoerotic type fashion, and he has Leonidas have that line about the people from Athens being the boy lovers from Athens, which is really bizarre because the Spartans were gay as hell.
00:35:48
Speaker
So, so I think that, and that, and that the only reason that Snyder puts all this stuff in the movie is because this one throwaway paranoid line from Rorschach about how Adrian's a possible homosexual. Which go, okay. Which touches on something that I wanted to bring up when you were talking about a director and their particular worldview and why, and certain, okay. Because when you talk about,
00:36:15
Speaker
Snyder and him interjecting his particular worldview into this material, it reminds me of when Josh Trank came out with his version of The Fantastic Four. And I said in my review, and a lot of people, oh, I caught heat for that. Because I said, no, I don't blame Josh Trank for The Fantastic Four. And people are like, oh, what are you talking about? How can you not blame him? He made movies. Yeah. But based on the previous movies that he made,
00:36:44
Speaker
Who in their right mind thought that he was the right director for Fantastic Four? Right. You know, now.
00:36:51
Speaker
Zach Slatter, I don't know the particulars about how this particular came to him. I do know that a number of other directors turned it down, including Terry Gilliam, who said flat out that it was uncomfortable. He said, you can't do this. Yeah, Gilliam had tried for years to make this work and he couldn't make it work as a movie. And he said it would have to be a miniseries. Right. OK, OK. I knew it was somebody that said, yeah, you got to do this as like a 12 hour miniseries. So it's not going to work as a movie. And I figured probably
00:37:21
Speaker
that it was just given to snyder because because he had already done three hundred well snyder had actively campaigned for this uh... he included uh... it was as it was a it was a still or something and i think one of three hundred trailers of someone it dressed up as rorschach holding the comedian's button and he included this as like this one thing that his wife even bet him a hundred dollars that nobody would find it and it was discovered and then that sort of the ball rolling on him being able to direct the movie
00:37:50
Speaker
So he had wanted to make this movie. Okay. But the problem is that, like a lot of the people who followed the comic creator, who followed Watchmen the Comic, is that
00:38:04
Speaker
You know, just like Mark Millar, just like a lot of the image founders, is that I think Snyder took the wrong message from the movie. Because Snyder, also this is ironic, because Snyder himself is an objectivist. And you can, he's talked about his admiration for the Fountainhead and how he wants to direct a new version, a new adaptation of that book. And...
00:38:28
Speaker
When you look at his movies, especially Batman v Superman and Watchmen, you can really see his philosophy taking center stage in those movies. Oh, yeah. Well, that goes back to my point about why it's important to put a director with the right material, or if you're going to let him
00:38:54
Speaker
have his way with whatever property or whatever. Okay, certain directors you can hire, what's this guy I'm thinking of? Okay, Ratner. Okay, Brett Ratner. Brett Ratner is a guy that you don't hire for his vision. Right. Ron Howard is a guy you don't hire for his vision. You hire them because you want them to deliver a product on time, on budget,
00:39:19
Speaker
with no problem there's also those those creators who are who are very good at uh... putting their own uh... world beliefs aside and i think marybond comes to mind uh... because matthew vaughan is a very right wing guy in real life mark millar has said that you know you know i love matthew vaughan but one of the problems is you know trying to get past his love of the torries and the the right wing british politics uh... right
00:39:46
Speaker
But if you watch his movies you don't really get that sense and like people said you know if matthew vaughan wants to direct a superman movie he should. Right doesn't okay you got ahead of me but basically that's where i was going and then you have the directors like zach snyder who who cannot let go of their own.
00:40:06
Speaker
you know, sexual, political, psychological, philosophical hang ups when they're directing something. Because that's in everything he does. That was in Sucker Punch. Oh my god, Sucker Punch is like a two hour long Zack Snyder therapy session. Bingo, there you go. I mean, it's not just the visual style that's in his movies, it's what he thinks about life, period.
Clash of Objectivist Philosophy with Superhero Ideals
00:40:34
Speaker
You know, in all of his movies and does that work to his advantage? No, it doesn't work to his advantage. Like you said, this stuff like Superman, you know, because he doesn't get Superman at all. No, no. And I think that goes back to his philosophy because, you know, one of the key tenets of objectivism is selfishness is a virtue and there's no such thing as a selfless man. And Superman is the ultimate selfless man.
00:40:59
Speaker
Once he, when he had that scene in Man of Steel where Pa Kent told him that he had the hottest powers from the world and don't do, you know, I said, okay, bingo, he don't get Superman at all. Because that's not Superman, he don't get Pa Kent. He doesn't get the whole concept. What you do is that you're supposed to give him characters that fits his concept and his worldview. Because whatever characters he takes, he's gonna take it and he's gonna fit that
00:41:28
Speaker
the way that he thinks of the world because he can't be objective enough. Like you said, you have directors who are objective and can say, OK, well, I could just make a movie about this character and not put my DNA in here. But no, Snyder is definitely not that kind of director. He can't do that. And with a story like that.
00:41:47
Speaker
Because Watchmen is so influenced, despite what right-wing trolls on Twitter think, Watchmen is so influenced by politics, and particularly left-wing politics. I mean, the whole thing is it's all about the Cold War. It's all about these right-wing paranoia.
00:42:10
Speaker
It's all about criticizing and taking down the system. You know who would have been the perfect director for this movie? John Frankenheimer. OK. John Frankenheimer. Because basically, yeah, Watchmen is a Cold War right wing paranoid thriller. Yeah.
00:42:30
Speaker
disguised as a superhero movie, but yeah, that's mainly what it's about. It's about, and you touched on something that really drive me crazy when people, when the TV series came out and they said, oh, why did they have to put politics in it? I said, wait a minute, did you read the original graphic novel? Did you see the movie? Well, remember that meme I posted on Facebook where it's like, you know, I love comics, but I, but I wish they weren't so political. And my favorite comics are Watchmen and the X-Men.
00:42:58
Speaker
I mean, seriously, I mean, practically, Watchmen is all about politics. That is what it's about. It is about politics. It is.
00:43:09
Speaker
And something that I think that Snyder is missing the point here is that, and a lot of people miss the point about Watchmen, is that the whole point of Watchmen is that Moore was taking down superheroes. He was completely tearing down the idea of superheroes. Because when you think about it, the idea behind superheroes is
00:43:30
Speaker
This guy thinks that he's the one who has the authority to be judge, jury, and executioner for the rest of us.
00:43:45
Speaker
that is a very you know objectivist type of view this idea of like that the selfish man who's deciding for himself what is right and wrong when you think about it in that context and you look back at watchmen you know you're left thinking why the hell would we want these people to to speak for us to defend us because they're they're on him because you've got rorschach who as we've already covered is a psychotic right-wing lunatic uh...
00:44:14
Speaker
who cooks up conspiracy theories in his mind to justify breaking people's fingers.
Dr. Manhattan's Alien Perspective and Hero Role
00:44:20
Speaker
You've got Dr. Manhattan, who's the victim of this science experiment, and now he's a walking H-bomb, but he is so cold and so distant that he has no connection to humanity whatsoever. He makes Mr. Spock look warm and cuddly.
00:44:35
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, there's that scene where when Rorschach tells him about the comedian's death and he says, well, you know, there's no difference between a live body and a dead body. They've got the same number of molecules.
00:44:48
Speaker
Yeah. So he's just so disconnected from everything. And it makes sense, why? Because, you know, someone who's as powerful as him, like, we must look to him like ants look to us. So it's understandable why you'd have that perspective. But you wouldn't want someone like that to necessarily be the defender of all humanity.
00:45:08
Speaker
and then you've got lori uh... the second silk specter who was forced into this by her mother who's never really wanted to do it who's got a whole host of psychological issues or and then you have to end rebirth who's this this you know this guy uh... son of privilege who um...
00:45:28
Speaker
Basically, he doesn't take responsibility in his life. He just wants, he's a big kid. Like, he just likes the idea of dressing up as his favorite superhero and playing with all these toys. And then you've got Adrian Veidt, who, you know, he built himself, he gave away his fortune, he built himself up from nothing, but his idol is Alexander the Great, one of the, you know, one of the fiercest conquerors in world history. Like, that guy, no doubt, had tons of blood on his hand. And you want to model yourself after that guy, so...
00:45:58
Speaker
And then, and he fits into that role perfectly because then he says, you know, I'm going to be the one to decide to kill millions of people in order to save the world because I say that's the only way to do it. And the whole idea behind all of this is you're saying, look at these guys, they're broken, they're...
00:46:16
Speaker
they're psychologically damaged and this is these are the people that we look to defend us and and then of course there's you know comedian who is a complete nihilist who thinks human life itself is a is a complete joke who
The Comedian's Honest Acknowledgment of Life's Absurdity
00:46:34
Speaker
who is probably, as far as I'm concerned, as much as I dislike him, the comedian is probably the most honest character in the whole thing. Oh, he is. Here's what Watchmen did. And you summed up the characters in this thing perfectly. My hat's off to you. You did it much better than I could have. But here's what it did. Previous to Watchmen, we had, what, like 60 years of comic books, right? 60 years of various comic book companies.
00:47:03
Speaker
telling us that, oh my God, if we just had superheroes in the real world, all our lives would be so much better.
Utopian Critique of Superheroes in Watchmen
00:47:12
Speaker
And then along comes Watchmen, and Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons is telling us, well, no.
00:47:20
Speaker
the world would not necessarily be the utopia that you think is gonna be if we had people in costumes running around taking the law into their own hand. As a matter of fact, most of these characters end up working for the government. I mean like the comedian, he turns into the hit man. I mean, he's shaking hands with the president and given what we know about him, yeah, he's a hit man for the government. Dr. Manhattan was working for the government.
00:47:47
Speaker
Silk Spectre, she becomes a government whore, pretty much. She's a sex slave to Dr. Manhattan. That's her only purpose. And her mother, they could do a whole movie about her alone because the comedian,
00:48:11
Speaker
He attempts to rape her and then apparently, she forgives the rape and has a child by him. Now, what kind of psychological hoo-ha is going on there?
