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theninjabadger wrote:Never read the comic but i like the film
It's basically Alan Moore's epic parable decrying Thatcher.
Read it. It is good.
you should try out the comic "the boyz" az, its a good one, and there is some very overt takes on thatcher in it as well. Its a long series, by garth ennis so not for the squeamish, about a world where super powers are fairly common and follows the story of a group whos job it is to keep the super humans in check (since lots of them are bad, and even the good ones tend to cause lots of collateral damage)
as for the V movie, it was good, but OFC the comic was better.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/06/02 19:46:47
MeanGreenStompa wrote:I really liked V, Watchmen, From Hell and I totally hated League.
Moore gets wheeled out from his snake worshipping and dubious child porn fairy tale pollution and asked about them, he says 'It's terrible' without actually watching the film and then loyal nerds say 'well, if the maestro does not like it, it is an affront!' and label the film rubbish...
But if you watch V, Watchmen and From Hell, without knowing the graphic novels, as some here have said, they are darn good movies.
I'm in the same boat. I've not read the comics/novels, but absolutely loved the Watchmen and V for Vendetta films.
"It is the great irony of the Legiones Astartes: engineered to kill to achieve a victory of peace that they can then be no part of." - Roboute Guilliman
"As I recall, your face was tortured. Imagine that - the Master of the Wolves, his ferocity twisted into grief. And yet you still carried out your duty. You always did what was asked of you. So loyal. So tenacious. Truly you were the attack dog of the Emperor. You took no pleasure in what you did. I knew that then, and I know it now. But all things change, my brother. I'm not the same as I was, and you're... well, let us not mention where you are now." - Magnus the Red, to a statue of Leman Russ
I'm in the other camp. I didn't like V (and tried), but greatly enjoyed From Hell.... and look, I'll admit it, I even liked League. It's got Connery, FFS.
lord_blackfang wrote: Respect to the guy who subscribed just to post a massive ASCII dong in the chat and immediately get banned.
Flinty wrote: The benefit of slate is that its.actually a.rock with rock like properties. The downside is that it's a rock
I thought Hugo did an amazing job as V given that he had a static mask over his face the whole time. It could have gone very bad, much like DaFoe's turn as Green Goblin or any Power Rangers episode.
Weaving himself did a great job as V. But the way he was written in the story completely missed the point of his portrayal in the comic.
In the comic, he was a morally ambiguous (extreme emphasis) figure using the supposed motive of revenge to hide his ambitions of pushing society from fascism to anarchy.
In the movie, he's turned into a romanticized hero who is out for vengeance against a system that did him wrong. Also, FREEEEEEEDOM.
theninjabadger wrote:Never read the comic but i like the film
It's basically Alan Moore's epic parable decrying Thatcher.
Read it. It is good.
you should try out the comic "the boyz" az, its a good one, and there is some very overt takes on thatcher in it as well. Its a long series, by garth ennis so not for the squeamish, about a world where super powers are fairly common and follows the story of a group whos job it is to keep the super humans in check (since lots of them are bad, and even the good ones tend to cause lots of collateral damage)
Biggest issue with the movie version of "From Hell" is the voiceover gives away the mystery inside the first 30 seconds.
didn't really think that one through IMO.
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
Still not seen or read From Hell. I was put off by Jonny Depp.
V was a good film that I greatly enjoyed.
Watchmen was one of the few examples of where I read the Graphic Novel first (I bought it on a whim and read it all in the time my Mrs was in labour with our first - it was a loooong night/day/night!).
While I didn't pick up on the nuances that Az did, but I thought then and still do that it was as close to the original story as you are likely to get with quite a dark and at time odd source, via Holliwood.
Spoiler:
I personally welcomed the loss of the blame the aliens flavoured ending and that annoying pirate ship skit that runs throughout the book.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/06/03 12:35:57
How do you promote your Hobby? - Legoburner "I run some crappy wargaming website "
The only ones I have an issue with are, as said already in the thread, League. It just wasn't a good movie, and From Hell, which I just didn't like (but I'm not one for horror, so that probably explains it).
V and Watchmen might completely miss their (now very outdated) political messages, but they are at least well produced, well acted, solid movies.
