Jon, Serv, Shag, Rox, and Ed hide in a closet together and chat.  The discussion this time around centered on tech, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter (or the eventual demise of Universal Studios), and trademarks.  The coda covers the wonders of Serv’s spam folder (and Rox’s lovers).

Let us know what YOU think by leaving comments, emailing, or even calling the comment line/Skype.

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The cast members in this  issue can also be found here:

Jon - Twitter

Shag - OnceUponAGeek.com – Twitter

Ed – ECTech.info – Twitter

Rox - Spazhouse – Twitter

I watched Fox’s ‘Human Target’ last night. The show is based on a DC Comics character, but I admit I know very little about him. What I do know is TV, and this is good old fashion fun television. Think ’24′ minus all of the angst.

It stars Mark Valley (who also stared in one of my favorite shows of all time, ‘Keen Eddie’),  Chi McBride (who seems to be making a career out of sitting behind a desk), and the brilliant Jackie Earl Haley (Watchmen, Little Children, and the upcoming Freddy Krueger).

Don’t forget to set the DVR: Wednesday nights.

Final Word Count: 100

Jon, Serv, Ron, Cary, Terry, Ed, Thomas, and Need Coffee’s very own Widge hang out and discuss the awesomeness that is Star Trek. I mean seriously only an idiot would find flaws in this masterpiece of a film… just call us a bunch of idiots then.

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There’s an expression in fan chat rooms and message boards that has fallen a little by the wayside.  It refers to when a classic series is updated or “improved” to be made more palatable for a modern audience.  I refer, of course to: “Eat it, Grandpa!”  a sort of a battle cry for those who prefer reboots to the original, etc.  Don’t like that they added a scream when Luke falls down the Cloud City mineshaft?  Eat it, Grandpa!  Optimus Prime has lips!  Aww, don’t like it?  Well, eat it, grandpa! There is no series with a deeper, grayer legion of grandpas, than Star Trek, and the new J.J. Abrams Star Trek has gone out of it’s way to say “Grandfather, your opinion is important to me.  You are my elder, without you I do not exist, and I hold you in the ultimate respect.  I hope you will find the offering on the table palatable.”

How do you  make a Star Trek movie in 2009?  There’s a lot going for you and a lot going against you.  On your side is an epic, sweeping, mostly-open plotline with only some basic mythological threads necessary to stick to.  It’s flexible (just make sure McCoy’s a doctor and Kirk’s the Captain, etc, and go to town)  You’ve got all the good will and name recognition in the world (everyone knows Star Trek, it’s the Batman of science fiction), and you’ve got international generations of fans, loyal to a fault.

Against you is brand-fatigue.  Later expansions of the series sure punished the poor, damned souls who followed them, and the word “Trekkie” has been late-night talk show host code for “sexless loser” for as long as there have been late-night talk shows.  You have to appease that core audience, convince the casual fan it’s superior to the last fifteen years of televised eye-murders and somehow grab the grandchildren, let them know there are zippers on the Starfleet uniforms.

They pulled it off.

What a corker of a barn-burner this new film is, with action and charisma to spare.  Marvelous casting and wild, flaring action and romance.  It’s rare to have a movie with so awful a plot, such an embarrassing shuttle-wreck of an opening and with such useless villains be so wildly entertaining.  You like the people, so you want it to work.  You forgive its massive missteps to the degree that a painful film becomes a beacon of hope for the future, and isn’t that the original purpose of Star Trek, to inspire hope for the future?

The Salmon climbed the ladder at the Ballard Locks and saw an IMAX screening this weekend in Seattle. After enduring that awful, awful open, a scene badly written, acted and shot, a complete off-putter from the get-go and rendered completely unnecessary by three conversations held later in the movie, he was able to settle in.  He found it irritating and unlikely when Anakin Li’l Kirk rocked out to the Beastie Boys, (it would be like a kid today stealing a car and flying down the road to Chopin), but he liked the weird half-shadows of sci-fi landscapes in the background and the future cop.  He hated the cheap-ass longface “monster” in the 99-cent store version of the cantina scene, but he liked teen-Kirk’s smirk and Uhura’s responding coolness.  The pattern of forgiving the movie in favor of the cast was becoming firmly established.  The bitterness of the opening was recalled by the recruiting speech Pike gives Kirk, but Pike was so gruffly likable, the bad taste was swallowed.