00:48:27
Speaker
heroes, the Minutemen, because you see that they've got these same types of hang-ups and issues. There's Dollar Bill, who's just a corporate-sponsored superhero, and he ends up getting killed because his cape gets stuck in a door, which the PR people at the company thought would be a good idea to give him this cape. To give him a cape, yeah.
00:48:50
Speaker
you've got uh... the comedian who we've already talked about you've got silk specter the original one who's only doing this as a stepping stone to get into acting and modeling like you care about being a superhero and you know mason talks about it in his book how do you know they're all just they're all coming in this with their own like kinda sexual hang-ups and stuff like that and it's all just like a game to them
00:49:15
Speaker
Yeah, because Mason and he's very interesting character in that he was a cop. Yeah. And, and he got into this pretty much as a way to extend his role as a policeman. Right. And not just be out now. I mean, you know, vigilante, but he realized that there was certain things that he could do to aid the police if he stepped outside the law, which, which, okay.
00:49:42
Speaker
Are we talking about questionable morals here and everything like that? Of course we are. Anytime that you put on a costume and hide your identity and step outside the law, yeah, we're stepping into a definite dark gray area here. But out of all the characters in Watchmen, we can say that his motives were the most pure and that he was apparently he was not corrupted.
00:50:05
Speaker
by putting on this mask. And eventually he died for it. Right. Because he wasn't corrupted. And I get the feeling, you know, I haven't read the watchman. I haven't read the matter. I was looking for it. I thought it was here someplace. I couldn't find it. But I, but I get the impression that, you know, when he was doing his time at the Minutemen and after the incident where the comedian tried to rape sick, uh, uh, silk specter, that's probably when he got out of the game. Right.
00:50:33
Speaker
I get that impression that, yeah, he said, you know what? Yeah, this is this isn't going the way that it supposed that I thought it was going to go. You know, now in the movie, I think right from the opening, it kind of tells you.
00:50:47
Speaker
how Snyder is viewing this very differently, because in the book, we never see how Blake dies. Like, we never see the scene when he gets attacked and thrown out the window. We see the detectives' impressions of it and what they believe happened as they're reconstructing the crime scene, but we never actually see it on page in the comic book.
00:51:10
Speaker
but in this book they in this movie they show it to us on screen like they show him being attacked and they show the fight and right from the start they show you what it's going to be because Snyder's camera really has like almost a pornographic view of violence and it it really like it it puts so much emphasis on the violence in the movie like you see this close-up of Blake punching his hand through the wall yeah through the wall yeah
00:51:40
Speaker
When Laurie and Dan are attacked, they're smashing bricks with their bare hands. And the camera is going very... It's taking its time to film like blood flying and all this stuff. And also in the scene when Dr. Manhattan goes to Vietnam.
00:51:58
Speaker
you know yes it's a recreation of that scene or also the scene when night owl and comedian are putting down the riot and it's it's a recreation of the panels except the way that uh... slider reenact them is yet he's got the framing there but it's got a completely different view of the situation uh... especially when you factor in the music that's playing in the background like in the in the vietnam scene you've got the the flight of all trees playing and uh... run
00:52:28
Speaker
I can't remember what song was playing in the riots scene, but it was like, you remember, what was that? Casey in the sunshine band. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I was, I was blanking on what song that was. Um, yeah, they're playing, I'm playing, I'm your boogeyman and, and in the scene when, um,
00:52:47
Speaker
Uh, Dan and Rorschach are going to confront Veyt. They're playing, um, Jimi Hendrix's cover of, uh, all along the Watchtower. And, you know, the music is great in this movie. I love all this music. But the problem is, when you think about what the comic was trying to say, the music really puts, and the way that, um, Snyder films it, is he's...
00:53:09
Speaker
twisting the perspective completely so now it becomes more about like you're watching
Contrast Between Comic and Movie Hero Portrayals
00:53:15
Speaker
these scenes of violence and you're getting pumped up and you're like yeah this is so awesome you know look at how he punches through that that brick but in the comic the whole thing is like no this is not awesome this is this is terrible this is terrifying and and the fact that you know dan and lori these two people that the only way
00:53:33
Speaker
they can find some sort of connection to others is through doing violence or dressing up in these superhero costumes and it's like it's it's kind of it the way the way they're trying to say it in the comic is these are tragic broken people you should not want to be like them but the movie it says yeah look at how awesome and how badass everybody is
00:53:57
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, they, they kind of like make the point that Dan is impotent because him and Lori don't constantly don't have sex until after they put on, excuse me, until after they put on the costume and then they go out and that's when they saved the people from the burning building. And like you said, they had that scene where they'd be in mug and they beat up on people. And, and that's also another excellent point that you make that,
00:54:23
Speaker
going back to what I said earlier, that these aren't exactly superheroes. They're more like costume acrobats and martial artists. But from some of the things that the comedian does, like you said, he punches through a concrete wall. And by all rights, he should have shattered every bone in his hand, but he does it. And then in the fight scene where Lori and Dan are being mugged,
00:54:48
Speaker
you know they come off as a little bit more like enhanced humans right rather than you know martial artists because they're like doing i mean they're like breaking bones are like no effort at all you know when and the backflipping and doing all this kind of stuff and also you know and has this smile on his face went just before they're about to get attacked which is not in the comic and that's also kind of something to shows like i like this misunderstanding of the characters
00:55:15
Speaker
Dan is not happy that the only way he can find some semblance of connection to others is through violence and big superhero masks.
00:55:32
Speaker
OK, when you go back to the movie, it's like Dan is really getting back into this and he's enjoying and he's saying, yeah, you know, oh, man, I really missed this and everything like that. And yeah, that's not what the graphic novel was all about. No. And then the graphic novel, he's basically having a midlife crisis. Yeah, exactly. Like he's out of shape. You know, he let himself go.
00:55:56
Speaker
you know he doesn't want to get back into this because he knows that he's let himself go and he knows that this is not a healthy way for a man his age to live there's also um... the scene when uh... we first see adrian like when he first it appears in the main story not not the the opening credits but there is that scene when uh... in the movie you know dan goes to tell him about war shack's theory
00:56:24
Speaker
And you see him, and he's doing this interview, and in the background, you know, you see Dan. He's taken, like, the night elf figure, and he's, like, excited about it, and he's playing with it. But in the comic, that's not Dan at all who goes to see him. It's Rorschach. And Rorschach criticizes the fact that Ozymandaeus is, you know, merchandising his legacy.
00:56:45
Speaker
right so again that's that's again this kind of view where you get the sense that dan really likes this life in the movie and he wants to do it whereas in the comics you don't get the sense that dan likes it you feel like he just doesn't know what else to do with his life yeah he doesn't know what right exactly at this point he doesn't know what else to do but in the movie yeah
00:57:07
Speaker
He definitely embraces getting back into the costume and doing the whole superhero thing. You know, he's into it. Right. You know, there's no doubt about that. Same thing with Laurie, you know, she gets back into it and it's like, yeah, you know, she, you know, she really wants to get back into this. Whereas in the graphic novel, it is clearly spelled out that she never wanted this. It was her mother that pushed her into it.
00:57:31
Speaker
You know, a mother keeps, oh, well, don't you want to be famous? Don't you want everybody to know your name? Don't you want men to be, you know, for it? She says, no, I don't know. She said, that was your thing. I never wanted that shit. They also, they don't call her by her real name. And that's another little point to, you know, Laurie's character is, you know, in the book, um,
00:57:53
Speaker
her mother took the last name jupiter because she didn't want people to know that she was polish uses polish but in the comic yet and in the comic you know when um... rorschach first uh... encounters them in the story he calls her miss jupiter and she schools image he's like my last name is just a quick sir i know there's a lot of you know about how it's pronounced but that's just what i'm going with off the top of my head and you know she explains that you know my mother
00:58:17
Speaker
use the name Jupiter because she didn't want people to know that she was Polish. So that's another thing is that Laurie is done hiding behind masks in the comic. Right, yeah. Where the movie, they never mention that, and I think that kind of takes away from it. And it's tough because, you know, even in the comic, Laurie is not the most well-developed character. I think she gets the shaft of development out of all the characters in the comic. But in the movie, she's treated even worse, I think.
00:58:49
Speaker
really yeah it's just like she in the movie she comes off as you know just like uh... constantly whining complaining and in the comic you understand why like you understand why she's broken like this and why she's got this you know cynical view of everything but in the in the movie you never really get that sense of why so she just comes off really bad i think in the movie well you know what okay
00:59:17
Speaker
I think that I don't see it that way because having of course, and see, this is what happens when you read the source material and then you watch a movie or TV show that's based on it. Since you have that advantage, you're filling in the gaps. Right.
00:59:31
Speaker
You know, so I guess that's why I don't see that way. Me personally, as far as all of the characters are concerned, I think that they did a pretty good job of representing them, except like you say, there is that slant with the characters of the comedian.
00:59:51
Speaker
and of Rorschach that year kind of puts them in a more, how shall I say this? Not heroic, in a more sympathetic light. Yeah. Whereas we're supposed to feel like, I guess like, okay, that scene in Vietnam,
01:00:07
Speaker
where they've just won the war and he's getting drunk in the barn and he's talking to Dr. Manhattan and everything like that. And I guess we're supposed to feel sorry for him because, you know, oh, well, he was dragged into doing all of these things. And then the Vietnamese girl, she comes in because she's pregnant with his baby and because she just asked him to do the right thing. He kills her. Yeah.
01:00:30
Speaker
You know, it's kind of hard to make a sympathetic character out of a guy like that. Right. But the movie goes out of its way to do it. And that's the weird thing about it. And in fact, I noticed this when I was after rewatching the movie, after rereading the book, is that a lot of the character defining stuff about John, about Laurie, about Dan, about Adrian, it gets excised. It's not talked about in the comic, in the movie, I mean.
01:00:57
Speaker
but Rorschach and comedian, their stories are almost portrayed completely unedited. Yeah. The one exception is, and one of the most interesting cuts comes when Rorschach is in prison and he's interviewed by the psychiatrist.
