Note: I have kept spoilers out of this post. Please keep the comments spoiler-free as well.
I got to see a special advance screening of Watchmen yesterday, at a taping of MTV Spoilers. They showed us the whole movie, and then ran some clips from the new Harry Potter, the Land of the Lost, and the new Star Trek movie, followed by a Q&A with Zack Snyder.
I know a lot of people want to know about Watchmen, so I'll just cut to the chase right away: It's the best movie inspired by a graphic novel that I've ever seen. It could have gone wrong in a thousand different places, and it didn't. I've wanted to see this movie for twenty years, and it was entirely worth the wait. Hear me now, my fellow geeks: you have nothing to worry about. Watchmen is fucking awesome.
Now, the entire story…
I was supposed to be there by 2:45, but lost track of time while writing, and left my house over 30 minutes late. I'd allowed a traffic cushion in my original plan, and it was gone. Everything would have to go perfectly if I was going to get there on time. Driving up the street toward the freeway, my fuel light came on. Then I hit every single red light between me and the nearest gas station. By the time I was on the freeway, I was 45 minutes behind.
Rather than totally lose my shit and drive like a psycho, I just accepted that I'd get there when I got there and not a moment sooner. I listened to the first episode of the new D&D Podcast while I made my way out the 134 and over Laurel Canyon. I laughed the whole way, remembering how much fun we all had when we played up in Seattle. It ended about ten minutes before I got to the screening, so I just let my iPod shuffle to some music. Out of 9000 songs, it chose Depeche Mode's Behind The Wheel. It was a little eerie, because I can clearly recall driving in my Prelude with my friend Darin in 1989, talking about who would be in the Watchmen movie if they made one, while we listened to Music for the Masses. I'd been excited to see the movie, but until that happened, I hadn't fully appreciated the real significance of seeing it.
"I have waited twenty years to see this film," I thought, "and in about twenty minutes, it's finally going to happen."
As I pulled up to the parking garage, I got the nervous feeling in my stomach that's usually reserved for auditions or the first few days of a book launch. I know that it's just a movie, but it's something I've thought about and cared about for two thirds of my life. I guess it was so important to me, I hadn't let myself fully appreciate just how important it was until that moment.
A few minutes later I met my friend Chris (who was my date for the movie), and we made our way to the theater, stopping on the way to talk to the MTV people about my appearance on the show later, after they ran the Star Trek stuff. It was a weird disconnect for me; while I was talking to the MTV producers, I stopped being a geek who couldn't believe he was about to finally see Watchmen, and I was a professional actor, going over the technical specifics of how the show would be put together. My stomach butterflies and that mix of apprehension and excitement vanished for a few minutes, until we walked away, I became a geek again, and it returned with a vengeance.
The lights went down, the film began, and after just a few minutes, my apprehension was gone. I knew after the Comedian hit the street that this was going to be everything I'd hoped for. For the next two hours and forty-five minutes, I gasped, I cheered, I applauded, I was stunned and I was blown away. Most importantly, though, I was transported to the world I first visited, one issue at a time, when I was a teenager. When it was over, I wanted to go right back to the beginning and start over again, just like I did when I finished the graphic novel back in the 80s.
<Non-Spoiler Review Begins>
I'm not going to discuss specifics, because that would suck for a lot of people, but: PAY ATTENTION, MY FELLOW GEEKS: YOU HAVE NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT.
(Did I just all-cap and bold that? I guess I did. What is this, MacWrite in 1986? Whatever. I'm leaving it, because it's that important to me that my fellow geeks read it.)
Now, listen, I know that we live in a world where we've endured Ang Lee's The Hulk, Spiderman 3, both Fantastic Four movies, and Indiana Jones Gets Raped Repeatedly While We Are Forced To Watch In Horror, so I think it would be really strange if we weren't worried and apprehensive about something that already means so much to us, but I hope this will calm your nerves until the movie is released: Watchmen is faithful to the book. It respects the book. I swear by the beard of Zeus, it feels like the book. Yes, there are some cuts, but they serve the release and don't disrupt or betray the narrative at all. Yes, they made a change to something that's a pretty big deal in the book, but it doesn't matter; what they did instead accomplishes exactly the same thing, and it does it perfectly. There is some of the Zack Snyder signature slow motion, and though it's a little heavy in the very first scene (which worried me) it isn't overdone throughout the movie at all, and I found it to be pretty cool and entertaining.