The Li’l Spock scenes were cute, and the goofy testing pits were equally so.  Loved the idea that Vulcans feel emotions even more intensely than humans, thus their greater need to suppress them with logic.  Super cool sci fi psychology.  Winona Ryder looked a little older than Leonard Nimoy.  She needs rest, maybe a few years of it.  The Salmon offers his Brooklyn apartment for this purpose.  He’ll leave sweaters out for her to steal and he’ll pretend to be an undercover cop.  Spock’s mommy had been wicked, hasn’t she?  What sort of arrangement might we come to, to avoid my reporting Spock’s mommy to the store manager, hmmm?

The Kobayashi Maru sequence was rendered impotent by not establishing what it was beforehand.  I mean, we know, but there should have been a line beforehand to say, “That gosh-darn unwinnable test!” or maybe shown another captain failing it.  In fact, the Salmon thought that tribble-dribbling open was the Kobayashi Maru up until the first awful, awful shot of the gravid Madmoiselle Kirk.  Like, why overshare in some story areas and undershare in others?  The whole thing needed a story editor, but the writers were the executive producers, so that wasn’t about to happen.  “What, change one word of my genius?  How would you like the craft services table delayed for a few days?  What do you mean we have Kirk falling off a cliff every other scene?  I say, it’s not enough!  He needs to dangle in every fight!  I’m the goddamn executive producer, and I’m into dangle-porn!  Jump out of the car and dangle!  Get punched off the drill platform by a Romulan and dangle!  Try to jump to a catwalk in the Romulan ship and dangle!  Daaaangle!  Ahhh, that’s good!”

Let me reiterate the main theme here.  The production of this movie was very, very bad.  The thing looked cheap.  The costumes sucked hard, the generic “epic” score sucked hard (do you remember it?), the sets looked like six-dollar music videos, (Rick Springfield destroyed these same smoky corridors in Bop Til You Drop), and the plot was awful.  Awful.  But the cast, that goddamn awesome cast, could be dropped anywhere and make you happy forever.  Oh, look, the cast of Star Trek is remaking Bloodrayne, beat you to the ticket line!

The players assemble one by one, and each is more likable than the last.  Scotty and Chekov are cartoonish, but they always have been.  Why did Scotty make so many food jokes?  Because that’s what you do with accented sidekicks (Coo! What about second breakfasts?), but who cares, he’s endearing and sweet.  So they put a melted Nien Numb mask on an Ugnaught, who cares? Simon Pegg is funny and sidekicks with their own sidekicks are funnier!  That worked for me.

McCoy is gruff and hilarious, really wonderfully comic and smile-bringing, Sulu is super-cool, despite their attempts to make him absent-minded.  Like, make up your mind writers.  Is he the kind of forgetful dork who leaves the parking brake engaged or a cool free-falling stab-master?  You can be both, I suppose.  Like, I can believe a character who is absent-minded at a desk but focused and calm in action, but that wasn’t really developed or established.  It’s just the writers plugging characters in when they need something to happen.

Which brings us to the villains.  Who were they again?  The Romulans?  Ok, whatever.  The main bad guy can’t speak, the opening tells us.  Oh, wait, he can, but he has a gurgly, thick accent, the next time we see him tells us, oh, wait, he has a regular-guy voice, the rest of the movie tells us.  What?  More examples of the writers plugging in whatever with no real plan.  There need to be bad-guys for the good guys to shoot, and they have to be bigger and darker, so the good guys look like their whiteness gives them the power to overcome the odds.   Eric Bana, that poor, goddamn, fate-cursed, sadsack motherfucker.  He’s fine in whatever he’s in, like he’s not unlikeable, but everything he’s in suuuucks.  Troy: he’s fine, the movie is cheesy and forgotten, The Hulk: he’s fine, but the movie is so bad it inspires Marvel to make their own studio and immediately remake it!  Why did they pay an Eric Bana salary to cast him in this when it could have been anyone at all in a rubber mask?  They could have spent the money on a ship design instead of ripping off the Matrix.

Or maybe punching up the plot a little.

Time travel is the refuge of the accursed.  I would rather have six Chris Tuckers in a movie than even an element of time travel.  Unless the focus of the plot itself is time travel (Dr. Who, Timecop!), it’s always used as a “do over it was all a dream bullshit” panacea.  Hate it.  Never done “right,” but…they used this inelegant, ugly board with a nail in it as a pair of sharp forge tongs with which to pass the torch and “justify” the reboot.  It ended up working, like everything else, because it promised us a future with these lovable, bright, likable, lickable, people.