01:01:16
Speaker
Now, in the book, there's almost like a whole chapter devoted just to this psychiatrist. And you find out, you see how Rorschach's worldview is infecting his life. The focus is on the psychiatrist and how Rorschach's madness is kind of praised on his psyche.
01:01:38
Speaker
Right. And, you know, this guy who's, you know, he's a good guy, maybe a bit opportunistic, but in general, he's a decent guy. And his whole life basically falls apart because Rorschach is almost like a disease that infects him. Yeah, exactly. Which is the point that Alan Moore was trying to make. Right. That this kind of worldview, this kind of, you know, idea of how life is that Rorschach has,
01:02:08
Speaker
that's like a disease that can affect you right it's completely toxic and yeah that's gone from the movie the movie like is they just that that psychiatrist he just appears in that one seat he goes in to interview him and right away rorschach tells his story and the psychiatrist leaves and he says i can't help him well the whole point of that
01:02:27
Speaker
scene. Yeah. As you say, that's supposed to make us feel sorry for Rorschach because, okay, this one. Okay. Well, that's when the poor guy went crazy when he was investigating this kidnapping. And he found out that the guy fed the little girl to the door, you know, presumably that made him snap. No, that did not make him snap. The man has snapped long before that. Right.
01:02:47
Speaker
That was just the final nail in his coffin. Yeah, exactly. That was just the... Okay, that was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, you know, yeah. But yeah, he was crackling on before that. And I think by showing us it this way, by taking away the psychiatrist's story, you're removing half the story from it, and you don't understand what the real point of telling us his origin was. Like, yeah, we can understand he's been through some shit, and it probably explains a little bit about why he is the way he is, but...
01:03:16
Speaker
Without you seeing the effect that it has on other people, you don't really get the full story. And it undermines the point that Moore was trying to make. Because here's the whole thing behind that character. OK. There is little scant difference between, there is only a hair's thickness between him deciding to put on that mask and that hat and that trench coat and going out to beat up what he considers to be the dregs of society.
01:03:46
Speaker
where he could just have easily have gotten a gun and went up on a bell tower someplace and start shooting people that he thinks are the dregs of society. There's really not that much difference. Well, I mean, there's this whole opening line. I mean, that tells you everything about it, where, you know, he says when like all the pours and the politicians will look up and they'll scream save me and I'll whisper no. And it's like, well, yeah, that's like the most unheroic thing you could ever do.
01:04:14
Speaker
which is the whole thing about superheroes. OK, why do we love superheroes? Because they beat up the quote unquote wrong people or the or the right people. You know, yeah, you know, as long as they're beaten up, you know, the criminals and everything like that. OK, well, we're cool with them. But then once they start deciding who's a criminal, who's not a criminal, that's the whole point.
01:04:40
Speaker
It's that Harvey Dent line from The Dark Knight. You die a hero, you live long enough to be a villain. Yeah, because sooner or later, that's what happens. You start making that distinction in your mind. OK, well, you know something? Well, you know what? I could beat up that guy because I just don't like him. I don't like the way he looks. Because sooner or later, it gets to that point. Yeah.
01:05:03
Speaker
it gets to that point where you start taking the law into your own hands and why not and it and it happens in the book to any because it that idea gets extended to the ultimate execution of it when you know they decide i'm just gonna kill millions of people because i think that's the only way that we can have peace on earth bingo and and what happens when the other so quote-unquote heroes find out is
01:05:32
Speaker
they decide to keep quiet, right? They make that decision. Yeah. They actually go along and say, well, you know, so, yeah, OK, well, we can't tell. Now we know this, you know, we know and we know is wrong. And they got to go along with this for no reason. I think that what we keep coming back to and that is the theme of.
01:05:59
Speaker
both the movie and the graphic novel is that superheroes are not necessarily a good thing. Well, I think that is definitely the theme in the comic. I think the movie kind of muddles that because the movie is torn between what the source material is trying to say and Zack Snyder trying to recreate panels. And you know what it reminds me of? Do you remember that episode of The Simpsons when Alan Moore appeared on the show voicing himself?
01:06:27
Speaker
Uh, vaguely. Okay, so it was like Alan Moore, it was Art Spiegelman and Dan Close, I think, the guy who created Ghost World. Right, yeah. And they appear at a comic book convention, and all three creators voice themselves. And Bart goes up to Alan Moore, and he says...
01:06:43
Speaker
He's like, oh Alan Moore, you wrote my favorite issues of radioactive man ever. He's like, I love what you did. And Alan Moore says, you mean you like that I turned your childhood hero into a heroin addicted jazz critic who isn't actually radioactive? And then Bart says, oh no, I don't read the words. I just look at the pictures. He's like, how do you get their costumes to stick so close to their muscles?
01:07:08
Speaker
And I watched that, and I realized Zack Snyder is Bart Simpson in that episode. Zack Snyder is Bart. I just got an image in my mind. That's great. I love that. Yeah, OK. You're right, though. Yeah. Because he does. He's so obsessed with just recreating the panels that he doesn't put as much thought into what those panels mean.
01:07:38
Speaker
And he doesn't know something. To give him his due, he does that superbly well. Oh, he does. I will say this. The movie looks amazing. All of Snyder's movies look amazing. Visually, that guy takes a backseat to nobody.
01:07:54
Speaker
Yeah, he's very stylish, he's got a great sense of design, and all the superhero movies he's done, they look absolutely amazing. A little bit too dark in places, but overall, they look really good.
01:08:10
Speaker
i've got nothing but praise for the way he designed uh... superman bad man and wonder what it's constant they're perfect uh... the flash that's a different story but no no god well yeah okay we'll say that we will get the justice we have but
01:08:28
Speaker
but overall like his design sense is amazing and you know we've talked before about that scene in Batman v Superman when Batman goes to the warehouse and you know how he does a great job of showcasing that action like he knows action he knows
01:08:43
Speaker
how to film something in a way that it looks good and the best the best live-action Batman fight scene ever absolutely yeah hands down no no argument for me at all but the problem is that you keep giving him these characters that he doesn't understand and he knows he knows the words but he doesn't listen to the music exactly like the sting song
01:09:06
Speaker
Yeah. And that's, and like, if you give him something, give him moon knight, give him the punisher. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
01:09:16
Speaker
Or, hell, give him the question, because the question was an objectivist character to begin with. But you give him something like that, let him cut loose, I think you'd have an amazing movie. But you should stop giving him stuff that he's clearly not suited for, because... That doesn't fit his worldview. Right. Just like I said with Josh Trank going back to the Fantastic Four movie. You know, Fantastic Four characters that don't suit his worldview at all. Right. You gotta... Yeah, if you gave Zack Snyder a character, like you said, Moon Knight would be perfect for him. The Punisher. Mm-hmm.
01:09:47
Speaker
Give him a punishment. A punishment he made would be absolutely amazing. You give him a character like that? The question. I would push an old lady in a wheelchair down by the stairs if I could see a question movie. Yeah.
01:10:00
Speaker
Give him a character that matches his world view, and he would knock it out of the park. Absolutely. And you give him characters that don't fit his world, like Superman, and then he tries to transmogrify the character to fit what he thinks Superman should be. Well, that doesn't work. That's like giving, what's that guy's name? That's like giving ET to Eli Roth and saying, OK, well, I want you to remake this. You know what? No, I kind of want to see that.
01:10:32
Speaker
No, that's insane. You know, you know, that's insane. Or like giving Superman to Tim Burton, which I also kind of want to see after seeing the documentary about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, I didn't know how badly I wanted to see Nicholas Cage's Superman until I said, you know, so I do kind of want to see that movie now. But yeah, but. You shouldn't leave. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Oh, oh.
01:11:01
Speaker
I think that the controversy about the movie stems not only from Zack Snyder's worldview of it, but also that, okay, the best way that I could illustrate how I think people took Watchmen is when I went to see it. When I went to see it, me and my wife, you know, I said, okay, come on, well, we're gonna see the superhero movie. She said, fine, okay. She brought her blanket, because she was gonna go to sleep anyway.
01:11:30
Speaker
We go to the movies and we go in there, and it's the middle of the day, mind you, because we always go to matinees. Right, matinee is about like one o'clock in the afternoon. Dita is about 20 people in there, all adults, except for this one guy with these two little boys. And the two little boys had to be about like nine and 10. So the guy that's selling them the tickets are telling them, you know this is already a movie, man, right? Yeah, mind your business, mind your business.
01:12:00
Speaker
He takes the kids in there, we sit down and we're watching the movie. The guy doesn't say anything until he gets to the scene where Dan and Lori are having sex in the owl ship.
01:12:15
Speaker
Then this guy, this responsible parent jumps up, grabs his kid and says, I want to see the manager. How can you have this? This is a superhero movie. How can you make a movie like this to let kids? Oh, kids aren't supposed to be seeing this. Wait a minute. They told you that. Wait a minute. You don't watch the man being beaten to death and thrown through a plate glass window. You've watched the naked blue giant incinerate.
01:12:40
Speaker
half a dozen people, you've watched them in... With this type of cock hanging out on screen. Yeah, you've watched all of this and this did not bother you. But two people having sex and now you're upset. And to me, that encapsulated the whole thing about Watchmen, that people didn't understand what it was about, that this was not a movie for kids. Yeah.
01:13:08
Speaker
And I get a feeling that that was a lot of the problem that people had when it came out in the movie theater because still people were associating superheroes with kitty
Suitability of Watchmen for TV Series Adaptation
01:13:20
Speaker
stuff. And I think they went in expecting one type of movie and got a completely different type of movie. Because a lot of people I know that went to see that weren't comic book were completely baffled by the movie. They said, I don't get it. I didn't understand. Because when they, okay, when you say superheroes,
01:13:37
Speaker
They expect superheroes. They expect Superman flying around, or Spider-Man, or, you know, whatever. People honestly didn't know what to make of this. Well, I think part of the problem is that this is why that if you're going to do Watchmen, it has to be done as like a TV series. Because there is so much that's crammed into that comic book that you can't really tell a linear narrative story without leaving whole chunks of it out. Because the story is just not built that way.
01:14:08
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. There's. OK, in an ideal world, because I remember when I went to see doom during its original theatrical run. Now.
