Re: New director for Watchmen

42
well, after reading his explanation of the trailer, i'm ok with it. thought it looked good. not sure what anyone who's that familiar with the comics would have expected it to be onscreen in order to put butts in seats....

Re: New director for Watchmen

44
blah blah blah. the best post there was the one that pointed here:
http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/article/wa ... omparison/

that right there says, "hey all you people bitching about the trailer and how it's not true to the source - SHADDAP."

it's a trailer. point of which is to get people to pay to see the film. this film is going to encounter the same issues any "book to film" movie is going to - no matter what you do, it's not going to live up to the version some people have in their heads from reading the source material six hundred times.

the other problem i have with that thread is everyone - all of them - are saying "graphic novel". how old are these people? if you weren't right there when it came out, you can't really have a feel for how it changed everything, a month at a time, in a 12-issue mini-series.

Re: New director for Watchmen

45
Nah, that's a good forum. Some idiots, like everywhere, but also some people who know their stuff. The Watchmen thread is just for laughs, really - the main topic of the day would be something like an Abel Gance restoration or a new Mizoguchi boxset ;)

Re: New director for Watchmen

46
While there's certainly plenty of visual touchstone to the source material, the trailer didn't look particularly good in comparison to TDK, which is probably what many people were thinking after the whole viewing experience--audiences are getting bored of extensive CGI and you see that reflected in TDK's overall success; people are wowed anew by something that looks like a real film of real people. Combine that comparison with the fact that Watchmen is much more of an ubergeek totem than a widely known group of characters/story, and it's no wonder the masses at the multiplexes were scratching their heads.
"I'm like a dog chasing cars, I wouldn't know what to do if I caught one. . . . I'm not a schemer. I just do things."

Re: New director for Watchmen

47
Alexhead wrote:audiences are getting bored of extensive CGI and you see that reflected in TDK's overall success; people are wowed anew by something that looks like a real film of real people.
It'll be interesting to rewatch Batman Begins now because of this... the first movie seems relatively super-heavy on CGI in comparison to TDK.
This is a snakeskin jacket. And for me it's a symbol of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom.

Re: New director for Watchmen

48
O-dot wrote:
Alexhead wrote:audiences are getting bored of extensive CGI and you see that reflected in TDK's overall success; people are wowed anew by something that looks like a real film of real people.
It'll be interesting to rewatch Batman Begins now because of this... the first movie seems relatively super-heavy on CGI in comparison to TDK.

Oh absolutely, especially in the second half. There is a piece of technology Batman uses at the end of TDK that involves some cgi, but it's basically his radar system, not what's going on in the rest of the 'real' world.
"I'm like a dog chasing cars, I wouldn't know what to do if I caught one. . . . I'm not a schemer. I just do things."

Re: New director for Watchmen

50
EW wrote:About two years ago, Warner Bros. announced that 300 director Zack Snyder would be adapting that gold standard of comics, Watchmen, into a feature film. The response was nothing short of orgiastic — from just about everyone except Watchmen's own scribe, Alan Moore, who remains ambivalent about all the hoopla. The 54-year-old writer and co-creator of such seminal and erudite works as From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (both of which were adapted into eagerly anticipated movies that failed to match the quality of Moore's source material) has a tangled history with the entertainment business. Even in a time when comics creators are more influential than ever (heck, The Spirit producers even gave comics great Frank Miller the helm), Moore simply wants to be left alone.

It's no surprise that Moore has been accused of being comics' Orson Welles — exceedingly talented, if profoundly prickly — and perhaps in certain incidents he's earned that description. But when EW phoned him at his home in Northampton, England, we encountered a very different creature, one not unlike (if we can be so bold) his DC Comics character from 1983, Swamp Thing. Like the gentle giant who fought abominable invaders to save his wetland digs, the soft-spoken, somewhat reclusive Moore (himself an imposing figure, what with his curtain of hair and thicket of beard) battles Hollywood producers and mainstream comics publishers — fiscally minded forces he perceives as sullying his creative properties. In this wide-ranging conversation, Moore talks in depth about those struggles, as well as about the new Watchmen movie, his upcoming League of Extraordinary Gentlemen installment, his next novel, magic, his favorite TV shows, singing along to South Park, and whether he'll ever shave his beard.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Don't you have the slightest curiosity about what Watchmen director Zack Snyder is doing with your work?
ALAN MOORE: I would rather not know.