There’s the link to the past, the sop to grandpa with Real Spock running around (though they showed him one too many times at the end) and despite his awkward denture-impaired reading of Shatner’s rightful script at the end, it was a well-received way to establish alternate universe cred and make everybody happy.  I get it.  The way he was introduced, imitating the sound of a Krayt Dragon to scare off the sandpeople, was weeeeaaak, but he was welcome.  When he shakes hands with the Fresh Spock at the end, it was like, “We’re not going to fuck with paradox theory or antimatter bullshit, anything’s possible!” and I dug that.  You know, it’s not like he can tell Fresh Spock anything about the future, since it doesn’t exist…anymore…yet.

I love the stuff they didn’t explain, like the red matter.  That was just cool and weird.  Though its ability to destroy Alderaan to make black holes was a whatever moment, it was strange future tech from an untold tale, and I like that a lot.  That’s sci-fi!

I haven’t said enough about the Big Two, so I’ll wrap up with a description of the two best scenes in the movie, the two scenes that establish that the series has legs.

One: When Kirk is getting his medal at the end and can’t keep that arrogant smirk off of his face.  He’s like, “That’s funny, the last time I was here, I was on trial, and now you’re sucking my dick.”  We’ve got a funny, young, prick arrogant Kirk who gets rewarded for it.  That shit-eating grin, with his lips twitching all over the IMAX screen was beautiful.

Two: The best scene in any movie this year.  The elevator with Spock and Uhura.  Are you kidding me?  In-fucking-credible.  Perfectly written and acted.  Getting chills.  It’s one of the most “Eat it, Grandpa!” moments in the movie, Spock in a relationship??!  With Uhura!!??? but so sensitively handled, and so essential to establishing character and tone, that Grandpa happily laps it up and goes back for more.  Besides, does not Gramps have a roll top desk full of slash fic, anyway?

Her following him into the elevator, her need to follow him into the elevator, and his not knowing that he needed her to but needing it, is perfect.  The way his face changes, the way he gives in to emotion for one microscopic second when he smells her neck and then recovers, masters himself, is an epic poem.  It’s Homer and Virgil and Milton and Hitchcock and Kubrick.  It’s genius.  What do you need?, she asks.  His answer is essentially, “to hide behind military discipline,”  and her answering face, her knowledge that that is what he needs mixed with her wish that what he needed was more vulnerable is Penelope and Beatrice and Leia and Lyra.  Magical.  Human.  Beautiful.  True.

My answer to that question is more moments like this.

Here’s an open secret, the Andorian elephant in the room.  Of the eleven previous Star Trek movies, only one was any good.  Shhhhh!  Don’t talk about it.  It’s true.  So, if they had failed with this one, it would have been in fine company.  But they didn’t, and even though it’s one of the most blatant set-ups for a video game in history, they pulled it off as a super reboot for a decaying brand.  I mean, the characters even play video games in it, the same ones you doubtless will be encouraged to.  (Quick, lock on to the crew members and beam them up before they die, oh oh, avoid the missiles or your cargo will explode! Rescue Scotty from the tube!, etc.).

Ugh, the plot holes.  Worse than the red matter could cause.  Why, with that tech, would the Romulans not just beam Pike over to their ship?  Why the shuttle?  Oh, so the rest of the crew can sneak out (undetected, why?).  Why, if they’re sending a shuttle over that the bad guys can’t detect the contents of, do you not just pack it with a thousand photon torpedoes and blow them all to shit?  All sorts of crap like that.  Situations altered to fit situations.  Bad, bad writing.  But, oh that cast, and oh that elevator.  Ahh!  I love how it’s set up by the first time you see him in the elevator.  Like, he sort of shuts down in between floors.  So, clinical and cool!  Ahhh!  Elevators!!

So, this movie was a cheap piece of crap with amazing people in it.  It’s like your best friends pulling up to your house in a busted-to-shit Volkswagen Van.  You’re happy to see them, but get that thing off my lawn.  You’re absolutely welcome here, but clean yourself up, ok?  We’ll give you the full benefit of the doubt.

Really looking forward to the next one.  Trek is bek, and the whole family can hold hands by the dilithium fire.  You too, Gramps.

Jon, Serv, and Ron get together to mostly review X-Men Origins: Wolverine. We talk about some other stuff too because, frankly, there is not much to talk about with Wolverine.

Oh, and we dial up a few other folks including our friend in NYC and a, wait for it… girl!