01:14:25
Speaker
A lot of you don't remember this because you're not young enough to remember this, but bear with me. When you went to see Doom, when it was in this original theatrical release. Oh, do you? I thought you said Doom, like the. No, I'm sorry. That's my nasal display speaking, Doom. OK. Adaptation. Right. OK. This was the movie that David Lynch did. Right. Right. Right. Frank Herbert novel. Frank Herbert novel. Right. You got a little booklet.
01:14:51
Speaker
That explained like a whole lot of the terminology. It gave you like a little background. You know, things that couldn't be explained fully in the movie. Right. In a perfect world, when you went to see Watchmen during this original theatrical run, they should have given you something like that.
01:15:14
Speaker
right some kind of supplemental material so that you could have took you know so that you know maybe before the movie starts you just go through it you think maybe that might have helped i i don't know if it would or not because people wouldn't wouldn't have read it is what i think
01:15:32
Speaker
I mean, because like, how many people do you think read that Dune booklet anyway? A lot of people did. Oh, really? Okay. Well, I mean, you know, we're talking about a time when, you know, things were done like a little bit differently. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think in this day of age, people wouldn't have read it. I mean, like even, you know, going back to when I first read Watchmen, like I skipped all the supplementary stuff. Yeah. But you went back and read it, right? I went back and read it. Yeah. This last time. But, but up until then, like I read Watchmen like three or four times and I'd always just skip the supplemental stuff.
01:16:01
Speaker
Okay, well I that's what I'm saying like you know I I can I can see that it probably wouldn't have gotten read That's why I think it could be presented a lot better if you did it as a TV series because then you could go into depth with all the characters and how they came to be because Watchmen's not really a story about
01:16:22
Speaker
a guy trying to blow up new york with a giant squid or with um... you know a nuclear blast or whatever it was as they did in the movie right it's a story about these people in their broken lives that's really what it's about well of course every well course i mean everything is not what exactly what it's supposed to be about i mean i get your point
01:16:50
Speaker
Okay, whenever people go to movies and then they tell me, they say, okay, well, they could have did this, they could have did that, they could have did that. Yeah, okay, there's a lot of things that they could have did, but we have to deal with what we have and not what, okay, well, it could have been this, it could have been that. In the best possible world that we have right now, I think this was the best job that
01:17:12
Speaker
they did at that time. Although I do agree with you 100%, I think that the way they're doing Watchmen now in its current form, they're doing the TV series.
01:17:23
Speaker
I honestly think that they should go back and do the original one in that format. Well, in fact, that's what I was thinking because when they first announced that they're going to do a Watchmen TV show and it's not going to be connected to the movie, my first thought was, oh, they're finally going to do an actual adaptation and HBO was the perfect place to do that.
01:17:45
Speaker
And then they announced, oh no, it's not gonna be, uh, it's not gonna be the adaptation of the original comic, it's gonna be a sequel to it. And I thought, my first thought was, I was disappointed.
01:17:56
Speaker
As I'm like, well, you know, I'm not one of those people who thinks they should never touch Watchmen again. I had no problem with Before Watchmen. I had no problem with Doomsday Clock. I don't think that it's one of those things that should never have a sequel, because, you know, I'm of the frame of mind that if the sequel sucks, you just ignore it. Like, in my mind, there are only two Rambo movies. There's the first one, and there's the one with him in Burma. I haven't seen the new one yet, so I can't say about that one.
01:18:24
Speaker
Thank you. I mean, you would think that by now we have gone past that bullshit baby crying about sequels. Oh, I hate sequels. I hate sequels. Yeah. Well, you know what? Live with it because
01:18:39
Speaker
Quite frankly, if a property has proven to have legs and is going to continue to make money and everything like that, they're going to make sequels, ad infinitum.
Concept of Personal Canon in Fandom
01:18:48
Speaker
Look at the recent Terminator thing. They're still making Terminator movies. They're going to keep making them. But like you said, as you so wildly said, just ignore it. There's nothing that says that you have to pay. Like me, I have my own individual cosmology in my own head as to what exists and what doesn't exist.
01:19:07
Speaker
You know, and there's certain things because I'm like you as far as I'm concerned, there's only. Well, I have to count Rambo three because. Well, I did because I did kind of come up with story for that. So, yes, the story I tell that you never heard my Rambo story. I don't think so. I'll tell it at another time. OK. Yeah. Just remind me in somewhere down the road.
01:19:35
Speaker
I'll take some time and I'll explain my Rambo story because it takes time. But yeah, I agree with you 100%. I was not opposed to, if they were gonna do Watchmen again as a series, I was all for it. Especially considering that I'm watching this series that they have on now and the guy that's doing it, Damon Lindelof. Am I pronouncing his name right? I believe so, yeah.
01:19:59
Speaker
Yeah, he gets it. Right. And that was another thing that I was kind of worried about because you you remember lost and how they were basically just they spent years telling us, oh, we have a plan for everything. We have a plan for everything. And then they get to the end. They're like, yeah, we were just throwing shit at the wall and seeing what stuck. Oh, yeah. Oh, they were making that shit up as they go. They didn't know what they were doing. They were making it up as they went along.
01:20:22
Speaker
so i was worried about that like okay well it's lindall off and he's proven that he has this kind of tendency to just kind of throw shit at the wall and and i thought if he was doing an adaptation of the original at least then you have a road map where he's supposed to go so maybe that could rain in that stuff but him doing a sequel i was a little bit worried about that and i was also kind of disinterested in the idea of seeing a watchman sequel so
01:20:47
Speaker
My whole thing was, I saw the trailer, I'm like, oh, it looks okay. I'll wait until it's complete, and then I'll probably get around to watching it at some point, just like I still haven't gotten around to watching the last three or four seasons of Game of Thrones.
01:21:02
Speaker
but then it came out and everybody's talking about it and i kept getting curious and then finally i'm just like you know what i think i'm gonna have to give this a try so after the fourth or fifth episode i binge watching all the episodes and i'm like
01:21:18
Speaker
Holy shit, he really gets it. Yeah, yeah, he gets it. He knows the words and the music. Yeah, yeah. And part of me is thinking, like, I hope Alan Moore at some point, maybe without even telling anyone, watches this show, because I think he might be surprised at how much Lindelof gets. Yeah.
01:21:40
Speaker
yeah because without a doubt and what i like about this is that it does not violate anything that we have already seen in the graphic novel or the movie no it gives an interesting twist like uh... the last episode where uh... they talk about will's past oh my god who did you know yeah uh... guys uh... this case that you know that uh... but yet is a huge revelation there uh... but
01:22:06
Speaker
Yeah, that was that whole episode. And that was the episode I thought I would be the least interested in. Because I saw the preview, and I thought, well, I'm more interested in the current story. I'm not as interested in seeing a whole episode devoted to Will. But after watching it, I'm like, holy crap, that was the best episode of the series. It was. It was. And somebody on Twitter said, and I wish I could find their name, because I love giving credit where credit is due. They said, more happens in six episodes
01:22:34
Speaker
of watchman then the six seasons of some other series yeah yeah. And that is one hundred percent true there is a there is always something happening in this thing the stories moving ahead the characters are moving ahead and there are echoes of what we seen in the movie that you know.
01:22:54
Speaker
Which is what I love. I love, you know, little echoes and callbacks and stuff like that. What they've done with Lori is absolutely phenomenal. I said this on the Facebook group, but this is the best version of Lori that's ever been seen. Like she's better than the comics version even. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know if the actress, I'm trying to remember her name. Jean Smart. Jean Smart. Jean Smart, who if you only knew her from Designing Women,
01:23:19
Speaker
You would never have guessed that she had this type of dramatic chops. Oh my god, she's brilliant in the show. Like, and her and Regina King playing off each other, it's, oh, it's awesome. It's like Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. It is, yeah. Yeah, it is. It's that good. And then you've got Jeremy Irons just, he's just so fun to watch in this show. Like, you know what, I'm gonna say it, put Jeremy Irons in every single superhero adaptation from now on.
01:23:47
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I absolutely had just happened to do it. I mean, I loved him when he was in Batman versus, uh, um, what was it? Batman versus Superman. Yeah. And justice league. Okay. And he was Alfred. Yeah. I mean, he was like the best Alfred ever. I mean, he was the best part of
Lindelof's Watchmen Series and Political Themes
01:24:08
Speaker
both those movies, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,
01:24:14
Speaker
He is having obviously so much fun in this show. Whatever the hell it is he's doing, we still aren't quite sure yet what the deal is with him or what's going on or how he got there or what's happening. But it's just so much fun to watch him having fun. I don't care. They could do this for the next three, four seasons and I'd watch it.
01:24:36
Speaker
And, you know, I would love to see them if after this is over, if Lindelof decides, you know what, I am going to go back and adapt the original story. I would love to see that. I think it would be. Oh, I think we would be the perfect way to do it. I think that if he took like, OK, like eight episodes and so I think he could do it. And I think, yeah, we would then we would probably have the definitive version of Watchmen. Yeah, absolutely. If we had it just based on what I've seen so far.
01:25:05
Speaker
In those six episodes that he did, I say, okay, he gets it. He knows what he's doing. There's a confidence to the storytelling that I like. I like when I can feel...
01:25:21
Speaker
Wait a minute, how can I put it? Confidence, and there was something else. Assurity, that's what I'm looking for. There's assurity. He knows where he's going with this. It's not like loss, like you said, because then I said, yeah, after a while, I just sat back and said, okay, well, they don't know what they're doing. They just, you know, they don't know what they're doing.
01:25:38
Speaker
But here, yeah. They know what you're doing. It is so confident. It is so much confident.
Historical Racial Injustices and Representation
01:25:44
Speaker
The balls on this show are massive. The way they handle race and politics and
01:25:52
Speaker
And people who are saying the comic wasn't about politics, yes it was. And they're taking... You can't use Cold War themes in a TV show that's set in modern times and expect it to be a modern show. It doesn't work that way. They have to take modern day equivalents. And so he's looking at things like police brutality and race relations and all this kind of stuff. And he's weaving it all together in a brilliant way.