Ultra-purists who are just determined to pick it apart will be able to find some things to be upset about, but I don't know why they're even bothering to see it, to be honest. Speaking only for myself, as someone who has read the book over and over again, there were maybe … three … things that made me go "eh," but I had to work really hard to get even that perturbed, because ultimately none of them mattered. In fact, when the movie was over, and I thought about the stuff they cut or moved around, I just couldn't get upset about it, because nothing happened that fucked with the story or the characters, at all. Zack Snyder's Watchmen is as close to a perfect film adaptation of Alan Moore's Watchmen as we were ever going to see, and when his super-ultimate-here's-everything cut comes out in the fall, I think it will be perfect. But what I saw yesterday is truly remarkable: a big studio movie adaptation of one of the most — if not the most — important graphic novels of my lifetime that not only didn't fuck it up, but brought it to life brilliantly.
I can't think of a better, more faithful, graphic novel adaptation, ever. Nothing else even comes close.
<Non-Spoiler Review Ends>
When the movie was over, we got down to the business of making the TV show. This can be really tedious, and people who go watch a taping of a show hardly ever go back again, because it just isn't that fun. It could have been a disaster, with a theater that was mostly geeks, but MTV did a fairly good job moving things along, even though the producer who was sort of managing all of us geeks between shots was clearly out of his element, Donny.
Case in point: there were two dudes in the front of the theater dressed up as the Comedian and Rorschach. The producer had them stand up, and the geeks in the audience went nuts, because how cool was that, right?
The producer said something about how the Rorschach guy's costume was so great, they couldn't even tell if it was a fan or … he stammered for a second … or … "you know, the guy who, um, plays Rorschach. The actor. I don't know his name."
The geeks just savaged the guy with boos. It was mostly good natured, but when the producer said, "Hey, hey, hey! I don't get to watch these movies, because I'm really busy making TV shows. You know, like My Sweet Sixteen," they totally turned on him with a taunting so vicious, I expected someone to put a cow into a catapult. It was hilarious. I mean, talk about not knowing who your audience is!
He would repeatedly try to get the audience back on his side for the rest of the evening, but it was like DC 25, and he got -5 for each failed attempt. I think he was up to DC 70 by the time we all left, but it was all in good fun.
They brought many of the cast members up, two at a time, and asked them some questions about the movie. They didn't spend nearly enough time with them, and I thought the questions could have been a hell of a lot better, because the ones they asked were mostly silly things about sex scenes and Doctor Manhattan's Junk (which is a good name for a band), but I guess that's what the audience at home cares about, and they have to keep them happy.
I forget the order in which the following events happened, but this is how I remember them.
After the first two groups of actors did their Q&As, they showed a clip from Land of the Lost. All I can say is: for fuck's sake. Are you serious with this bullshit? If the trailer during the Superbowl was punching my beloved childhood memories in the face, this clip they showed us was pissing on its corpse. I'm not entirely sure, but I think the whole thing is a New Coke way to trick people into thinking the television remake they did in the 90s sucked less than it did.
They showed us something from the new Harry Potter movie, which I can't comment on because I don't know enough about Harry Potter, but it made the Harry Potter fans in the audience really happy. After that, they brought up a couple more actors from the movie (Billy Crudup was hilarious and, yes, ladies, he is that good looking in real life) and then a couple more who talked about the sense of responsibility they felt while making the movie (it showed on screen, guys, you were all fantastic).
