Comments on: I’m counting your heads as I’m making the beds: Chris reviews Tales of the Black Freighter

By: c0ld

c0ld — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 08:48:28 +0000

Really interested but I’m going to wait until the uber Watchmen DVD release for exactly the reasons mentioned in the article. To really be something more than a spooky cartoon it needs to be framed against the movie narrative itself. I hope when this is inserted into the movie the scenes with the kid and the newspaper seller are also included, to bring a little humanity to the bigger story.

As for saying there’s a crowd that say they don’t like the movie because it’s “big now”, I cannot disagree more. Perhaps there are a few, but the majority are people who just feel the movie didn’t really capture the brilliance of the book. I personally found it very rushed (a strange thing to say for a 3 hour movie I know, but yeah), didn’t really get the sense of imminent nuclear disaster across (thanks mostly to the horrific Nixon scenes, I could barely watch) and in general lacked humanity. Yes there were bright moments, notable performances, brilliant set design and that fantastic opening sequence which squeezed so much history into such a small space. Even the additions like the ending while changed, fits better and Rorscharch retrieving his “costume” from the docs office were handled very well, but it seems that majority of the production was about getting the little things right (and even then they left out the sugar cubes. My personal little fanboy whine). The larger message, themes and most importantly the emotion have been given fairly little attention.

By: James

James — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 04:05:18 +0000

I want to see this but I may just wait till the deluxe edition of the Watchmen dvd comes out for it. On a side night I am sadden by some of the reviews for “watchmen”. It kind of seems to me that alot of the people trashing the movie are coming across as the standard “something I like is big now so I won’t like it” type of people. I had hoped that those of us who truely enjoyed and understood the book would be above this sort of mindset but I’m starting to think I am sadly wrong about it.

By: ryan bilt

ryan bilt — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 03:01:40 +0000

Less said about the motion comic the better?
WRONG.

By: Matt Maxwell

Matt Maxwell — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:05:48 +0000

Kirth, it’s also about *thinking* you need to go that far and losing sight of your humanity in the process, becoming what you beheld.

By: Shaun

Shaun — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:37:23 +0000

I’m not going to bother with this, for the very reason that Chris mentions of how, when you bring something like this to life it makes the gore and violence all the more “real” and literal. It’s one of the (many) problems the Watchmen movie itself had. If I were to rent it, however, I’d do it for the Under the Hood stuff. I was sort of hoping they’d find a way to work into the actual movie, and I think it might’ve helped “humanize” the film a bit. At the very least, there would’ve been an opportunity for an appropriate use of “Ride of the Valkeries” rather the (inadvertently) laughable sequence with the music playing while Dr. Manhattan blows away Viet Cong soldiers.

Mostly though, I just wanted to thank you Chris for being honest and willing to point out some of the reasons why (sadly) Watchmen failed as a movie. It wasn’t for lack of ambition, and it’s not like everything sucked (I agree with Chris that the opening title sequence was brilliant all the way around, and several performances were solid), but the movie was so wrapped up in ridiculously over the top violence (and sex) and so concerned with being a literal adaptation (ending aside) that it failed to find the heart in the story and it just left me cold.

By: Ike Iszany

Ike Iszany — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:38:53 +0000

Kirth, that pretty much sums it up.

By: Kirth

Kirth — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:12:53 +0000

Without the juxtaposition of the central narrative and Black Freighter, we aren’t allowed to see the sub-text of the story.

Which is:

“What would you do to save your wife, your children, the ones you love…the planet…EVERYTHING. How FAR would you go?”

It’s the entire point of Adrian’s story. Divorced from the central narrative, it’s just a weird cartoon.