01:26:22
Speaker
And, and I'm going to say this just flat out that he's a white guy and, and I give him.
01:26:31
Speaker
100 percent. My hat is off to him for having the first episode. First scene of the first episode that we have is about the massacre, the total massacre. Yeah. That. Yeah. I knew about you knew about. Well, actually, no, see, that's the thing. I did not know about it. You did not know about that. Oh, no. And you know me like I'm a pretty I like to keep my eye. I like to I know a lot of, you know, fucked up history that America has done. But this is something even I didn't know about.
01:26:59
Speaker
Yeah, that's why I figured that you would know about it because, you know, you're you are what I consider to be a extremely social conscious person and you know a lot about other cultures and other races. And like you say, you know a lot about the messed up stuff this country has done. But I was surprised that there was a lot of black people that I know that contacted me on Facebook and on the phone and whatever. And they were a lot of black people didn't know about this. Yeah.
01:27:27
Speaker
A lot of people did not know about this, and I give him, my hats is off to him, to bringing this horrible incident in American history and making that the focus of what is supposed to be a superhero show. Well, and you know what's now happening is that HBO is backing a comic book about the Tulsa massacre.
01:27:51
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause a lot, a lot of people did not know about that yet. But yeah, I mean, it was something I heard about, but it's only like, come to light in recent, there was another, uh, incident that was like that. Um, if you ever get the chance, it's a movie called Rosewood with Bing Reims. Okay. And, and it's set in Florida and it was about just about the same thing happened to a town in Florida. But,
01:28:19
Speaker
Those were the two most extreme examples of what happened. But out in the West, there are like in those territories like Oklahoma and places like that. Because you have to remember that after the Civil War, there was a whole bunch of black people that just went West. They formed their own towns and their cities and communities and stuff like that. This happened in a number of places. Tulsa is, of course, the most horrendous one. But this is something that happened quite regularly.
01:28:49
Speaker
we know that's it and then we talked about on you know japan on film when we did seven samurai and magnificent seven is that people have a very the people's ideas of what the old west was like after the civil war after reconstruct during reconstruction it's very different from the way that really was it wasn't as you know lily white as everybody thinks it was these towns were a lot more
01:29:13
Speaker
integrated there are people there are a lot of people have different races you had a lot more like intermixing of the races like Native American and black black and Chinese black and white and there's a lot more stuff going on that people really realize oh yeah well absolutely that's why that's why even today
01:29:32
Speaker
You will not meet a black person that will not claim that they don't have somebody Indian in their family. That's just like a black thing. Everybody, oh, yeah, well, my great grandmother was a Cherokee or something like that. But yeah, but there was a lot of that that was going on. And like I said, a lot of people don't know that. But yeah, there was a lot of black people that after the Civil War, well, they just packed up and they just went west. And they formed their own communities in their own towns. And that was it.
01:29:59
Speaker
And in these places you didn't really have the benefit of picking and choosing the people that you'd need help from. You were out in the wilderness there, you were going to accept help from anyone you could find. Exactly.
01:30:15
Speaker
Again, history is written by the winners. Right. And that's why a lot of American history got whitewashed and is only a lot of it is only coming to light now. And a lot of issues are being redressed as to how stories are being told. And I just give a lot of credit to, you know, this guy for, you know, he's presenting such a horrendous incident
01:30:43
Speaker
and framing it in the context of a modern superhero story. To me, it was a brilliant choice to make. It was a brilliant way to go. And like they did in this episode, they connected to Superman story. Yeah. I thought that was a, that was an amazing way to do that and to draw that connection. And that gives him the inspiration to become a hero. Yeah. Yeah. Bringing it right back to the first
01:31:07
Speaker
superheroes or Superman right we did in our first episode we do what do we do our first episode on Superman because ultimately it all starts with him yeah yeah and that's why you know that's why they did that that's why they had that scene in there because ultimately everything goes back to Superman plus they also bring in a character that you're very familiar with and that's Bass Reeves
01:31:29
Speaker
Ah, yeah, yeah. Which, you know, I don't know. But I think this may be the first time he's really appeared in any sort of like really mainstream media production. Am I wrong about that? I have been told that there are a couple of Basri's movies that were floating out there somewhere. I haven't seen any of them. Somebody told me it was a Basri's movie. OK, but I know they're coming out with one now. I just saw the trailer for it this morning.
01:31:58
Speaker
with Ron Perlman. They're coming out with one now, but I don't know. I'm kind of leery about that one because it looks to me like, um, what's his name is more the main character. Ron Perlman. Who? Ron Perlman, you mean? Yeah, Ron Perlman. From what I've seen of it, it looks to me like he's more like the main character in this. Okay. Ambassador, he's just like a supporting character. I don't know. I'm not making any, don't get mad at me, folks. I don't know all that much about
01:32:24
Speaker
You know, the movie, I mean, listen, more than anybody else, I would love to see a Bass Rees movie. And again, Bass Rees, Bass Rees was a character that I had never heard about him until... Wait for it. A white guy told me about it. Yeah. Yeah. Ron Fortier. He knew more about Bass Rees than I never heard of this guy. Never heard of him.
01:32:53
Speaker
until he told me. And then once I started doing my own research and doing my own digging and everything like that. And I'm glad that he's getting so much attention now because he deserves it. Yeah. I mean, this guy was like, you forget about it. You talk about guys like Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp and, you know, Doc Holliday and all those other guys. Well, this is a guy that easily was the equal of them. Right. Then you know, Western legends that you want to talk about.
01:33:16
Speaker
And same here, like, first time I heard about him was through Ron Fortier. Like, I had never heard of this guy before that. And now, you know, a lot of people, like you said, Damon Lindelof is a white guy, and he's probably telling, he's telling some black people about the Tulsa Massacre, which, like you said, a lot of people didn't know about that. There are probably still black people out there who don't know about Bass Reeves. Yeah. Yeah.
01:33:42
Speaker
Yeah, well, listen, I hear from them all the time. Every once in a while, I'll get an email from somebody. I say, oh, you know, I picked up, you know, the anthology. I read, oh, you know, I never, listen, I never heard about bad streets before. I said, listen, if you really want to thank me, buy another copy and give it to somebody else. Yeah. And now what's coming out too is you've got Yasuke, the Black Samurai.
01:34:09
Speaker
Oh, yeah, which now they're getting a movie with Chadwick Boseman is playing him. There's something again. This is another character I did not know about. Yeah, so.
01:34:22
Speaker
So yeah, it's interesting how all this new history is getting uncovered and how much we're learning about it.
Praise and Critique of Watchmen Movie Cast
01:34:28
Speaker
But going back to the movie now, what were your, like let's put aside all the, I think we've kind of talked enough about all the differences between the movie and the comic, but just approaching the movie, like what were some of your thoughts about the cast? Okay.
01:34:51
Speaker
A lot of these people I had never seen before, and I was absolutely floored by their performances. I became a fan of Jeffrey Dean Morgan for life, just from this movie. Never seen this guy before, but I say, you know what, I love him. I first knew Jeffrey Dean Morgan from Supernatural. Okay, so you play Sam and Dean's father in the first two seasons. Okay.
01:35:20
Speaker
See, this is the first, I've never, believe it or not, I've never watched Supernatural, even though it's been on my Netflix queue for like years now. I've never watched, so this is the first thing I'd seen him in. Well, you know, I think this is the last season, so after this, you might as well just binge on all 15 seasons of it. Yeah, yeah, uh-huh, yeah. I figured that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna wait till it's all over, and then I'm just gonna say, you know what, I'm just gonna take a month and do nothing but watch, you know, Supernatural.
01:35:49
Speaker
I like Jeffrey D. Morgan because he's got a nice old school film star type of quality to him. I could have easily seen him back in the 1930s starring in a movie with, I don't know, Clark Gable or Humphrey Bogart. I could have easily seen him do that. He has that type of quality. Yeah, he's got this very rugged type of, you know what? I don't know if he's ever been in a Western, and if he hasn't been, then that's a crime. He should really be in a Western.
01:36:19
Speaker
He definitely should be because he's got that kind of man's man type of aura. Right. You know, who else? Oh, Jackie. Oh, Jackie. Oh, Ellie. Oh, it's time to gather.
01:36:39
Speaker
He steals the movie, as far as I'm concerned. He steals the movie. He is never anything less than convincing in every scene that he's in. Unless I'm mistaken, he was the only one of the cast who had actually read the book before this movie had even started production.
01:36:57
Speaker
campaign to play the role of Rorschach. He really wanted this role. Well, like so many actors, he is the actual comic book geek in the real life. He goes to conventions and stuff like that. So, you know, yeah, so I yes, I'm not surprised to hear that. You know, he's never anything less than convincing. Oh, I sat through the remake of Nightmare on Elm Street just because he was playing Freddy Krueger. Yeah, me too. Exactly. Know something?
01:37:27
Speaker
That's the only reason why I sat through it. Yeah, same here. Because you know how much I love Nightmare on Elm Street. I had no interest in seeing a remake, but when I heard he was playing Freddy Krueger, I said, OK, well, for him, yeah, I'm going to watch it. Yeah. Then there's Patrick Wilson, who plays Night Owl. Patrick Wilson was a good choice because Night Owl is kind of like, OK, let's face it, he's supposed to be like kind of bland. Yeah.
01:37:54
Speaker
And Patrick Wilson can play bland, he's not a bland guy. Okay, I've seen him be more dynamic in other roles, but he knows how to play bland when he has to. Aquaman, he was great as Ocean Master. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, totally different role. Totally different type of energy and dynamic all together. And in the Insidious movies and the Conjuring movies, he was great in those too.
01:38:20
Speaker
Okay, well I've never seen those. Oh, you should definitely check them out. They're really good. Really? The first two Conjuring, I think there are only two Conjuring movies, and then the first three Insidious, or the first two Insidious movies. Okay, well you know what, based on your recommendation, I'll check them out. Because I know the first Conjuring, and I'm not sure about the second one, but definitely the first, and the first two Insidious movies, they were all directed by James Wan, who also did Aquaman.