After all that, they showed the Star Trek thing. It was mostly stuff we've already seen, but the geeks (including me) were excited about it. Their host asked me some questions about the movie, and I thought I got in one comment about myself that was stupid, one about the movie that was insightful, and another that was humorous. You can watch MTV Spoilers on Saturday if you want to see what I said. BUT BE WARNED: THERE WILL BE MASSIVE WATCHMEN SPOILERS IN THIS SHOW.
After I finished my bit, I got to sit back down and enjoy the rest of the taping, which included the promise of something from the new Transformers movie that they didn't actually show (I guess it was a rights thing, and they can't show it until Saturday night) and then the only thing that could have made the evening even more awesome than it already was: a Q&A with Watchmen's director Zack Snyder.
They told us that he'd probably talk for about 30 minutes or so, but he ended up staying for close to 45. I was just blown away by his candor and his enthusiasm not only for Watchmen, but for comics and filmmaking in general. I know that he's been talking about this stuff and answering these exact questions for months, but if he was feeling any fatigue over it, he didn't let it show. He could have sat there and spoken in the language of Hollywood douchebags, but he spoke in the purest form of Geek that I've ever witnessed from a filmmaker. He didn't talk at us, he talked with us, and it was great.
I can't possibly remember everything he said, but there were a couple things that totally stood out, that I think geeks would want to know:
He said that when he was in film school, he wanted to make movies out of everything, whether it was a pair of shoes, or a cup of coffee. When he read comics back then, he thought that it would be great to make some of them into movies. He singled out Dark Knight Returns and Sin City, but when he got to Watchmen, he said there was no way he would even attempt it.
Then the studio came to him after 300 and asked him to make the movie. He didn't want to do it at first, partially because he was so afraid he'd screw it up, but also because the script was just horrible. It was set in the current day, it was about Doctor Manhattan going to Iraq, something about "The War on Terror" and was a PG-13 monstrosity that would be left open to a sequel. It was, in other words, exactly the kind of thing we're so afraid the studios will do to things we love when they adapt them for film.
He said that the more he thought about it, though, the more he felt a responsibility to make it. He said something like, "If I made it, I had a chance to not screw it up. If I did screw it up, at least it was me who screwed it up. But if I let them take the script they showed me to someone else to screw up, it would have been my fault. So I had to make it."
He also talked about how the studio kept trying to turn it into what he called a "PG-13 Superhero movie" and how he just refused to let that happen. He said that it was going to be rated R, there wouldn't be this ending that they wanted which would make you go for fuck's sake. are you serious with that bullshit? It would be set in 1985, and it would be faithful to the book.
I've read interviews with him, and I've heard from some second-hand sources that he cared deeply about the material, but until I saw him speak last night, I didn't fully appreciate just how passionate he was. While I listened to him speak, it hit me: Zack Snyder cares about Watchmen as much as we do, and it shows.
Before I realized it, I was on my feet, getting in line, not to ask a question, but to make a comment.
When I approached the mic, I felt my hands get cold and I couldn't feel my feet. This is typically what happens to me when I'm really nervous.
I cleared my throat and said, "Hi, my name is Wil, and I'm from Pasadena."
He said, "Hey, I'm from Pasadena, too!"
"AWESOME!" I said, and felt stupid.
I steadied myself, as the entire theater faded away and all I could hear was the sound of my own voice, coming out of someone else, very far away. "I just wanted to tell you that I've wanted to see this movie for twenty years."
I took a breath, and was horrified to feel some very real emotion rising up in my chest.
"Oh fuck. Just say it and run away!"
"I just wanted to say thank you for making it worth the wait."
He said something, but I don't know what it was. I was too busy running away.
As I left the theater, and feeling returned to my hands and feet, I thought, "Shit. I forgot to tell him, "If they ask you to make Sandman, please say yes.'"
I doubt he'll ever read this, but just in case he does … Zack Snyder, this is Wil from Pasadena. If they ever ask you to make Sandman, please say yes.
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Excellent post, Wil! No spoilers (thank God!) and enough fun and atmosphere to make me really go find a DeLorean and jump a few weeks ahead in time.
The great thing about this post, Wil, is that the fan is there, and he’s honest, and he scared to talk to people, and THAT is why we continue to follow your blog posts.
