Wally Watches the Watchmen (Archive Post)

 Editor's note:  Sorry that there hasn't been much content lately, unfortunately life has been getting in the way of my writing and the site doesn't draw enough revenue (read: any revenue) to allow me to find time.  Hopefully new reviews will pop up soon, but for now, here is an old review I did for Watchmen.  ENJOY!

Wally's Journal
March 8, 2009

The expectation of uproarious applause would have been preposterous at this point. We have just witnessed a film that has been stewing in the minds of the comic book reading public since 1986. When the lights came on in the theater and I go to work the next day, coworkers will scream,"Should I go see this?" and I'll whisper, "No."

"Watchmen" is based on a one shot comic published by DC Comics and written by Allen Moore and drawn by Dave Gibbons in response to DC acquiring the rights to another companies characters; however since many of the characters didn't make it past the ending of the story arc Moore was tasked with creating new ones.

This is why most "mainstream" comic fans may not know about these characters, because they aren't the standard Superman, Batman, Spider-man or any other character they may have heard of.

The question becomes at this point, should you care if you didn't know the source material? Well, yes, but please wait for a rental or at least go read the graphic novel.

The story and the characters are there, but all in all the movie just doesn't work. Now this isn't to say that the movie doesn't do anything right. I absolutely loved every second that Rorschach played by Jackie Earle Haley was on screen. He was this movies "Marv" from "Sin City" in that I wished that the movie would have been focused or even paired down to feature him more. He was visually interesting, layered as a character and quotable to boot. The fact of the matter is that if this was Rorschach: The Motion Picture, I might have enjoyed it more.

While watching the film I felt like I was watching the deleted scenes reel on the DVD. So many scenes that just didn't work, were too long, or didn't serve any aspect of the main story were left in that I felt pity on the poor editor who had to have been conditioned to leave things in just because the director liked that part of the comic.

Over the course of the almost three hour picture I walked out appreciating "Sin City" even more because despite the dead on accuracy of the graphic novel, it still made cuts to the more expendable parts of the stories. These cuts gave the movie a quick pace and retained the integrity and heart of the original while the hardcore fans didn't even notice. "Watchmen" is the anti-thesis of this. It had a truckload of material culled directly from the books and it suffered because of it.

Perfect examples of this will require spoiling moments of the movie, so if you plan on testing your tolerance for filler, please discontinue reading.

Case in point: When the Superman-esque Dr. Manhattan needs to have a heart to heart with Sally Jupiter on Mars (you read that right), we spend a ridiculous amount of time just sight-seeing. Now, the movie was shot beautifully. Everything looks amazing and the visuals are almost enough to watch the film; however we just wasted five minutes on what is essentially a conversation that could have been summed up with a few sentences and it broke up the flow of the impending climax of the movie.

This isn't an isolated case either. As Ang Lee's "Hulk" focused too much on making everything "arty" in a movie that movie-goers wanted to just see things go "boom", Zach Snider decides to err on the framing, blocking and lighting of the shots to pay too much attention to how things flow. There are gratuitous love scenes, flashbacks that do not serve the story, and even a fight scene that was thrown in that did nothing more than raise the gore quotient, making some scenes seem like they were from one of the "Saw" movies and not from a DC Comics property.

Also worth noting was the horrible music choices as well. I know that they were probably chosen to set you in the right time frame of the movie (it was supposed to be set in 1985) it didn't work. We literally go from a sad score from a funeral scene to an abrupt flashback blaring at 400 times the volume of the previous scene, "I'm Your Boogie Man" by KC and the Sunshine Band and then back the the funeral score again.

In all, it wasn't the worst comic book movie that I've ever seen as that pleasure goes to the abysmal "Batman and Robin". When I liked the movie, I REALLY liked the movie, but I think that out of the two hours and forty five minutes I was in that theater I only got about an hours worth of entertainment. I just wished that Snider would have delivered a better movie without pandering to his fanboy urge to get every last panel of the books on film. Not even Sam Jackson with an eyepatch could have saved this movie.

2 1/2 Blood Stained Smiley Faces out of 5

X-Men: First Badass

My wife surprised me by taking me to Ruby Tuesday (had a coupon) and the movies for Father’s Day.  Yes Father’s Day…what, do you think we’re waiting for next week when everything will be unbearably busy?

The movie that she chose to go to didn’t really surprise me TOO entirely much considering one of the men on her “list” was in it, Mr. James McAvoy: “X-men: First Class”.

I remember back when the first “X-men” came out as it was a VERY different time than it is now.  Superhero movies in the late 90’s weren’t a dime a dozen as they are today and comic book fans were anticipating the release of the adaptation with much skepticism.  We wanted our X-men to be as close to what made us fall in love with the comic to begin with, but we didn’t feel from the trailers that we would get it.  There was no spandex, Rogue was too young, Jean was too old, and Wolverine was too tall.  Professor X was ok though.

While not perfect, the X-men movie ended up being rather good and the sequel was an even better experience.

I want you, for a moment, to forget that the previous X-men movies existed.  Forget about the good and bad.  I want you to forget about the comic book that came before it.  

Can you do that?  Because I did.  SPOILERIFFIC REVIEW:

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS

I don’t want to dive, head first into a sea of hyperbole, but I can’t help it.  Not with this movie.

This is the X-men movie that we should have gotten in 1999.

There.  I’ve said it.  