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There are a billion reviews of this movie, and there were a billion articles in advance of it.  The demographic I fall into is well-represented already as far as online criticism goes.  (What, a white thirty-something wannabe writer who read the comic as a boy is talking about the film?!  That’s a perspective I hadn’t considered!  Link me!).  I write this without any conceit of a unique perspective, but as a record of my personal experience in order to compare it to that of others.

I’m in my mid-thirties.  I have always known Watchmen as a collected work, so my “cred” doesn’t go all the way back to the individual issues.  I didn’t find it by “accident,” (even less cred!) It was first recommended to me by a comic store employee in the late ’80s, and since that time I have probably read it all the way through (including the text documents) three or four times.  I have flipped through it to revisit the art or favorite scenes many many times, but the last time I read it cover to cover was probably ten years ago.  I wanted to re-read it in advance of the movie, but my thought was seeing it without being hyper-aware of each panel would enhance my ability to judge it as a film.  Like, if I knew everything that was going to happen, it would cheapen the experience.

Some things are unavoidable, some plot elements you don’t forget.  I know who the bad guy is.  In the early scene where Nite-Owl goes to warn Veidt someone might be trying to kill him, Veidt receives this news with his back to Nite-Owl, and we see a little smirk, a tiny tug at the corner of his mouth.  Knowing he’s the villain makes it difficult for me to see that as anything other than either, “Hee, the fool is warning me that I might be trying to kill me!”  or “As the paragon of human genius, I predicted you would come here, and I take a small pleasure in seeing it happen.”  Someone unfamiliar with the story might think the smirk meant, “Me, in danger?  Laughable!”  I can’t know.

I have read some amazingly-detailed reviews of the movie from people who are obsessed with the book, and you get things like, “The scene in the lounge where Dr. Manhattan explodes Moloch’s henchmen is a betrayal of the novel!  All it shows is gore!  In the comic we see Moloch’s horrified face.  It’s supposed to indicate his realization that the human era is ending!  Here it’s just a cheap effects scene to wake up the back row.  FAIL!”  I think that’s interesting, for sure, but my brain doesn’t work that way.  I don’t have a deep-enough understanding of the novel to generate a thought like that.

So, what I wanted to do was experience it in as much of a vacuum as possible.  To try and see it like someone who had read some Jane Austen in middle-school would enjoy seeing Pride and Prejudice on tv many years later.  I remember Dr. Manhattan ends up with Mr. Darcy, but how?

So, I held out for an IMAX screening.

The opening scene is fair enough at first.  An old guy flipping channels is a cute way to start establishing the universe. It’s an alternate ’80s, but not terribly different, ok.  He likes girls!  He stopped on a channel with a girl on it.  Celebrities are just like us!  “Unforgettable” had a little comeback back then.  I remember that, and hey, it’s Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon all of a sudden.  Terrible, off-putting slow motion scenes and completely unrealistic fight scenes.  Hey, the television got shot, but the music is still playing.  Lame!  Oh, wait, there’s the cover of the graphic novel, the sloppy smiley face.  I’ve seen that on posters!  Oh, the crash through the window is fucking cool and just like the comic.  I’m back in.

Then what proves to be the movie’s ultimate achievement, the historical montage.  A fucking masterful blend of music, image, color and narrative.  It entertains and conveys information perfectly, seemlessly building a foundation for a story without intrusive voiceover and thrilling with crazy alt-history collages.  The Times Square victory kiss between the super-chick and the nurse is a triumph of modern cinema.  Perfectly paced and executed.  Just brilliant.

Then it gets less focused as we meet all the principals and it tries to get going.  The way it jumps around makes it difficult to craft this review in a purely straight-forward way, so I’m going to have to match the movie’s capricious scattery!

Rorschach is fantastic.  They nailed it with the casting, and the effects on his mask are mesmerizing.

It’s been really interesting to see how movies deal with covered mouths.  Like, the Green Goblin in the first Spider-Man is terrible, just terrible Japanese opera bullshit.  Long, boring scenes where he shakes his fist and a frozen mask bobs.  In the Fantastic Four, they hide Dr. Doom in the shadows or under his hood as much as possible to minimize talking without moving lips.  In Iron Man, they nail it by taking us inside the mask, and here they give us something awesome to look at.  The dripping, changing blots are cool and eerie and fun and make you forget the voice-acting was done months later and miles away.