That, and you know how to roll 2d10.
That sound you hear is a million geeks breathing a sigh of relief that this passed the Wil Wheaton test!! Thank the makers.
Did you see the Simpsons where Alan Moore is approached to sign “Watchmen Babies” by a clueless Milhouse? Ohhhh the geekery…
Was waiting for this post all day – thanks, man!
Awesome. Geeks everywhere thank you. 🙂
I’m glad to hear that you liked the film, and
it makes me more excited about seeing it.
You are hereby excused from squandering your super secret Hollywood connections on that extra ice in your club soda two weeks ago.
This is Ariana from Pasadena, and thank you for this blog. This reassures me and makes me even more excited to see it (if that’s possible).
*whew*
Wow. This is the first blog post of yours I have read, although I follow you on Twitter. Twitter is now forcing new accounts to follow you, and you can’t be unfollowed.
Anyway, thank you for setting my mind at ease. I moved to NYC this week, and I only started getting excited when I saw the city plastered with ads.
But I have to ask: How do you feel about the whole Alan Moore angle? That’s what is making me feel guilty about wanting to see this film.
Great post! I’ve been re-reading Watchmen (for the first time in probably ten years) out of excitement for the film. This post just jacked me up another notch.
I take your word that it is indeed faithful, and I’m not a hardcore purists, but if the really big thing is the really big thing I think that you are talking about–there will be blood (figuratively speaking of course).
Also, am I the only person that actually kind of liked Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? It wasn’t as good as The Last Crusade and nothing will ever be as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I found it better than Temple of Doom. After all, after watching the Wrath of God melt faces, I don’t think that it is too much of a logical leap to go with aliens.
Man, Wil. Just…thanks for still being a fan.
Oh man! I cannot wait to see this, I will never forget reading this graphic novel back in 1995 as an 13 year old, wide eyed, wondering what will happen next. I was hoping the film adaption would be faithful to the book. And from your review it is! can’t wait.
Wil,
I first want to say that I recently found your blog after listening to you on Leo Laportes TWiT podcast, I Am Not Spock, from a few weeks ago. I’ve been looking around your site and at your books over the weekend. I must say I am very pleased with what I see.
This is so funny. Right now, I feel like you did in your description about making your comment to Zach.
I am just a few years younger than you, born 1977, and I can remember those nights of excitedly waiting for ST:TNG to come on. I remember thinking how cool it was to see someone close to my age in such a bitching setting. And when I got the opportunity to now again see your blog and read your books I’m thrilled.
Ok, now that that’s out of the way. Geeze, I’m like almost sweating here. This is the interent, I shouldn’t be this nervous. Oh well.
Secondly, AWESOME review (cue the sound effects by John Dvorak on that podcast I mentioned). Now I unfortunatly never read the graphic novel, well any graphic novels at all, growing up. But after realizing at about 17 that I really trully am a geek and that it’s OK to love books like that I’ve read all that I can find. I am glad to hear of a movie based off of superhero’s that is not so twisted that it no longer resembles the original. I hate, HATE, seeing a movie that is made from a book that has so twisted the story to fit into that 2 hour block. It just makes me sick.
Anyway, again, thanks for the awesome review and I am looking forward to purchasing your books in the near future, just gotta free up some fundage. Is there any paticular order I should read them in?
My son (who will be 15 next week) is greatly looking forward to the movie. He has the read the book, as have I of course. I noticed that it is rated R with lots of little worlds under the R explaining why it is an R.
Would you have let your kids see it at 15? I’m trying to decide and input from somebody that has actually seen the movie and has teenagers might be helpful.
It’s an adaptation of a property that people have treasured for 20+ years. Of course there’s going to be blood, some people just can’t accept any changes to canon.
You really want to start a slapfight, get a group of Beatles fans together and show them Across the Universe. That’s hours of good entertainment right there (unless you’re one of the people who can’t stand covers of Beatles songs, in which case you’ll be one of the slapfighters and I’ll be watching with some popcorn. Man, I love that movie, but then again, in my brain, people break into random public choreographed dance sequences all the time!)