He's supposed to be a very nice guy.
He may very well be, but the thing is that he's also the person who made 300. I've not seen any recent comic book films, but I didn't particularly like the book 300. I had a lot of problems with it, and everything I heard or saw about the film tended to increase [those problems] rather than reduce them: [that] it was racist, it was homophobic, and above all it was sublimely stupid. I know that that's not what people going in to see a film like 300 are thinking about but...I wasn't impressed with that.... I talked to [director] Terry Gilliam in the '80s, and he asked me how I would make Watchmen into a film. I said, ''Well actually, Terry, if anybody asked me, I would have said, 'I wouldn't.''' And I think that Terry [who aborted his attempted adaptation of the book] eventually came to agree with me. There are things that we did with Watchmen that could only work in a comic, and were indeed designed to show off things that other media can't.

Do you think that any good can come of comics movies?
I increasingly fear that nothing good can come of almost any adaptation, and obviously that's sweeping. There are a couple of adaptations that are perhaps as good or better than the original work. But the vast majority of them are pointless.

You haven't enjoyed any comics adaptations? Even the indie films?
ALAN MOORE: There are none that leap to mind. I hear that the American Splendor film was pretty good. I didn't go and see the film; I waited until Harvey [Pekar] and [his wife] Joyce came over to our house — so I got the live talk. We got to show them all around town — that was, for me, better than the film.

Has Warner Bros. tried to contact you about Watchmen?
No, they've all been told not to. They get the message.... I don't want anyone who works for DC comic books to contact me ever again, or I'll change my number.... And I only started to get upset when I found out they [DC Comics] were trying to rob me of a couple thousand pounds. It was over the Watchmen merchandising back in the '80s, and they kind of eventually said, Oh, yeah, I suppose you do deserve this money. But by that time the damage was done. The only reason I ended up working for them again, during the ABC period from '99-'04, [was because] I had already signed the contracts. [Editor's note: DC Comics President and Publisher Paul Levitz responds: ''We've had our disagreements with Alan over the years, but we remain great fans of his talent and would be happy to work with him in the future if he's ever inclined.'']
there is more to the interview, some interesting stuff. nothing about Watchmen.

Re: New director for Watchmen

51
don't know how i missed this when it came out last month, this is hilarious:
MTV wrote:EXCLUSIVE: Zack Snyder Reveals Secrets In ‘Watchmen’ Trailer

It’s a sacred comic, bobbing and weaving throughout the hallmarks of popular culture as if it were Forrest Gump’s evil twin. It explores the very nature of the “blockbuster,” deconstructing our popcorn heroes with the tools of philosophy, theology and morality. So it only makes sense that Steven Spielberg, the man who has shaped so much of our modern entertainment, would get an off-kilter shout-out in the new “Watchmen” trailer.

“I take this heart-attack serious, I really do,” director Zack Snyder explained to me this week when he sat down with MTV to give his only interview regarding the eye-popping first trailer for his 3.6.09 movie. “If you look, there’s one super-crazy Easter egg.”

One of the reasons we love the writer/director is because he “gets” the fans — as evidenced by the blink-and-you-miss-it Rorschach test footage he snuck into a “300″ trailer last year. He knows that people are so excited for “Watchmen” that they’ll be watching the trailer frame-by-frame as it floods the Internet — so now, he’s at it again.

“If you look, when you see Adrian [Veidt] hitting this would-be assassin in the trailer, the guy gets hit with a stanchion, one of those brass stanchions, and the guy flies in the fountain,” Snyder revealed to us, making reference to the scene in Alan Moore’s classic comic where Ozymandias avoids an assassination attempt.

“[The assassin] has a gun,” Snyder explained, remembering the difficult process of transforming his dark, R-rated film into a trailer for the masses. “So the MPAA said, ‘Look you can’t have him [holding the gun]‘ … I don’t even think it’s one second. I think it’s like 12 frames. He’s pointing the gun at the camera, and they said, ‘You can’t do that.’”