I actually still remember sitting through V for the first time, I rented it on a whim and my dad and I watched it having a few drinks. The drinking stopped shortly after it started, since we were pretty engrossed. By the end, my dad (who never really shows much interest in comic movies and at that time didn't watch movies much at all) turned to me and said 'that was a bloody good movie'.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2013/06/03 12:50:16
theninjabadger wrote:Never read the comic but i like the film
It's basically Alan Moore's epic parable decrying Thatcher.
Read it. It is good.
you should try out the comic "the boyz" az, its a good one, and there is some very overt takes on thatcher in it as well. Its a long series, by garth ennis so not for the squeamish, about a world where super powers are fairly common and follows the story of a group whos job it is to keep the super humans in check (since lots of them are bad, and even the good ones tend to cause lots of collateral damage)
I've got the whole run.
Glad we have that in common then! garth ennis has done some good stuff!
notprop wrote:Still not seen or read From Hell. I was put off by Jonny Depp.
V was a good film that I greatly enjoyed.
Watchmen was one of the few examples of where I read the Graphic Novel first (I bought it on a whim and read it all in the time my Mrs was in labour with our first - it was a loooong night/day/night!).
While I didn't pick up on the nuances that Az did, but I thought then and still do that it was as close to the original story as you are likely to get with quite a dark and at time odd source, via Holliwood.
Spoiler:
I personally welcomed the loss of the blame the aliens flavoured ending and that annoying pirate ship skit that runs throughout the book.
Yeah, I think the way the movie handled the common enemy element was a little more concise. However, the Black Freighter pirate story is where many of those subtleties lie; it was an allegory for the change in characters, who find themselves in situations where necessity and circumstance dictates their moral compasses to drift slowly enough that they don't realize that they become the villains by the end.
theninjabadger wrote:Never read the comic but i like the film
It's basically Alan Moore's epic parable decrying Thatcher.
Read it. It is good.
you should try out the comic "the boyz" az, its a good one, and there is some very overt takes on thatcher in it as well. Its a long series, by garth ennis so not for the squeamish, about a world where super powers are fairly common and follows the story of a group whos job it is to keep the super humans in check (since lots of them are bad, and even the good ones tend to cause lots of collateral damage)
I've got the whole run.
Glad we have that in common then! garth ennis has done some good stuff!
Definitely. I felt The Boys got a little long in the tooth, though. It would've ended about a year earlier than it did; and I think it peaked very early on and coasted for the last 20 issues or so. It definitely paled in comparison to Preacher.
Both, movie and comic was good in their own individual ways, but it had that same issue that the Matrix had, where too many of the wrong people took it for more than it was, for the wrong reasons.
Hordini wrote:Could you go into a little more detail on this? I'm not as familiar with the comic as I am the film - what is the major difference in Rorschach and Night Owl's interaction at the end?
!!! MASSIVE SPOILER THAT WILL RUIN EVERYTHING !!!
Spoiler:
In the comic, after Veidt reveals that he executed his plan "20 minutes ago", all of the Minutemen recognize that because they are powerless to stop the calamity, they might as well just go along with it, as Veidt actually makes sense in a twisted sort of way. However, to do so will require that they become tacitly complicit in the plan, morally akin to helping bury the body of a murder victim. Rorshach cannot stand for that, refuses to compromise, and tells Dr. Manhattan that he has ot kill him. Dr. Manhattan does so, and as the Night Owl looks on, he realizes that he's sold his soul in exchange for world peace. However, in the film, the Night Owl freaks out and shouts like a ragemonkey and starts punching Veidt.
It's a small difference, but it significantly changes the character of the Night Owl at the end, which I feel is a departure that is hard to forgive, considering the entire theme of the comic is the small degrees of compromise we all take over time, until up is down and black is white and eventually it becomes so easy for us to accept those compromises, which tarnish and detract from those whose jobs require being paragons of virtue (this is one part of the use of the phrase "who watches the watchmen"). However, by spazzing out, the Night Owl's character is fighting back against those small compromises, which in turn severely erodes the theme of the comics, just as much as if, as a hypothetical, Rorshach had compromised.
Spoiler:
The bigger issue is leaving out The Tales of the Black Freighter. In that story the central character commits horrific acts to prevent the Black Freighter committing even more horrible crime... only to learn that crime was never going to happen, at which point he joins the Black Freighter as another of its horrible, evil crew.