(p.s. I liked Crystal Skull)
Thanks for the review. Damn, this is going to be a long 2 weeks.
I can’t be unfollowed? Um, that sucks a lot. I should bug twitter support about that, because that’s going to make a lot of people unhappy.
As far as Alan Moore goes, I have tremendous respect and gratitude for his work, and Zack spoke about this last night. He said that Alan didn’t want to be part of the movie, doesn’t want it made under any circumstances, and is giving anything he’d earn from it to Dave Gibbons.
Speaking only for myself, I don’t think Alan Moore gives a flying fuck about me or what I think, see, or do, and isn’t going to lose a second’s rest because I see the movie.
Sorry, that first bit was a joke, based on how many people are following you, and how it’s almost a default activity for new Twitter users to follow you.
Timing was WAY off.
Hey! Welcome!
I’d suggest starting with Sunken Treasure, because it’s got stuff from all of my books in it. You can see what you like, and choose the next one accordingly.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you’ll keep coming back.
I would have let my kids, yes, but only you know your kids well enough to decide if it’s appropriate. There is some nudity, some sexual content, and some violence. Beyond that, I can’t say anything without spoiling the movie.
Speaking as a parent, if you’re in doubt, I’d suggest seeing it yourself first, and then making a decision.
I cannot wait to see Watchmen. This might be sacrilegious, but I haven’t read the graphic novel yet. I might say ‘it was before my time’ as an excuse, but I now have it in the house. Sitting on my desk. I just don’t know that I want to read it before I see the movie. So…. should I read it first?
As always its a pleasure to read your blog Wil. I first read the Watchmen when I was 14, and have been waiting for this movie since pretty much 2 minutes after putting down the comic. It has been amazingly reassuring to continue to see support such as your self and other “geek celebrity” thrown behind this film. March 6 can’t come soon enough.
The idea of ANYONE making a Sandman movie just made me heart jump. I hope Snyder listens to you. …and first time and long time.
mook
read it first.
Wil,
You make me feel so much better. If you want to see him do Sandman, which is pretty much un-makable, I have faith.
I don’t know how to tell you how you make my day better each and every day. I read your twitters and your blog while I st at an insufferable job and you makes it tolerable. I listen to your audio books at the gym and it makes me stay the extra 15 minutes on the treadmill that I should probably do anyway. Your antics make me and my friends laugh all the time. I even bought your shirt because my D&D peeps will be so jealous!
Thanks for making your life so public and for having 100,000 friends that you make happy every day. Any time you are having a bad day, please remember that you make the world a better place for a lot of people. You’re a good egg.
Noelle
Reading this post gave me the warm fuzzies.
It really is horrible when the Hollywood machine destroys your childhood memories by making sucky adaptations. E.g., I was in a very stabby mood after watching Prince Caspian. C. S. Lewis would have been spinning in his grave.
I feel like such a nerd failure. I’d never read Watchmen until about six months ago — I asked for it as a birthday gift. I read it, and thought it was OK. Time passes…and I realize it’s stuck in my head, and getting better. Watchmen was absolutely haunting, in the best sense of the word, and I re-read it a couple of times over the last six months, getting more out of it each time.
But…
The graphic novel was so compelling for me that I have absolutely no use for the movie. I’ve already experienced the wonder that was the graphic novel, and I can’t imagine what the movie will add to the experience. I’d be happy to be wrong, and I suspect that I’ll one day see the film and enjoy it, but I won’t be standing in line for the first two weeks.
I had the same feeling when the first Harry Potter movie came out — I enjoyed the book so immensely that I couldn’t imagine how the movie could make it any better. Now, I did enjoy the John Williams score, and that certainly wasn’t in the book, but otherwise, the movie (and its sequels) managed to live down to my expectations — a fine movie, but not as good as the book. In fact, I don’t even think I’ve seen all of the Harry Potter movies.
