Watchmen: si? o no?
I am super-crazy-psyched about Watchmen coming out this Friday. And that surprises me. And it scares me.
I am not a Zack Snyder fan.
I thought the opening moments of his Dawn of the Dead remake were interesting, but the rest of the movie was not scary and really just sort of depressing. So many horror directors nowadays think that the Horror genre is filled with depressed, boring people - it’s infuriating. Also, Zombies don’t run. They Do Not Run. They have fucking rigor mortis to deal with, people!!! They CANNOT run. With this crap-fest of his, Snyder was actually ripping off one masterpiece (the original DotD) and one should-have-been masterpiece (28 Days Later, which does not feature Zombies but, rather, people infected with a crazed virus) - but still, he failed to steal ANYTHING good. Sarah Polley and Jake Weber, by the way, are two of the least compelling actors working.
And 300 is a mixed bag. I love how far into the comic book world he takes it, how completely absorbed it is in color and style and grotesquery. I realize the graphic novel 300 is skimpy with material besides cool war illustrations and that they had to add a bunch of stuff to fill a feature length movie. But they added too much, and nothing that was of any value. 117 minutes is at least 30 too many for this little ditty. Nevertheless, it was interesting. Fascinating, even, with how far it was allowed to go.
And then there’s Watchmen the legendary graphic novel - which supplies such a wealth of material, of visuals and characters and moments and ideas and stunning stunning, shocking storytelling. It’s often called the greatest graphic novel of all time; Time Magazine included it in its 100 Best Novels (1923-present, at the time). It is basically a script and storyboard for one of the greatest movies of all time. A movie of this thing is going to disappoint. No matter what. Probably.
And that “probably”, that lack of certainty for failure, the idea that this could maybe possibly actually live up to the source material is thrilling…however improbable.
Bottom line, though - it will be wicked cool to see this stuff brought to vivid life on the big screen…
