Monday Morning Quarterback Part III

By BOP Staff

March 11, 2009

You're thinking of that Saturday morning cartoon Watchmen viral video, aren't you?

New at BOP:
Share & Save
Digg Button  
Print this column


Kim Hollis: Without answering anything spoiler-ish, what did those of you who watched Watchmen think of it?

Max Braden: Two and three quarters hours is just too long, and it still felt like material was left out, so I feel let down that the filmmakers boxed themselves in with just one movie. The Comedian's moral character was key to the theme of the movie but it caught me off guard and pulled me out of the viewing experience. Still, Rorschach completely made up for any complaints. Jackie Earle Haley's performance was excellent.

Josh Spiegel: As someone who never read the graphic novel, I can say that I wasn't too overwhelmed with the plot or confused. However, I didn't much enjoy myself either. Jackie Earle Haley was fantastic throughout, and the special effects were very impressive, but I feel like Zack Snyder was either wallowing in the violence of the film or hammering points into my head with the help of awful musical cues. Also, I'm with Max: way too long.

Pete Kilmer: It was about ten minutes too long, and could have done without everything after Antartica. Otherwise I was pretty pleased with it and Jackie Earl Haley and Jeffery Dean, they were just terrific.


Craig Hemenway: The best performance in the movie was Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan, followed closely by Jackie Earle Haley as Rorshach. I suspect Haley benefits more from the film's success - and it was a success for opening - than Crudup does simply because he is a lesser name at this point. Haley may be a Bad News Bear but he's no golden god.

My single biggest question on walking out of a Friday morning showing was whether or not viewers unfamiliar with the comic series would be able to follow the plot. In other words, was this an "X-Men" or the modern equivalent of 1986's "Dune?" In the end, I think it falls closer to the latter than the former. A gorgeous film that is made for fans, I expect the multiplier on this to be very shallow. I would bet that the film takes under $150 million in its first six weeks of release. For those of you who have been following the site since the HSX days, you know that's a mighty rough multiplier given a $55.7 million opening weekend.

There's always a discussion over whether or not the length of a movie hurts opening weekend. Yes, 2 hours and 43 minutes is a damn long film. But when opening across over 3,000 venues, it's tough to believe the run time hurt the film's take. That's a lot of venues to sell out before movie length factors in.

In short, this was a film for the comic fans. Even then, it only pleases the non-fanatics who accept that the movie adaptation necessarily sacrifices both subtext and portions of the series itself. As one of those people, I think we got a movie much better than we had any right to expect and that would be a landmark film if not for the last two Batman movies.

Continued:       1       2       3       4       5



Thursday, July 18, 2019