Of course, I’ll be in hell when the movie Watchmen 2: The Wettening comes out.
I’m thrilled that you enjoyed it, Wil – seriously. It’s good news for the folks who are looking forward to it.
Wil, thanks for writing this. Although I have a pretty high tolerance for mediocre movie adaptations, seeing Watchmen dragged through the Hollywood ‘process’ might have been too much to bear.
“Fear not, comics geeks” — coming from you, that’s more than enough for me.
Wil…
OK… this may be a strange post, but, 100% honest.
Thanks for the Watchmen review/post… good times!
We’ve connected once in the past, back in the day (WAY back) I responded to a post on your old blog about some issue you were having with a mac… you responded… I was thrilled! Darn, the star of my favorite movie responded to me! Made my day/year/decade.
Here’s the back story… back in the very old days, my oldest son came to me and said, “You’ve got to see Stand By Me, it’s a great movie…That movie continues to be one that I can watch over and over… I’ve shown it to parents I worked with in a “parenting class” for parent of court involved kids…I show it to kids in my alternative education program… many messages to be listened to…. That son, Sean, died four years later, motorcycle accident, a tragic event.
His brother, Wes, was an artist…and eventually went into graphic arts, then film… moved to LA…
Wes is now a partner with Zack Snyder in Cruel and Unusual Films… and is a producer on Watchmen…
Reading this blog post brought things full circle for me…
I’m coming to Pasadena on the 28th, will be attending the premiere…
Wil, I would love to do lunch or dinner while I’m there if you can work it into your schedule… I’ll be in Pasadena from the 28th until the 4th, then it’s back to Michigan…. Sorry to do this in such a public way, but i didn’t have any other way to connect.
e/mail me [email protected]
Bob
Now there is no doubt that I will be in line opening night for this film. The previews have certainly looked good and made me think that there was a decent chance that the movie would come close to the quality of the book. Your review gives me confidence that I will not be disappointed.
I just wanted to say that, at the bottom of the RSS post for this entry, was an ad for Jonas Brothers. It was so hilariously opposite what you wrote that I thought you inserted it on purpose.
I sort of wonder if Zack Snyder was sitting there thinking “Oh my god, it’s Wil Wheaton. If he says he loved the movie, I may die from geek happiness.”
I just reread Watchmen (again) and noticed something interesting (to me). When I first read it, at 14 in 88, I was all about Rorschach. The nihilism and unwavering certainty appealed to me, I suppose.
When I reread it in college I noticed I was much more in sync with where Ozymandius was coming from. His striving to do some good no matter what the cost (while profiting from it) again spoke to something in me, and how I saw the world at the time.
This last time, at 35, it was Nite Owl (Dreiberg, not Mason)who caught my attention. I hadn’t paid him too much attention in my previous readings apart from the way hit fit into the plot. Now it seemed like he was the most realistic character. Just someone trying to do the right thing and get by.
Anyone else notice this from multiple readings? Truly a great piece of art. The themes can be teased apart and poured over, but it also holds up as several great character studies.
Thanks so much for the review Wil. I am desperately trying to keep my expectations lowered, and you are making it very difficult.
I added your blog to my feeds about a week ago and have been loving it (why haven’t I been reading your stuff for years?), but this is the first time I’ve felt compelled to comment. Thank you, thank you, thank you for this review; when Wil Wheaton says it’s okay, it’s okay. I can’t wait for my Watchmen-loving roommate to get home so I can have her read this. She’s the person who first introduced me to Watchmen, which I read for the first time about a year ago.
Last summer I was about as excited for the Watchmen trailer as I was for Dark Knight… and I went to see Dark Knight with a bunch of people who didn’t know what Watchmen was… so frustrating!
That’s great to hear, about how good it turned out to be. And I would love to see a well-made film version of Sandman, but…I can’t imagine how it could be done in a single movie.
To do the story justice, it would have to be multiple films–a minimum of three, I’d think, and possibly more, depending on how much time is given to some of the side stories and flashbacks (several of which are vitally important, like those dealing with Orpheus). It’s a sprawling story, and would be better suited to something more like an OVA than a feature film.