His scenes are fun and cool, his being savage and driven “sells,” though I was put way off by his seeming super-powers.  He’s able to jump really high, and he has the same kind of Asian-magic fighting technique and ability the others have.  I think the concept is supposed to be that the only one with any kind of “power” at all is the godlike Dr. Manhattan.  Everyone else relies on gadgets and weapons (Nite-Owl/The Comedian), ferocity (Rorschach), distracting sex-appeal (Silk Spectre) or rigorous mental and physical preparation (Veidt).

By giving everyone, including a pot-bellied has-been and an eighty-pound chick, mystical ninja properties it takes away from Veidt’s superiority and makes the final fight confusing.

The casting ranges from “excellent” to “she’s hot” with the critical exception of Veidt, who, they have to know, they completely shit the bed with.  He’s unconvincing as anything, really, and it’s not clear at all that he’s supposed to be both the world’s smartest man and the peak of human perfection.  He just comes off as “rich guy who can magically beat everyone up when he feels like it.”

The movie drags. It’s a bunch of talking and characters that seem important and never come back (original Night Owl?) and some more talking and now it’s this guy’s origin, and now it’s this guy’s origin, and here’s another origin, and these guys don’t get origins, sorry.  Also, more talking.  It really only consistantly holds interest with Rorschach’s scenes.  His prison scenes are cool, his battle with the cops is cool.

There are loooong shots holding on insignificant images and perverse short-cutting on seemingly important scenes.  Why do they hold soooo long on that stone angel in the cemetary with a slow pull out?  Why do they show every fucking card fall out of the guy’s briefcase?  But, Silky is in an explosion and then suddenly safe on Archimedes again.  Why a jump in time there?  Random!

The music is really distracting and misses the mark more often than not.  Often terribly distracting.  What function does 99 Luftballoons serve in that particular place?  All Along the Watchtower was necessary, but not without matching the action to the lyrics. Ball dropped.  Much of it was way too loud.  Hallelujah was cringe-worthy.  The end credit music was like, “Fuck you, leave!”  It was like they were happy with Dylan in that opening montage and then stopped trying.

The score was cool, like in the prison riot and stuff.  The incidental stuff was fine, and the muzak version of Everybody Wants to Rule the World during Veidt’s convo with the businessmen was clever and fun, but on the whole the music diminished the experience.  Very poor decision-making skills were employed in its selection and application.

The ability to recreate specific panels from the comics is a stellar achievement.  The attention to detail is remarkable, and I can’t wait to pause the DVD, just as I can’t wait to fast-forward through most of the film.  It occurs to me the best way to experience the movie is to have the powers of Dr. Manhattan, the ability to ignore the linear nature of time.   Maybe we should consider the wait until the DVD’s release as a distracting stream of tachyons.

He was not as terrible as I was worried about.  The trailers make him seem like a blue Jar Jar Binks, and while it wasn’t really the top of the line effects-wise, they made him interesting to look at, and the performance was fine.  I liked him, and thought he did a reasonable job of conveying a character who has lost his humanity trying to remember how humans behave.  Like, he didn’t degenerate into Data or anything.  Captain, What. Is. Love?  He’s circumcised in the movie, and I don’t remember if he is in the book.  It was amusing to think about him being “uncut” before the accident but reforming himself “cut.”

One thing the movie did well, I think by accident, was make me think about the similarities and differences between Veidt and Dr. Manhattan.  Like, Dr. M isn’t human anymore, but he takes the appearance of a natural man (well, a natural blue man) and Veidt is human, the human-est of humans, but he wears retarded armor to appear less human.  Dr. M doesn’t care about people (the structure of a corpse is the same as the structure of a living person) but he doesn’t slaughter them.  Veidt “loves” humanity, and he kills millions of people.

I liked Nite-Owl very much.  He could have been dorkier, but that might have overplayed it.  They could have done a little more to suggest he was out of shape.  His function was to be the relatable one, and he served it.  They push that a little much at the end by having him suddenly be witness to all the important scenes and getting to punch Veidt (which I’m sure does not happen in the source material, and nothing in the movie has suggested is possible).

I thought it took a lot away from his character to be allowed to see Rorschach’s murder.  He doesn’t see it in the book and that gives him a kind of plausible deniability.  Like, why is it ok?  Oh, well, he kind of smelled and might have told the truth.  I’m down with it, Blue.  Hurry up and zap him so I can get back to fucking your ex.

Having Rorschach’s blood-smear be a Rorschach blot was fucking genius.  The hat drifting down was dumb.