01:38:49
Speaker
Oh, okay. Well, now in that case, yeah, I definitely got to check it out because that movie was totally off the chain. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and that's one of the reasons I was so excited when he was announced for Aquaman because I'd seen these horror movies he'd done and he's, he's got a great eye. He's a great director. Um,
01:39:10
Speaker
Yeah, he did. I think he did the second one. He didn't or wait. No, he didn't do the first one. You're right. Yeah, he did the first one. Yeah, he did it for which I like and and you know me I'm I'm kind of very hard on horror movies because but that's all I like the first one. Okay. See, I didn't really like the first one. I did like the second one and I don't think I watched any after that.
01:39:31
Speaker
OK, well, I've watched like three or four of them after that, and I couldn't make heads of tails out of it. Seriously, they lost me. They just went up their own ass with their I mean, with their continuity and everything like that. Right. I I don't see how people keep track of that stuff. But oh, who else were we talking about? Carla Gugino. Oh, yeah, she plays the original Silk Spectre. Now,
01:39:58
Speaker
She does a wonderful job considering that she has to act through the worst old lady makeup I've ever seen in my life. Although, if you want the worst makeup in that movie, or basically of all time, I think it's got to be Richard Dixon. Yeah, yeah, that, yeah, whoever... I mean...
01:40:17
Speaker
The only way that I can figure that they let that makeup pass is that he's supposed to deliberately look artificial and cartoony. Well, they excelled at it that way. God, yeah. Oh, my God. You don't look like a real person at all, which maybe is the point. I don't know. Maybe that was the point of it. But yeah, that was. Yeah, that was some terrible makeup. But as always, she's one of my favorite actresses and
01:40:46
Speaker
she makes the character sleazy yet sympathetic i think that's that's kind of the issue like she does a great job with what she's given but i've got a problem with what she was given because egg like the whole thing about sally jupiter in the comic is and i know i said we're gonna take it away from the comparisons but i just want to get this out but you know it's that sally jupiter is you know this kind of tragic figure who's kind of burnt out and you do feel like a lot of
01:41:14
Speaker
pity for her. Whereas in the movie, I don't really feel that same sense of pity for Carla Gugino because she's just very sharp. She's almost too sharp, I think.
Discomfort with Portrayal of Sexual Violence in Watchmen
01:41:25
Speaker
Yeah. She's very calculating. She's very manipulative. Right. And I really do have kind of a problem
01:41:33
Speaker
with that whole, well I got a problem with rape scenes anyway. I mean for a variety of reasons. And that's kind of a problem with, that's one criticism that you can have of pretty much all Alan Moore's work is that
01:41:46
Speaker
Dude loves his rape scenes. Yeah. And, you know, I remember a few years ago when they were doing Before Watchmen and he was complaining about how nobody ever did a sequel to Moby Dick. And I was thinking, well, this is the guy who did League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and took, like, Cinderella and Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and put him in a porno comic. And then I thought to myself, I'm like, you know, the only reason nobody's done a sequel to Moby Dick is because Alan Moore hasn't found a realistic way for someone to rape a whale.
01:42:16
Speaker
And in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, didn't he have the Invisible Man running around raping? Yeah, the Invisible Man was running around raping people and then... He was going around to girls' schools and raping the whole school. And then Mr. Hyde raped the Invisible Man. Some guys like rape. What can I tell you? Apparently, you know. But...
01:42:39
Speaker
In the movie, there is the hint that she was a willing participant. Yeah. In the attempted, you know, rape. Which is also another disturbing addition by Snyder. And then, of course, later on,
01:42:57
Speaker
Lori finds out that, you know, apparently her mother and, you know, she hooked up with the comedian and she's their daughter. Right. You know, so which also adds another disturbing layer on an already disturbing situation that, you know, so, hey, so, but it is what it is. But yeah, but she's one of my favorite actresses. I love her and anything as well as being a flat out gorgeous woman. Period. Um,
01:43:27
Speaker
Who else? I'm trying to think of any performance that I really did. Who did Dr. Manhattan? Oh, he was good. Yeah, he was good. You know what? It couldn't have been easy doing that role because he has a play so much. He only has a little short bit where they show how he became Dr. Manhattan. Right. Where he's human and he gets to act as a human being because for most of the movie, he's this big
01:43:57
Speaker
glowing blue guy, you know, so it couldn't have been easy doing that. But you know what? I think that a lot of these actors now, they have found a whole new style of acting simply because so much of movies now are dependent on CGI. Yeah. And stuff like that. So it's a whole new style of acting that they've had to, uh, um,
01:44:22
Speaker
involved yet and doctor manhattan's whole thing is that he's supposed to be like really distant and separated i think likes some of this might be down to cgi but just like his facial expressions he's able to stay like almost completely neutral no matter what's going on around him and i thought he did i thought he did a really good job like i think him and
01:44:43
Speaker
Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Jackie Earl Haley are probably like the three best performances in this movie. And I think probably the closest to what we see in the comic book, because Wilson does a good job as Dryberg, but he's not really the kind of sad sack that Dryberg is supposed to be.
01:45:03
Speaker
Right, yeah. He's a little bit too good looking. A little bit too good looking, a little bit too confident. And we got that ridiculous way they showed the sex scene with the Hallelujah song playing over
Critiques of Snyder's Adaptation Choices
01:45:15
Speaker
it. Like it was just... Oh my God. Didn't they have the orgasm, the lights up the sky, literally? Which to be fair was in the comic, but the way that Snyder films it is it's just like this very like slow motion. It's putting a lot of emphasis on it. And it's just, you're taking the wrong idea and you just make it look cheesy after that.
01:45:33
Speaker
But again, like I said, and we, there was some other movie that we were talking about, there's some scenes that you can have in a comic book and it works. But when you've seen the live at, you know, it's just, cause I remember that when we went to see it and she hits the flame throw and it goes like that. I mean, people laughed. Yeah.
01:45:53
Speaker
Because it was like, okay, come on. I mean, it's a little bit, I mean, yeah, but if you read the comic book panel, you guys like kind of just go over it. Right. It's kind of like the famous scene, the famous sex scene from Starranco's Nick Fury.
01:46:10
Speaker
Yeah. Where they, it's just like these series of images and it works because it's, it's static. So you can show that in quick succession like that. And it tells you everything that's going on without showing you, but you can't really do that in a movie. Exactly. You know, but yeah, and then in order to make his point even more, he cuts to a scene where the people there on the street, they look up and they see, you know, this valid shaped,
01:46:40
Speaker
And people look at this and say, what the hell is that? You know? And it's shaped like a phallus. You know? I don't know who. Huh? What? You know? I said, OK, dude, we get it. Yeah, yeah. It was good. It was good for the bowl for them. We got it. Oh, my lord. And then I guess the last two. So there's Mel and Ackerman who played Lori. I like her.
01:47:09
Speaker
I'm trying to think of what else she's been in. Like, cause I can't, I know I've heard her name before and I can't think of anything else I've seen her in. Um, she's been in a couple of movies. I know she's never been in anything as high profile as this though. I know. I remember seeing her some, she died her hair blonde and she was in a couple of comedies. She's been a couple of TV series. I mean, she's still around. She's still acting, but this was like her, this was like her first major role.
01:47:38
Speaker
And she's never really been in anything as high profile as this. Oh, I see shit on that new show, Dollface, that Hulu keeps recommending to me. So maybe I should check that out. Yeah. No, not good? I don't know. I don't have Hulu. Oh, OK. My wife watches Hulu, but I refuse to watch any streaming service where I'm paying you and I still get commercials.
01:48:06
Speaker
Oh, I paid the higher tier so I don't get the commercials. Well, you're rich. Yeah, right. She had a small part in How I Met Your Mother, but I think that's the only thing in here that I've ever seen her in besides Watchmen. Okay. I know I saw her in one movie with
01:48:27
Speaker
That chick from The Good Place, what's her name? She was in some she was in some comedy with Kristen Bell, I remember. Oh, OK. She was she was blonde in that one, though. She had died of hair blonde. Oh, she was in Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. Oh, really? Yes. And Leanne, who's probably one of the small characters that appears, she was also in was it 27 dresses? Was that it? Hmm.
01:48:56
Speaker
Who was in that one? I think I saw that one. I think that was the one with, I think it was Catherine Heigl was in that, that was one of her movies. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, then I saw it, right. That was like the only successful movie Catherine Heigl was in before she... No, she was in Knocked Up, and then after that, she got too full of herself.
01:49:18
Speaker
who Catherine, yeah, yeah, she made the mistake of starting to believe her own press. Right, yeah. And you know what, you don't piss off Shonda Rhimes. No, no, no, you don't do that. Otherwise you end up doing dog food commercials. No lie, which is the last thing I saw Catherine Heigl doing. Seriously, she was doing dog food commercials. Oh, wow.
01:49:40
Speaker
Uh, so, I mean, like, Mel and Ackerman, like, she... I think a lot of it is just due to the way the role was written, because, you know, like I said, they took a lot of Laurie's backstory out of the, of the movie. It wasn't in the movie that we find in the comics, so it's, it's kind of hard to sympathize with her character because of that. And then, um, and then last is Matthew Goode as, uh, Ozzy Mandayas.
01:50:11
Speaker
You know what? Here's a guy who's supposed to be the pivotal character of the whole piece because he's the mastermind behind the whole plot. Right. So this guy is supposed to be, like you said, that he's supposed to be very charismatic, very confident, you know, like a Robert Redford or like a Brad Pitt. Yeah.
01:50:35
Speaker
But in the movie, you know, he comes off as very stiff, very cold, very smarmy. Like he. Yeah, he's he's central. He's a he's a central casting villain. So when you see him, like, you know that he's going to be the villain. Right. Right. He's supposed to be the guy that you look at. Like, remember, OK, going back to a better movie, Captain America, the Winter Soldier.
01:51:00
Speaker
Yeah. You didn't know Robert Redford was the bad guy until he revealed he was the bad guy. Right, right. Or also taking it to Iron Man, you had Jeff Bridges in the first Iron Man movie. Jeff Bridges, right, again. Okay, you didn't know he was the bad guy.