And since I can’t imagine a film studio trying to get a thing like that made, I’m very afraid of a movie form of Sandman, even one done well–it would cut far too much to do the story justice.
wil,
are you telling me that snyder didnt recognize you?
i still think its cool that you get geeked out over stuff like this…makes me feel more comfortable with my middle aged geekdom
im hoping that you take the kids opening day and let them post their thoughts.
im glad that zack made a movie that fans will like. im hoping that the gen public likes the movie too, if only to legitamize the art form.
whats that you say? iron man and tdk already did that? well no, not really
both those movies bear the stamp of their respective directors…tdk more so
while this is a zack snyder production, he seems to have attempted to really use the book as the movie’s bible.
if it is very successful, maybe that will cause the suits to finally realize…RESPECT THE SOURCE MATERIAL…at least when it comes to comic book adaptations.
as for sandman…i really dont think it should be adapted
preacher, on the other hand….needs to become a maxi series
None of us every truly “arrive” no matter how successful, do we? I read your stuff and think that never arriving may be the very best part of life. I would hate to miss out on the delicious terror of gushing a little to a rockstar geek. I hope you always get to be a fan boy, Wil.
Thank you for taking the time to write this — and thank you again for writing it spoiler-free. I was afraid I’d have to wait until the movie was out so I could see it for myself, given how many reviewers like to toss in several handfuls of spoilers.
I had the same experience when meeting Neil Gaiman and getting his autograph.
I’m planning on seeing Watchman on Imax when I visit Sydney this April. Watchmen will be the first film I’ve ever seen in 3D, and it sounds like it’s going to be an awesome experience. Thanks Wil.
The algorithm that google uses to insert ads into my RSS feed is like a dozen rakes to my Sideshow Bob.
I doubt that, but he was sort of giving me that “do I know you from somewhere? Why do you look familiar? Did we go to school together?” look that I seem to get from a lot of people more often than you’d expect.
I experienced it in almost the exact same way across the years, so you’re not alone.
In the Q&A Zack said that on WATCHMEN, they went to the graphic novel every time they had a question, and in some cases the actors asked to use dialog from the book instead of the script. He said that they had numerous copies on the set all the time, and they used them every day.
This review is why Wil should be Secretary of Geek Affairs – get out and vote! paulandstorm.com
Thanks for the news that the movie lives up to geek expectations! I can’t wait to see it!
Dude, I’m up against HAWKING. I couldn’t even vote for myself.
Are you gonna watch an IMAX screening of it? I am so booking tickets this weekend. Glad to hear it is actually awesome, there have been anxieties circulating amongst me friends.
Ah, Wil, thank you so much. Huge sigh of relief from this geek right here. 2 weeks to go. The waiting, it is harshing on my hp.
DUDE! You’re killing me. My Animation Supervisor was at that exact screening and was holding it over me ALL DAY!
BLAST!
Thanks for the review, I can sleep at night now. Going to re-read Watchmen next week then planning a cinema expedition. It’s my birthday on the 5th of March, my band has a gig on the 6th and I’m going to see the movie on the 7th, what a few days…
Must admit that I came late to the party, only really got into comics a few years back but Watchmen was one of the first I read. Totally blew me away and I’m so glad they haven’t gang-raped it for the big screen. You know what I’d really like to see given a good big screen treatment though? DMZ. That would be awesome. Oh, and The Five Fists Of Science, Transmetropolitan, The Walking Dead, etc, etc, etc 🙂
I’ve never been a big comic-book follower (I read a few years worth of Wolverine stuff when I was 15 or so), but a friend bought me Watchmen around a year ago and I really love it. I think that, since I’m not a massive comic geek, I miss a lot of the meta stuff in it, not to mention that all the other comics I’ve read have been heavily influenced by Watchmen in the way they tell their stories.
Still, I’m glad to hear that the movie lives up to the graphic novel; a whole bunch of us from work are going to see it together on release day. 😀