Comments on: Watchmen

By: Kevin D.

Kevin D. — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 19:49:20 +0000

Actually, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” was more a parody of Frank Miller’s “Ronin” than superhero comics in general.

By: Dean Esmay

Dean Esmay — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 19:05:55 +0000

I was impressed by The Watchmen when it first came out. I even pressed it on a friend of mine of an older generation who mocked me for still reading comic books in my 20s. He hated it, thought it shocking, lewd, and shallow, and that’s all.

In my own case, I read it once and liked it much but didn’t love it. Read it a second time, then never cared much about it since. It had its proper place in that time and moment, an era when comics (especially the superhero genre) needed to be deconstructed, ripped apart, and reinvented. Moore (the author) accomplished that fairly well. This was also the same era which spawned a host of parodies of superhero comics. (People don’t even remember this, but that’s actually how Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles got started–as a parody of superhero comics). The only real difference with this book was that it wasn’t a parody, it was a deliberate, unfunny, dramatic savaging of the industry at the time.

In retrospect I really do not think that the story holds up–and I really, seriously, cannot possibly imagine why anyone would make a movie out of it today. I honestly don’t know what the heck it would have to say of relevance to moviegoers in 2009. I just don’t.

I have no real interest in it and as such will probably not even see it until it’s available for cheap rental.

By: zach

zach — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 13:05:34 +0000

i haven’t seen the movie, plan on checking it out once it hits the second run theater in my area. i liked the comic. not my holy grail, but i did like it. but it seems to me, that of any comic book that could be adapted to the screen, watchmen is about the worst one to adapt. the entire book is so meta, everything in it screams “comic about comics.” making that into “movie about comics” just seems pointless. especially since, according to what i hear, anyway, the movie stays so faithful to the source material. if you’re going to make a literal translation from book to screen, what is the freaking point? just read the book. but, of course, i’ll see it, and hopefully it will blow my mind despite my griping.

By: Brian Tiemann

Brian Tiemann — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 12:53:24 +0000

We live in the era of tongue-in-cheek, ironic, self-aware deconstruction of the superhero genre. From Mystery Men to Space Ghost Coast to Coast to The Venture Bros to Blankman and Orgazmo, we're awash in satire. Oh, sure, there are a lot of great new superhero movies that play it straight—the Batman and Spider-Man franchises, Superman Returns, and (marginally, thanks to the Juggernaut) X-Men. But the concept of a parody superhero movie is pretty well tapped-out by now, and I think it all traces back to the Watchmen book. That was about the first time when the genre was treated as something both more and less than its parts: just a bunch of humans trying to deal with human crap, under extraordinary circumstances. With that in mind, I think the Watchmen movie would have done a lot better if it had come out right in the book's heyday, before we were subject to postmodern things like Aqua Teen Hunger Force and comics like Preacher that took Moore's "play to an adult sensibility" ball and ran with it far beyond where he ever did. These days, I'm afraid people are going to watch the movie and, like watchers of the ill-conceived Hitch Hiker's Guide movie from a few years ago, go, "Uh, that's it? That's what all the fuss was about?"