For years, the MPAA has prohibited weapons from being pointed at the “viewer” in advertising, presumably for fear that it will freak them out. That’s why you always see guns pointed at angles on movie posters and in film trailers.

“So we erased the gun,” Snyder grinned. “And put a walkie-talkie in his hand.”

As many film geeks remember — and are still angry about — Steven Spielberg famously re-released his family classic “E.T.” in 2002 after using CGI to transform the gun-wielding federal agents into less-threatening agents holding walkie-talkies.

“It was a total Spielberg reference,” laughed Snyder. “Because I was like, ‘Well, it worked for Spielberg, so we should do that. Just put a walkie-talkie in his hand!’ … [The editors] were like, ‘But then you cut to a real gun!’ but I’m like, ‘No one will ever see that; they’ll think he had a gun in the other shot, so it’s fine.’”

Take a close look and you’ll see the two shots at 1:30 in. The first shows a walkie-talkie, and then we see the gun.

“I was thinking about it afterwards, and I was like, “Damn, we should have given him a bouquet of flowers, or a box of candy,” Snyder laughed. “Maybe next time.”

Re: New director for Watchmen

52
anyone who was as geeked when the watchmen series first came out will remember these ads, originally for comic stores. zack's redone them as onesheets:
medium_2703373070_03f3a24d3a_o[1].jpg
medium_2702552049_ee10cb1e88_o[1].jpg
medium_2702552095_ed9308f361_o[1].jpg
medium_2702552173_f88155ab4d_o[1].jpg
medium_2702552231_9bdeb1390a_o[1].jpg
medium_2702552303_88bd748893_o[2].jpg
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.

Re: New director for Watchmen

53
VH1 wrote:'Watchmen' Director Zack Snyder Discusses Challenges Of Taking Comic To The Big Screen
Plus, he addresses film's running time: 'I just don't want to lose any story line.'

These days, "300" director Zack Snyder is hard at work perfecting the impossible. As you read this, he is undoubtedly in some dark edit bay, unshaven and chugging a Starbucks, doing his very best to transform "Watchmen" from an unfilmable comic book into the next smash superhero movie.

So far, what we've seen of his efforts has been nothing short of perfection, from the trailer to the fan-pleasing in-jokes to the decision to have My Chemical Romance cover a Bob Dylan song for the end credits.

But how does he deal with the issue of Dr. Manhattan's crotch? What does he do when the script demands that he cut secondary characters like Hooded Justice? And why won't the creator of the graphic novel stop trashing Snyder when he hasn't even seen the movie? In a candid chat with MTV, the director of the March 2009 flick gave us a rundown of the landmines he's tiptoeing around while crafting a cinematic event worthy of the "Watchmen" name.

MTV: When "Watchmen" was first published in 1986-87, it was a shock to readers who'd become accustomed to clear-cut, antiseptic superheroes. After all the men-in-tights movies we've seen in the last few years, are moviegoers similarly ripe for a film that tears apart the mythologies of a Batman type, a Superman type and others?

Zack Snyder: Well, that's the hope. The hope is that people see their icons in this movie, and they see them deconstructed. That creates a conversation that is transcendent of a superhero movie. It's not just "Oh, that was fun, let's get a beer," but "That was great! Let's talk about it!" or "What does that mean?"

MTV: "Watchmen" creator Alan Moore recently gave an interview to Entertainment Weekly in which he reinforced his hatred toward any movie version of his book. Moore said he "would rather not know" what you do with your movie and that "There are things that we did with 'Watchmen' that could only work in a comic." How do you feel about his comments?

Snyder: I think it's consistent with his stance, and I respect that. Like I say, the point of the movie is not to replace the graphic novel. Look, after the trailer came out, "Watchmen" went to #2 on Amazon and suddenly hundreds of thousands of copies of the graphic novel are selling. That's all I can ask for. If the movie is successful, that's great. But in the end, I want people to read [Moore's] book.

MTV: It's no secret that Nite Owl is based somewhat on Batman. With the success of Christopher Nolan's films, did you try to ramp up such comparisons?