01:51:16
Speaker
until he was bad they use ocean he's the big guy which is what you're supposed to do but the way this guy plays i was a man is yeah you know right from the start yeah okay okay yeah this cat is sketchy one of the ways they show this is when they talk about his origin story because in the comics right it's just in his narration he presents it but in the show in the movie uh... he tells it when he's talking to these uh... oil company executives and
01:51:45
Speaker
It gives a completely different interpretation, because now it seems like he's bragging instead of the reader finding out about his background. I can see that. OK. Now I'm replaying the scene in my head. Yeah. I remember, because one of the guys is going to be Lee Iacocca that he's talking to. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I like the concept of the character.
01:52:15
Speaker
especially he gets one of the best bad guy scenes where he's explaining his master plot.
01:52:23
Speaker
And then Rorschach and Nite Alice said, OK, well, we're going to stop you. And he says, stop me. He said, what do you think? I was going to tell you my plan to stop. He said, I did that shit 30 minutes ago. I love that because it turns the whole thing on his head. Because of course, I'm going to tell you my world conquering scheme when there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. You know, this isn't a James Bond movie. I'm going to give you 30 minutes to stop. No, I did that shit 30 minutes ago. Which is the problem because.
01:52:53
Speaker
Matthew Goode comes off as a James Bond villain. Basically, he does. Instead of coming off as the type of Messiah that he thinks he is, he thinks he's the savior of mankind. But yeah, he comes off as more like a James Bond villain. And now he contrasts him with Jeremy Irons. Even though Jeremy Irons is playing a clearly deranged version of Adrian, he's still got that charisma.
01:53:22
Speaker
Right, exactly. And you know what? So much depends on a good villain having charisma. At least that's what I think. Those are the ones that we remember, the ones that have charisma, the ones that, you know, even though they're doing horrendous, monstrous things, you're saying, damn, yeah, but he's such a nice guy, though. How can he do it? The guy in this movie, yeah, he comes, I mean,
01:53:50
Speaker
And it goes back to some of us that you were saying too, that he doesn't look right. But I think that they did that to throw you off. So you wouldn't think if you had never read the graphic novel, you wouldn't think he was the one that kills a comedian. That could be it too. That's why he's so thin and puny looking.
01:54:07
Speaker
Right, but I think that actually has more to do with, like I said, the stuff I brought up before about Snyder reading too much into the line from the comic about Rorschach thinking he's gay.
01:54:22
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I mean, because when you factor that in with the Batman and Robin style costume and like the Studio 54 shot, the boys thing on the computer, like it all seems like they're trying really hard to make you say like, this guy's gay and he's evil. Oh, I got it. Yeah. Good point. Which seems like, again, Zack Snyder's got some deep seated homophobia issues that I think you should probably see a psychiatrist about.
01:54:50
Speaker
Well, he's got a lot of issues that I think that he should see. Although, I sympathize with the guy because he had a horrendous loss that nobody should suffer. And then he had to go through all that shit that people was thrown at him online.
01:55:05
Speaker
but people are dicks and what are you gonna do? I do wish him well in his future career because the man is an extraordinarily talented filmmaker. Yes. He just needs to do a better job of picking projects. His Dawn of the Dead remake was great.
01:55:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And you know what? That's probably still his best movie. I think so. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, that's his best movie. And I saw Sucker Punch. And as I said in my review that, you know what, that was a movie. He should have put that script on the shelf and waited.
01:55:38
Speaker
About another 10 or 15 years once he built up the creative muscle to write off that type of storytelling Because it was a very ambitious thing. He was trying to do not that I knock him I will always give props to somebody that tries to
01:55:53
Speaker
to be a little bit more ambitious and maybe reach for something that's a little bit out of their reach instead of playing it safe. You know, because I think that he had something there with sucker punch, but he didn't have enough creative muscle to, you know, pull it off. But I mean, he's, I mean, he's got an extraordinary eye for detail.
01:56:18
Speaker
He knows how to work with actors. He knows how to get great performances out of actors. And, you know, he's an important filmmaker. And I do believe that with all of its flaws, and it does have flaws, people. You know, I love the movie, Scott Flaws, but I will always, if somebody ever says to me, give me a list of what superhero movies I should see, Watchmen is always gonna be in the top 10.
Evaluation of Watchmen Movie Ending Changes
01:56:47
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, see, I definitely would not put it on that list for the reasons we talked about today. But one other thing to talk about with this movie is the way they change, the biggest change they made to the movie, and that's the ending, where instead of this giant squid they have, he recreates, he makes it look like Dr. Manhattan committed all these attacks. What were some of your thoughts about the change in that? You know what? I, okay.
01:57:17
Speaker
I understood why they did it, because the whole squid thing, let's face it, that would have been too complicated to explain. And I think it's tough to explain the squid thing without having the benefit of all the background stuff, because in the comic, there's so much in the background that's building up to it. And again, if they were doing, this is why it should be a miniseries, because if they were doing this over the course of 10 to 12 episodes, they can see that stuff into the background. You can't really do that as convincingly with the movie.
01:57:46
Speaker
Yeah. You'd have time to explain the squid. Yeah. You know, but in the context of the movie, no, people would have been more confused than they already were. A squid? What? But the whole notion of him manipulating events to make Dr. Manhattan look like the bad guy and get him off earth. And that's how the nations of the world
01:58:10
Speaker
I said, you know something? That was pretty damn clever. Me, I know people that will die on that hill that, oh, he shouldn't have changed that day. If he was going to change that thing, he should never did the movie. But I understand, but I understand why he did it. And for me, it works.
01:58:27
Speaker
You know what, when I first saw the movie, I thought it worked really well. This last time, I'm watching, and I still don't think the squid would have worked as well, so I still think there's something that they had to change with that. But I also, the more I think about the Dr. Manhattan thing is, the more it's still just, something's just not clicking, whereas I don't see why the Soviet Union wouldn't just turn around and blame it on the US. Because even though it attacked the US as well,
01:58:55
Speaker
you know, Dr. Manhattan was still a creation of the US. The US took advantage of it. So I still think there'd be a lot of animosity to work through that's not there when you have an alien invasion. So, so while I get it, I think it does create some story problems, so it doesn't quite work. But I also see why the squid wouldn't have worked either. Yeah, yeah. I mean, listen, you got to go with the squid or you got to go with Dr. Manhattan and and
01:59:23
Speaker
I think it was clever of them that they sat down and, and actually, yeah, because you know what, it would have been an easy way. Okay. Um, first of all, you couldn't have the U S and Soviet Union go to war. You couldn't have it because then now everybody would say, well, you're setting it up for a sequel because you know, well, what are you going to, I mean, okay, well the world ends. Yeah. Is that it? You know, so they had to figure out something.
01:59:54
Speaker
that would be in the spirit of the original story. And I think that with the Dr. Manhattan solution, that's what they did. They were in the spirit, cause they had to end up with the United States and the Soviet Union not going to war and the world uniting. Right. It's a, it's a solution. It's an imperfect solution, but it solves the problem. It says Dr. Manhattan is like the only real super being that's on the planet. Well, if you're going to, okay, if you want to change the planet,
02:00:24
Speaker
This is what you do. You get rid of the guy that, that indeed did change the planet. Yeah. Get rid of him. And then humanity has nothing to rely on except itself. It can't rely on Dr. Manhattan anymore. Right. So yeah, I mean, I can see it, but it's just, they were, they were definitely stuck between a rock and a hard place with that ending. You know, I sympathize with them. I'm not sure if
02:00:50
Speaker
They could have done something better, even though I think I would have liked to see something done better with it. But it is what it is, and it mostly works. There are some questions left hanging at the end, but it mostly does the job.
02:01:09
Speaker
I'm pretty sure, because they keep mentioning him throughout the TV series, I'm pretty sure that at some point, sooner or later, they are going to address the Dr. Manhattan issue, because apparently he's still up there on Mars, doing God knows what. I think there's one theory that he's actually on Earth, and that one of the theories is that he's actually Angela's husband.
02:01:34
Speaker
Hmm, that's interesting. Yeah, because they had that whole conversation about well Couldn't he change the color of his skin and you know pretend that he was a human being? How come he couldn't do that? You know, yeah Cal is reading the book about the Tulsa riots Right So, yeah, yeah a lot of different but you know, he could also be something he could be the he could be lube man the guy who Was wearing that bodysuit and squirts himself and move it slides into the sewer This shit was so funny
02:02:03
Speaker
You know what? I kind of hope they never explain that guy. Yeah. You know, so if they never explain Lou, man, I'll be just as happy for the expression. What the fuck? You know, I'm half convinced like that wasn't even planned. Like they didn't tell Regina King anything about this. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Right. Because, you know, the expression of her face is like.
02:02:29
Speaker
I mean, if she was acting, she is a damn good actress. That was damn good. But she looked just as surprised as I felt. Because I really was not expecting that guy to do that. So if they never explained who Luke man was, then she'd just have to show up every couple of episodes to do that. Do you remember how in Buffy and Angel, like in the end credits, they had the cartoon vampire crossing the screen going grr, r.
02:02:57
Speaker
They should just end every episode with just like lube man skating across the screen.
02:03:05
Speaker
Yeah, oh, man. That thing was hilarious. I think I must have laughed for about 10 minutes behind that, because I had DVR'd the episode. And I paused it, and I re-ran it, and I paused it. I re-ran it again, and I was cracking up every time I re-ran it, just from the expression on Regina King's face. And I'm with you. I'm how convinced. They didn't tell us exactly what we wanted. They told us something, but they didn't tell exactly what they were going to do. And they actually got somebody to actually do that. Yeah.
02:03:36
Speaker
That show was so amazing. It's doing a great job of really bringing the story into the modern age. I never thought a sequel to Watchmen could be this rewarding. I never thought that they would do a sequel, period.
02:03:57
Speaker
And if they did do one, I did not think they were going to do it this well. They're 100% committed to this is a sequel to the comic book, and they're not doing any hand holding in this at all. Like, I mean, the first episode, they've got a squid rain.
