Watchmen Trailer

[obonicus]

New Watchmen trailer online.

So it's going to be a scene-by-scene recreation of the comic, like 300? Long movie. I did laugh at Pruit Igoe playing as the soundtrack, though.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

So it's going to be a scene-by-scene recreation of the comic, like 300? Long movie. I did laugh at Pruit Igoe playing as the soundtrack, though.

if you read the article a little further upstream, the director keeps being asked to make the film shorter, and he keeps saying he can't cut stuff out of it. So hopefully, yes, it's going to be as near as scene-by-scene as possible, though I believe the comic-within-a-comic story is being cut out and put together as a short to be part of the DVD extras.

The director is a big fan, and one of the reasons he lobbied to get the project is because he was genuinely fearful of another studio or director screwing up a movie that he wanted to be great. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Watchmen might end up being the one Alan Moore translation that actually works on the big screen.

 

[PARANOiA]

Preview screening indicated

Spoiler

the ended has now changed. Instead of a "hideous monster" the master plan is detonating nuclear weapons in many major cities. That kind of defeats the point of the book in my mind, since it brings the whole exercise down to your stock-standard terrorism rather than some sort of unifying act.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Preview screening indicated

Spoiler

the ended has now changed. Instead of a "hideous monster" the master plan is detonating nuclear weapons in many major cities. That kind of defeats the point of the book in my mind, since it brings the whole exercise down to your stock-standard terrorism rather than some sort of unifying act.

That's not so good.

Spoiler

The whole point of the fake monster was to prevent a nuclear war and have all humans join together to fight against the fabricated alien threat. A load of nukes from an earth-based threat would simply encourage humanity to continue to war against itself - exactly the opposite of what Ozymandius intends.

 

[holsty101]

This report from a (the same?) preview/Q&A went up on AICN a few days ago, good read though maybe a bit spoilerific if you're not aware of the original ending, even with that change I'm still hopeful that the feeling of the comic remains intact.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Preview screening indicated

Spoiler

the ended has now changed. Instead of a "hideous monster" the master plan is detonating nuclear weapons in many major cities. That kind of defeats the point of the book in my mind, since it brings the whole exercise down to your stock-standard terrorism rather than some sort of unifying act.

Wow, that totally sucks.

 

[Daozang]

Since I'm one of those few people that hated 300 the movie (loved the comic), I'm not expecting a lot from this one...

 

[suryad]

Since I'm one of those few people that hated 300 the movie (loved the comic), I'm not expecting a lot from this one...

TBH the trailer still does nothing for me.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Open letter from Watchmen producer:

From my point of view, the flashpoint of this dispute, came in late spring of 2005. Both Fox and Warner Brothers were offered the chance to make Watchmen. They were submitted the same package, at the same time. It included a cover letter describing the project and its history, budget information, a screenplay, the graphic novel, and it made mention that a top director was involved.
And it's at this point, where the response from both parties could not have been more radically different.
The response we got from Fox was a flat "pass." That's it. An internal Fox email documents that executives there felt the script was one of the most unintelligible pieces of shit they had read in years. Conversely, Warner Brothers called us after having read the script and said they were interested in the movie - yes, they were unsure of the screenplay, and had many questions, but wanted to set a meeting to discuss the project, which they promptly did. Did anyone at Fox ask to meet on the movie? No. Did anyone at Fox express any interest in the movie? No. Express even the slightest interest in the movie? Or the graphic novel? No.

Now here's the part that has to be fully appreciated, if for nothing more than providing insight into producing movies in Hollywood: The Watchmen script was way above the norm in length, near 150 pages, meaning the film could clock in at close to 3 hours, the movie would not only be R rated but a hard R - for graphic violence and explicit sex - would feature no stars, and had a budget north of $100M. We also asked Warner Brothers to support an additional 1 to 1.5 hours of content incurring additional cost that would tie in with the movie but only be featured in DVD iterations of the film. Warners supported the whole package and I cannot begin to emphasize how ballsy and unprecedented a move this was on the part of a major Hollywood studio. Unheard of. And would another studio in Hollywood, let alone a studio that didn't show one shred of interest in the movie, not one, have taken such a risk? Would they ever have made such a commitment, a commitment to a film that defied all conventional wisdom?
Only the executives at Fox can answer that question. But if they were to be honest, their answer would have to be "No."
Shouldn't Warner Brothers be entitled to the spoils - if any -- of the risk they took in supporting and making Watchmen? Should Fox have any claim on something they could have had but chose to neither support nor show any interest in?

Look at it another way... One reason the movie was made was because Warner Brothers spent the time, effort and money to engage with and develop the project. If Watchmen was at Fox the decision to make the movie would never have been made because there was no interest in moving forward with the project.
Does a film studio have the right to stand in the way of an artistic endeavor and determine that it shouldn't exist? If the project had been sequestered at Fox, if Fox had any say in the matter, Watchmen simply wouldn't exist today, and there would be no film for Fox to lay claim on. It seems beyond cynical for the studio to claim ownership at this point.