Snyder: Well, Nite Owl's still a character who is a rich guy. He decided to become a crime-fighter. He lives in a brownstone. Under his brownstone is an abandoned subway station that he's turned into his Owl Chamber, as he calls it. He's built this ship; he's a genius of gadgetry. He has gadgets, and you could call him a gadget-based superhero. He has a grappling gun, and he throws things, and so he is very Batman-esque in that way. He was based on Batman as well as Blue Beetle.

MTV: You've said before that the character is like Batman if Batman couldn't get it up.

Snyder: [Laughs.] Yeah, that's just real. You've got to have that scene.

MTV: At Comic-Con, you revealed some very cool new "Watchmen" posters. What was the inspiration behind them?

Snyder: There were some materials that David [Gibbons] had created to advertise the book. We took those and said, "Let's just make some versions of that with Photoshop magic and re-create them almost exactly." [The Sally Jupiter] one we had to make up; that's the only one we didn't have. They were actually designed to be put in comic book stores to advertise the book. They were drawings that looked exactly like that.

MTV: Another big question, pardon the pun, is Dr. Manhattan's crotch area. He's naked in many scenes. So did you CGI things out or enhance them or what?

Snyder: It's an R-rated movie, right? What you see in the trailer had to be a little bit squished around so it could get on TV. I think in the final film, you'll see it's true to the graphic novel. He's naked.

MTV: Malin Akerman's Silk Spectre costume also looks beautiful but seems like it would need some serious technical assistance.

Snyder: It's all latex. It's a very tight latex suit that we had to oil her up to get her into. [Laughs.]

MTV: Was it hard for her to deal with?

Snyder: I think it was uncomfortable, but we were like, "It's sexy." And so she was like, "I guess it's OK." ... She was constantly like, "Ow, it's poking me here!" and I was like, "Well, that's the superhero lifestyle!"

MTV: The footage you've shown gives us a brief peek at some secondary Watchmen like Dollar Bill. But you almost cut out Hooded Justice, correct?

Snyder: Yeah, it was hard [to get them all in]. There was a point where Hooded Justice wasn't in the movie. But then I was like, "No, we've got to have him in," so we had to scramble and get him in. Hooded Justice is in the movie, and he beats up Blake.

MTV: What's the current run time on the flick?

Snyder: Right now, it runs at around two hours and 50 minutes. I'm trying to make it shorter, because it's better if it's shorter, apparently. There is an online petition that says, "Keep 'Watchmen' at three hours." We'll see how that ends. Look, I just don't want to lose any story line, because you know eventually that's what happens. You start to have to cut characters out, and I just don't want to do that.

MTV: Where do you stand with "Tales of the Black Freighter"?

Snyder: We're waiting for some of the animation to come in, and we're just working on the edit. We did get Gerry Butler to do the voice. He's being the voice of the Sea Captain.

MTV: Can you tell us about a moment creating the "Watchmen" movie where you dared to veer away from the comic?

Snyder: Wow. ... I added dialogue between Nixon and Kissinger — that kind of stuff was fun to do. It's Nixon and Kissinger, and they're older than we would remember them, because it's 1985.

MTV: Are the Watchmen in these scenes?

Snyder: No, we [cut] to scenes with them. There are scenes where Nixon goes to the War Room, and they're talking about the escalating war with the Russians. It's that line of the story. ... In most cases, it's elaboration.

MTV: You're making a movie out of a literary classic, where everybody knows how it ends. Do you find yourself fighting the desire to change the ending and just throw a curveball at all the die-hard fans?

Snyder: I don't. There's something that happens in the graphic novel at the very, very end with one of the lead characters and how he resolves things that is not very Hollywood. ... Basically, the graphic novel offers us a moral dilemma. That's the crux of the book: It offers you a moral dilemma about what's the right thing to do. It's so complex that the true answer of what is right is not an easy one-line fix [typical] for Hollywood. ... In order to create the conversation at the end of the movie, in order to create the debate about whether it's right or wrong, you need to do it a certain way. And that's what we tried to do. ... For the fans, it's not about what happens at the end. It's about being able to have that conversation after the end.

Re: New director for Watchmen

54
Thanks for the Moore interview, comes across a lot more like a respectable artist than a crotchety old prick, which is how I'd envisioned him before.
"I'm like a dog chasing cars, I wouldn't know what to do if I caught one. . . . I'm not a schemer. I just do things."