Silk Spectre was attractive, very attractive, but she in particular highlighted some of the weird dialogue choices in the movie.  Like, I don’t think she was a bad actress, because there’s no way to say some of the lines they lifted directly from the comic as speech.  In general, I thought they could have done flash-images to the costume instead of having her describe the costume over lunch with Nite-Owl.  Like, I’m sure he’s seen it.  She doesn’t need to tell him what it looks like.

In the movie – They are eating lunch.  Boring shot through window.  Pointless, random ’80s tune fades out. Silky speaks: “Remember my costume, the leather one with the yellow stripes and the thigh-high boots.  The merry-widow sort of lingerie strap things on there and those shiny gloves?  I used to wear it.  It had a zipper.”

What should have been:

Silky – Remember that costume?

flash to costume

Nite-Owl – yes.  yes, I do.

There are four elements of the film that look like they were in a situation like, “Oh, shit, this is due tomorrow, and I’ve been busy image-sculpting Dr. Manhattan’s cock.”

They were -

1) The casting of Veidt – “Get me Jude Law.”  “He’s not available.”  “Ok, if I can’t have my first choice, I’ll settle for someone who totally sucks. “  “I’m on it, boss!” “Wait, I don’t want a guy who just sucks a little bit.”  “Got it, chief,  maximum suckage.”  “Don’t disappoint me.  He’s got to really, really suck.”  Mission accomplished!

2) The “old-people” makeup.  Bargain basement.

3) The late ’70s Dr. Who model that filled in for Veidt’s arctic compound.  Fucking amateur hour there.  Would have been better off not showing it.   Worst establishing shot ever.

4) Bubastis.  Why did they even bother?

The pleasures of watching a movie in a theater and reading a book in a chair are very different.  They are as dissimilar as eating a fruit salad and having your mother tell you a recipe for fruit salad.  In the theater, a film is static and linear.  It goes without your control.  You can’t stop it, you can’t slow down if you miss something, you can’t flip back to remind yourself who someone is or why an object is important.  You can’t skip to the end, and you can’t lower the volume if, for example, they’re blasting a Leonard Cohen song at an inappropriate moment.

You read a book alone.  It’s a personal experience.  When you see a movie in a theater, you are there to share the energy of others.  The theater during my screening, though full of people, was mostly dead energy.  Bored folks.  Girls dragged there and dudes fulfilling an obligation to their teenage selves.

I think director Zack Snyder is a guy with a lot of vision, and in a short time he’s put some really memorable images into the public consciousness, but I think an unwillingness to compromise on changing the movie around has doomed it to big opening/massive drop off status.

The big story changes made sense and showed an understanding of how narratives work. The new ending is probably better than the squid.  Cramming in a million details from the novel without knowing what they mean was an exercise in nothingness, though.  It’s a movie, a product designed to entertain and make money.  It’s not supposed to be a frame by page recreation of your favorite book.  It makes no sense to retain all of the conversations about being human, and then make everybody super-human.

The book The Return of the King is three hundred pages of Frodo and Sam climbing a mountain.  They had the good sense to push it around and make an entertaining movie out of it.  The first three Harry Potter movies are slavish to the books, because they were scared of alienating a super-informed audience.  They suck.  The last few HP movies made compromises in order to serve the format of a movie, and they are entertaining.

It makes no sense to make a huge change in one area and then drag an audience around in others.  You have shown a willingness to change something and shown good judgement in your choices, keep it up.  It was almost like he was trying to win a bet, like an ego thing.  I can make the “unfilmable movie.”

And why, if you love the Watchmen, do you want a movie of it?  The only reason would seem to be a craving for acceptance. It legitimizes my taste in reading if Hollywood notices it.  I count!  I have a voice! I need something else to buy.  Sell me something!

They captured some great images, and the movie made me consider and revisit a lot of the themes of the novel with an older, more-experienced mind.  I am grateful to it for that.  I was moved several times by memories of reading it as a boy, because they captured the scene exactly or used the exact dialogue, but…Watchmen the novel is a brilliant, nuanced and significant work of literature.  It is flawed, but it is powerful and intelligent, and it tried and succeeded in saying something new.  Watchmen the movie is a noisy piece of mimicry that tried and succeeded in advertising a forthcoming DVD.  I really don’t anticipate anything good coming out of it.  It wasn’t bad enough to sink comic movies completely but it wasn’t meaningful enough to jump-start a series of original, smart or fun movies either.  There isn’t enough understanding in it to justify the boring parts in-between the exciting parts.