Including this story throws a whole other light on Ozymandias plan and the Watchmen passively accepting it. In spending their lives dealing with the worst of humanity, they'd come to see that in everyone, and so they all accepted that nuclear war was inevitable unless something changed, and therefore Ozymandias' plan, while not acceptable, was best kept concealed. Expanding on the theme further is the now cliche Nietzsche quote given in chapter VI about monsters, gazing and abysses.
That idea - that the heroes acted with absolute certainly but were probably wrong, is probably the best commentary on comics in the whole thing. In almost every other comic the hero's extreme actions and violence are morally absolutely okay, because he knows with absolute certainty who the villain is (its the guy he just saw mugging the lady, or the dude in the underground lair who just told the hero his whole plan). But in the real world, well we're all dealing with incomplete information and theories on what might come to pass.
In Watchmen, the heroes act with certainty as if they were in any comic, but this isn't any other comic, and it's quite likely they're completely wrong.
Now, I understand why that sequence wasn't in the movie, and only on the DVD (the film was too long and too disjointed already). But without it, the film is kind of pointless.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2013/06/04 04:26:10
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
Fafnir wrote: Honestly, I feel that Watchmen should have been split into 3 movies.
Is that you, Peter Jackson?
"Sometimes the only victory possible is to keep your opponent from winning." - The Emperor, from The Outcast Dead.
"Tell your gods we are coming for them, and that their realms will burn as ours did." -Thostos Bladestorm
Fafnir wrote: Honestly, I feel that Watchmen should have been split into 3 movies.
I honestly feel that it shouldn't have been made in to a movie at all. The film they made was a fairly good effort, but basically there's no way of including all the extra text in the main story and without that a lot of the stuff that made Watchmen great is mised out.
There's also the problem that much of the commentary in Watchmen was on comic books as they stood in the 80s, and that's not really something it makes any sense to explore in a big budget superhero film today.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
I suppose, but considering the popularity of the comic, and the way comic-book movies have been dominating the box office lately, it was bound to happen at some point.
And unlike most Moore adaptations, at least they decided not to completely toss out the entire damn source material at the first meeting.
Having watched it with my parents, I was very disappointed in the entire thing. They didn't mind it that much, but it was obviously just another superhero movie to them. The film did very little to impress what made the comic truly great upon its audience.
To me the film showed what happens when you let religious nut jobs in to power. Sort of what is happening in Middle East . I never felt like it was ment to show what is gonna happen if we let bush and Blair continue haha. It was an ok film.
Seaward wrote: I enjoyed the moviefilm. I've never read a comic book in my life,
Really ? Any particular reason or just soemthing that's passed you by or you've never had a chance or urge to try ?
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
reds8n wrote: Biggest issue with the movie version of "From Hell" is the voiceover gives away the mystery inside the first 30 seconds.
didn't really think that one through IMO.
I really liked the movie (From Hell, not V, didn't see that). It was dark, had good acting, and an excellent mood. I didn't know there was a comic.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/06/04 12:29:05
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I grew up with an interrupted version of "V for Vendetta", I first saw it in "Warrior" magazine in the early 80's and was so impressed with the darkness of it all. I was really taken by the fact that the government had sunk so low as to hire scum as policemen and allow them to choose the punishment for someone they caught prostituting herself because she could not make enough money working in the munitions factory. That scene in the film was so diluted by the fact that they could claim she was a suspected terrorist due to being out after curfew.
Unfortunately that sort of change was carried throughout the whole film, and it was diminished as a result. Things seemed to be changed (mostly) for no reason other than to change them. Character's motivations, character story arcs, locations, the Stephen Fry character, all changed or were inserted for no real purpose.
Don't get me wrong, the film was a good, solid update of the graphic novel, and a great film if you haven't read the graphic novel, but it could have been so much more.
As to Watchmen, I thought that the film was, as pretty much every modern superhero film is, a good Action film. Watchmen was better than most in that I could see a good storyline in there as well. Whether I will think the same once I have read the graphic novel in a couple of weeks remains to be seen.
"Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics, and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-Tzu, and Einstein, and Morobuto, and Buddy Holly, and Aristophanes…then all of this…all of this…was for nothing. Unless we go to the stars." Commander sinclair, Babylon 5.
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