Re: New director for Watchmen

55
well, this is certainly potentially awful news:
Slashfilm wrote:Judge Won’t Dismiss Fox’s Watchmen Lawsuit

Earlier this year, 20th Century Fox filed a copy infringement and breach of contract lawsuit against Warner Bros over the big screen rights of the upcoming comic book adaptation Watchmen. Fox alleged that it had the “exclusive copyright and contract rights” to “produce and develop the picture and to distribute the work throughout the world.” When the story was first reported, many wrote it off as baseless. Even I assumed that it would be thrown out of court or quickly settled for a small amount of cash. WRONG.

Not only did the judge deny a motion by Warner Bros to dismiss the lawsuit, but according to Nikki Finke, he appeared to conclude that Fox actually retains the rights under a 1994 agreement with producer Larry Gordon. Of course, his opinion could change over the course of litigation, but this doesn’t look good for Warner Bros.

According to the suit, Fox acquired all motion picture rights to Watchmen through a series of contracts with the author, and subsequent screenplays by Charles McKeown and Sam Hamm. This has been certified by the U.S. Copyright Office. In 1994, Fox and producer Larry Gordon entered into an agreement that would require a buy-out payment if a Watchmen movie was ever produced, in addition for profit participation of 2.5 percent of 100 percent of net profits on any motion pictures that result (this includes sequels and spin-offs such as The Black Freighter). According to the lawsuit , neither Gordon nor Warner Bros has paid Fox the buy-out amount. Warner Bros insists that they have the sole rights to the project.

So what does this mean for the future of Zack Snyder’s Watchmen? I’m not a lawyer, so I really have no idea. The court is still considering Fox’s motion for an injunction to prevent the film from being distributed to theaters in March 2009. Who knows what will happen at the end of the day. Could Fox walk off with Zack Snyder’s film? I’m guessing the more likely scenario involved Warner Bros ponying up tens of millions of dollars, and possibly some back end points.

Re: New director for Watchmen

56
but, in the good news department:
/film wrote:
Kevin Smith Has Seen Watchmen: “It’s F**king Astounding”


At the Entertainment Weekly Visionaries panel at Comic Con, writer/director Kevin Smith was raving hard about the Watchmen footage which had premiered at the Con. After that I had a feeling that Zack Snyder, who was also on the panel, was going to show the film to Smith. And I was right. Kevin Smith has seen Watchmen. And while he couldn’t give the film a full review due to a NDA, he did have a couple things to say about the film:
“I saw Watchmen. It’s fucking astounding. The Non-Disclosure Agreement I signed prevents me from saying much, but I can spout the following with complete joygasmic enthusiasm: Snyder and Co. have pulled it off. Remember that feeling of watching Sin City on the big screen and being blown away by what a faithful translation of the source material it was, in terms of both content and visuals? Triple that, and you’ll come close to watching Watchmen. Even Alan Moore might be surprised at how close the movie is to the book. March can’t come soon enough.”
I think most of the /Film readers will also agree - March can’t come soon enough.

Re: New director for Watchmen

57
Fox will get a piece of the pie but I suspect a deal will be worked out. They get nothing if the pic isn't released, and they're not going to get the whole thing.
"I'm like a dog chasing cars, I wouldn't know what to do if I caught one. . . . I'm not a schemer. I just do things."

Re: New director for Watchmen

58
Alexhead wrote:Fox will get a piece of the pie but I suspect a deal will be worked out. They get nothing if the pic isn't released, and they're not going to get the whole thing.
What you say makes logical sense, but of course these are studios we're talking about. This is almost the same situation that's kept the original Batman TV series from being released on dvd all these years (Fox owns the show, Time Warner the character). But given the amount of money that has been spent on the film already, I suspect Warner will want to come to a deal with Fox quickly to avoid losing actual money they've spent. It might not even be cash, it might be rights or something else. Right now all DC characters and properties are locked up with Warner, and I'm sure Fox would love to get their hands on one of them. They might say, okay, you can use Watchmen, if you let us do so and so (not one of the big three of course).
Just cut them up like regular chickens