The issues that I have with the first four movies in the series (“X-men”, “X2”, “X-men: The Last Stand”, and “X-men Origins: Wolverine”) were finally completely clear to me after watching “First Class”.  They were too safe, the performances were stilted, the dialogue was horrid, the action was poorly executed, and everything looked too new and sterile.  It was as if no one lived in the world that they were in as the sets were obviously brand new.

“X-men: First Class” falls victim to none of that.

The film starts out where the original does in Poland during the holocaust, but doesn’t stop there.  We learn so much more to what made Magneto the villain that he became.  In the context of this movie, typing that Magneto is a villain seems wrong.  I know why he feels the way he does and in many ways, you sympathize and agree to an extent.   Magneto didn’t become Magneto because he was a bad guy, but because he has seen the full extent of human evil and he can never forgive our race for what we had put him and others like him through.

This obviously has many undertones that are obvious as he is essentially writing every human being off as an enemy due to his experience and his turning point in the finale when he declares that he will never be subject to people “just following orders” is chilling and satisfying.  You understand, but it doesn’t make it right.

Xavier, who has become close friends with Erik over the months of working to prevent nuclear war, tried so hard to tie everyone together as a team, makes the ultimate sacrifice trying to save the very people who fear and mean to kill all of his kind, is just as sympathetic, but differs in his ideology.

Xavier, played by the fantastic James McAvoy, wants nothing more than to live in peace with normal men.  He can literally sense the good in mankind wants to share his gifts and hopefully convince those in power that he wants nothing more than to help.  In the heartbreaking final moments, he runs through the most emotional turmoil as he experiences the pain, the joy, and the futility of life and it is handled through the masterful performance with the kind of subtlety that makes me hope he is remember for an Oscar.

I feel that the performance is that good.

I know that I only touched on the performances and journeys of two characters, but they were the most important ones.  I think that FOX, with all of its idiotic ideas from movies past, has finally “gotten it”.  It truly saddens me that it isn’t making as much money as the other X movies.

“X-men First Class” doesn’t seem like a proper prequel for the X-men films because of all of the liberties that it takes with the continuity.  Sure, there are a lot of things that they do to explain the reality that they have created in this flick in relation to the existing X-Men movie cannon, but there is just enough where it wouldn’t make sense either.

The movie isn’t a retelling of any specific X-men story from the comics either.  A lot of back story is wrong, the characters are wrong, and the time frame is all wrong.

The truth of the matter is if you are a stickler for any of the above, or some sort of unreasonable fanboy who can’t handle change in any form, or even a nitpicker who will freak out at some of the choices being made, then you will hate this movie.

That, and you have no soul.

5 out of 5 X Genes

E3 Special Report: Nintendo- Now You're Playing With POWER!

Anyone who is around my age can remember a time that when you were playing video games, no matter what you owned, you were “playing Nintendo” in much the same way you Xerox a copy and drink a Coke.  Those days are behind us, but this era dropped a small amount of the fanboy seed for Nintendo in you. 

Quite literally, without Nintendo, there is a really good chance that video games wouldn’t be the powerhouse industry that it now is.  This is especially ironic in that Nintendo could also be equated as a company who would innovate, but refuse to change with today’s gaming trends. 

Between the company releasing the Wii with outdated specs, deciding not to add HD capability to the machine, and using the much maligned “Friend Code” process, it is interesting to see what the big “N” is doing to keep in step with it’s much more powerful competitors.

Watching the live tweets of the Nintendo conference is not the same as actually being there, I’m sure and I am in the poor position of having not even seen Nintendo’s new console in action, but I’m going to attempt to anyways.

Continuing my trend of not really “getting” what makes other gamers excited, I sat through the game announcements of new “Zelda” games and whatnot and was completely bored, especially since most of these announcements were for 3DS games and I couldn’t be less excited about that thing.  I played one for a total of five minutes and my head hurt, but I can say that my head problems weren’t as bad as they were when the Virtual Boy attempted the same many years ago.

Then Nintendo showed their new console…or more accurately, the controller for the new console, and they called it “Wii U”.

Pronounced just like it looks (as if it was a European police siren), the new Wii U controller is the size of a small E-reader and has face buttons, shoulder buttons, motion tracking, and a 6 inch touch screen in the center.  Quite honestly, I can’t see myself playing games with this thing, but to be fair, I said the same thing when I saw the original Wii controls. 

A few tech demos were showed and the single most impressive thing I heard of was a golf game where you place the controller on the ground and you swing at a ball on the screen and it flies on-screen down the fairway.

You can also have the game stream to the controller if someone wants to commandeer your TV, but only for a few feet as it requires the console to power the game.

I am rather skeptical about this whole thing.  They say that the console is a modern machine with graphical capabilities comparable to the other current-gen consoles and will output 1080p; however, many of the visuals shown during the conference were on those other consoles and not native to the Wii U.  Like I said earlier, the controller looks unwieldy.  I recall people throwing their Wii remotes when it first came out and I can only imagine the potential damage this thing could be capable of.  The controller also looks as if it could cost around $100.  If my guess is right, then how on earth could I hope to play multiplayer?

Nintendo; however, is showing initiative and had the most interesting showing of E3 in my opinion.  Nintendo frequently takes chances and when they pay off, it does in droves.  I can’t wait to see what they have in mind for this thing and the kind of experiences we’re in for.