02:04:15
Speaker
Yeah. And then in the, I think it was in the, was it the last one or the one before that when they had, um, they actually showed the squid on screen. And like, not even the comic showed the squid in full detail like that. When they did the origin of Looking Glass. Yes. Yeah. So it was the fifth episode. Yeah. Cause he was in New Jersey when the squid dropped. Right. Right.
02:04:37
Speaker
And that's what they did. Yeah. And yeah, they and yeah, they actually showed the squid. You know, I said, oh, shit. I said, no, that's cool. I never thought they would undo that. But yeah, they showed the squid. Thank goodness. Yeah. You know, I've seen so many people asking online like, well, wait, what's all this? I thought this was a sequel to the movie. Like, no, it's not a sequel to the movie. Go buy the book. They were very clear, although they although there are some things that they mentioned.
02:05:04
Speaker
that did happen in the movie, but yeah, they're very committed that this is a sequel to the original graphic novel. Not the movie, but there are some things in there, you know.
02:05:15
Speaker
and it's also doing uh... like you know we're talking about the supplemental stuff in the comics they've got supplemental stuff for the t.v. show too uh... they've got uh... what's the name uh... agent p who's uh... working with lori he's um... he's got his own like uh... they're putting like his files in his reports and also like his reviews of the uh... uh... american hero story there are being put up online supplementary stuff all really i don't know about that okay i have to check that out
02:05:46
Speaker
Um, but yeah, uh, that I think that about brings us to the end of Watchmen. Uh, do you have any final things you wanted to say about it? Uh, only that like all of the movies that we've been doing up till now, we've been doing, we said when we started out, we were going to do movies that were what we considered to be like the touchstones movies that, uh,
02:06:11
Speaker
changed the game. And this was a movie that indeed changed the game because just like the graphic novel, this was a mature, intelligent, adult superhero movie that explored other things. It was not about people in costumes just going out and beaming up on other people in costumes. It's a movie that actually does try to say something about society and
02:06:39
Speaker
are the psychology of damaged people who think they're changing the world for the better. Because I think that there is something inherently noble in people who try to do things to uplift the planet and other people and then they fail through their own flaws.
02:07:00
Speaker
You know, and these are people who do try for the most part, you know, most of them do try to do their best. But, you know, it just doesn't work out that way. And yeah, this is a movie that says to us, you know what, we are better off in the real world.
02:07:19
Speaker
looking to ourselves to handle our own problems and not for, you know, blue skin gods or people in costumes to keep us safe. You know, we can keep ourselves safe. We can take care of our planet. We can take care of each other. We don't need people in costume to do it for us. So.
02:07:37
Speaker
I mostly agree with you, although I'd quibble on the intel. I think most of what she said applies more to the comic. I probably wouldn't go as far as using those same words described, the movie, but I can agree with most of what you're saying there. Okay, that's good enough for me.
02:07:56
Speaker
I don't hate this movie. I know some people who love Watchmen the comic who absolutely despise everything about the movie. I think it's entertaining. It's very watchable. But when I'm thinking about
02:08:17
Speaker
It's kind of like when we're talking about, you know, Constantine, right, with Keanu Reeves. Very entertaining movie, a lot of fun to watch, but it's not a Hellblazer movie. I kind of get the same thing about Watchmen, where it's entertaining, it can be fun to watch, it's very stylish, but it's not Watchmen for me. When I try to think of it as an adaptation of Watchmen, it just, I get that hollow feeling that I don't get when I watch the TV show.
02:08:46
Speaker
right yeah well yeah well i mean yeah i mean definitely the tv show has got something there that the movie doesn't well i think one of the things is that the tv show is trying to recreate the spirit of the comic book whereas the movie was trying to recreate the panels of the comic book which yeah and i watched the ultimate cut which had the black freighter segments edited into the movie
02:09:13
Speaker
And it kind of illustrates what's wrong with Snyder's approach and why it doesn't quite work, because Snyder's just putting these images up on the screen. But he's kind of missing the point of why the Black Freighter segments are there in the first place. Yeah, like you said, he's more interested in recreating the look of the graphic novel. Because, yeah, there are some panels
02:09:42
Speaker
that are recreated exactly in this movie. But that isn't what the point of adaption should be, to just recreate everything exactly as it was. But yeah, this movie is Zack Snyder's vision of what Watchmen is, whereas the TV series, that's Damon Lindelhoff,
02:10:10
Speaker
enhancing Alan Moore's vision of what the original source material was. I think one of the biggest weaknesses that Zack Snyder has when he's approaching adaptations is that he's more concerned with the look and he never asked the question why.
02:10:29
Speaker
you know you never asked for it why did freight miller drop that and in this way he never asked why did they get ends rendered this scene this way and i think that that weakness is kind of white is adaptations of the superhero properties haven't really worked because it's one thing if you're doing you know three hundred and i never read three hundred the graphic novel so i can't sit speak much to how well are he did that they're not but
02:10:57
Speaker
But it is visually, he does a lot of what Robert Rodriguez did with Sin City, where he's basically putting the panels up on the screen. But I think that kind of approach works a little bit more with Sin City, maybe with 300 as well. With Watchmen, with these other characters, you need to ask the question, why are they doing it this way? Yeah, yeah. I see where you're going. Yeah, good point.
02:11:26
Speaker
All right, so now that we're pretty much done talking about Watchmen, next movie is your pick. So what are we gonna be watching next? Okay, I'm gonna see if I can find it. If I can find it, I'm pretty sure I can find it on YouTube or maybe it'll be on Amazon Prime.
02:11:44
Speaker
But what I would like to do is go back to the good old days of TV. The last movie I picked was Doctor Strange. And what I want to do next is a movie that a lot of people, I think through my humble efforts, have come around to saying, you know what? It's not that bad. And I'm talking about the David Hasselhoff version of Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. OK.
02:12:14
Speaker
never seen this when it was our first when it first aired on tv way long ago um... and yeah you know what i gotta say that i remember most of it is just you know standard
02:12:28
Speaker
you know, low budget TV stuff, but Hasselhoff, surprisingly, I remember doing a really good job as Fury. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's one of the things that, you know, like I said, I'm going to see if I can find it and if I can find it. And because it's been a while since I've seen it and I used to have it on DVD, I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened. A lot of my shit is missing for some reason, because I had it on DVD. I can't find the DVD.
02:12:55
Speaker
But yeah, David Hasselhoff, his performance, I don't want to go into it. I want to say before this, but.
02:13:02
Speaker
If you've read the Jim Starranco, Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., that's definitely who David House is playing. And you know, I haven't seen the movie since I read Starranco's Fury. So I'm kind of looking forward to going back and seeing how it compares now that I know more
Future Plans and Listener Engagement
02:13:19
Speaker
about the character. Because when I watched the movie, like I did not know a whole lot about Nick Fury because I'd only ever seen him as a supporting character and stuff in comics. I'd never really seen any of his solo stuff at that time. Right.
02:13:33
Speaker
Well, for somebody like me that grew up reading, as a matter of fact, I have, I am on my third copy of the trade paperback of the Staranko, Nick Fury, because I read and reread it so much that pages fall out. Maybe you should just buy a different version at this point.
02:13:52
Speaker
That's how, no, I gotta hold it in my hand. I gotta cradle it. I gotta rock it to sleep at night. Okay, I think some of that allergy medicine's kinda going to your head a little bit now, because you're getting a little bit too intimate with Strankos Fury. It's just one of my all-time favorite. One of my all-time favorite. If not, no, actually my favorite is like tumor Dracula. Okay.
02:14:22
Speaker
the Gene Colon, Marv Wolfman, that and Howard the Duck. And then after that, probably Nick Fury, Agent of the Shield.
02:14:32
Speaker
All right, so that about wraps it up for us. You can head on over to the Facebook group, Superhero Cinephiles. You know what, we might as well have a discussion about Watchmen, because I think it might be one of the most controversial superhero movies ever made. So, pop on over and let us know what you think about it, what you think about this, if you can tell us to go to hell, you can tell us that you agree with us, whatever you like.
02:15:00
Speaker
And mainly to discuss this, we're still going to do the Watchmen TV episode once the season is over, right? Yeah. Eventually, after the series is over, we'll sit down and we'll talk in depth about the first season and see how now Doll stacks up.
02:15:20
Speaker
Yeah, because a couple of people had asked me when I said that we were going to do this. You said, oh, you're going to talk about TV series? Well, I said, well, of course we're going to mention it probably. I said, but we're going to try to wait until the season is over and we're going to save everything for one episode where we can really go into detail and talk about just the series. Absolutely, yeah. That's just the whole thing, yeah.
02:15:41
Speaker
All right, so head on over to the website, drop us a review, superherosinafiles.com. Also, I've now set up a Patreon page for us, so, you know, you can kick us- Oh, hi. Yeah, I mean, we don't have any perks or anything on there yet, but, you know, I just threw it up there. But, you know, if you like the show, if you like what you're listening to, then, you know, chip in a dollar or something here because- Give us money. Yeah.
02:16:06
Speaker
Because that helps pay for the hosting of the show and for other stuff we need to put it together. So anything you can chip in, just please do. And you can find all that on the website. Perry is going to be polite about it, but I'm a greedy capitalist. Give us money. There we go. There we go, yeah.
02:16:28
Speaker
Thanks so much, and also SuperCinemapod on Twitter. And that's all from us. Thanks, and next time we'll be talking about Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. OK, thank you, folks. Goodnight, God bless. Oh, and I hope you all guys had a happy Thanksgiving. Yes. All right, thank you. Bye.
02:17:13
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Superhero Cinephiles Podcast. If you have any questions or comments about this or any other episode, or if you have a superhero movie or TV show you'd like us to cover in a future episode, you can email us at superheroescinephiles at gmail.com. Or you can also visit us on the web at superheroescinephiles.com.
02:17:33
Speaker
If you like what you hear, leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Each review helps us reach more potential listeners. You can also support the show by renting or purchasing the movies discussed, or by picking up our books, all of which can be accessed through the website, as well as find links to our social media presences. The theme music for this show is a shortened version of Superhero Showdown, a royalty-free piece of music, courtesy of Hezlionstudios.com.