Watchmen?

[Dottore]

Originally Posted by Laneco

This is really not a good movie.

Old Nepalese proverb: "When rats mate, don't expect lions."

In other words: "Don't expect great cinema from a comic book."

[emcon5]

Originally Posted by Dottore

In other words: "Don't expect great cinema from a comic book."

Yeah, but as far as "Comic Books" go, Watchmen is something pretty special. This excerpt from it's Wikipedia entry sums it up well:

Watchmen received critical praise, both inside and outside of the comics industry. Time, which noted that the series was "by common assent the best of breed" of the new wave of comics published at the time, praised Watchmen as "a superlative feat of imagination, combining sci-fi, political satire, knowing evocations of comics past and bold reworkings of current graphic formats into a dysutopian [sic] mystery story."[59] In 1988, Watchmen received a Hugo Award in the Other Forms category.[60] Since its release, Watchmen has garnered acclaim as a seminal work of the comic book medium. In Art of the Comic Book: An Aesthetic History, Robert Harvey wrote that with Watchmen, Moore and Gibbons "had demonstrated as never before the capacity of the [comic book] medium to tell a sophisticated story that could be engineered only in comics".[61] In his review of the Absolute Edition of the collection, Dave Itzkoff of The New York Times wrote that the dark legacy of Watchmen, "one that Moore almost certainly never intended, whose DNA is encoded in the increasingly black inks and bleak storylines that have become the essential elements of the contemporary superhero comic book," is "a domain he has largely ceded to writers and artists who share his fascination with brutality but not his interest in its consequences, his eagerness to tear down old boundaries but not his drive to find new ones."[62] In 1999, The Comics Journal ranked Watchmen at number 91 on its list of the Top 100 English-Language Comics of the 20th Century.[63] Watchmen was the only graphic novel to appear on Time's 2006 list of "the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present".[64] Time critic Lev Grossman described the story as "a heart-pounding, heartbreaking read and a watershed in the evolution of a young medium."[65] In 2008, Entertainment Weekly placed it at number 13 on its list of the best 50 novels printed in the last 25 years, describing it as "The greatest superhero story ever told and proof that comics are capable of smart, emotionally resonant narratives worthy of the label literature."[66] In 2009 Lydia Millet of The Wall Street Journal contested that Watchmen was worthy of such acclaim, and wrote that while the series' "vividly drawn panels, moody colors and lush imagery make its popularity well-deserved, if disproportionate", that "it's simply bizarre to assert that, as an illustrated literary narrative, it rivals in artistic merit, say, masterpieces like Chris Ware's 'Acme Novelty Library' or almost any part of the witty and brilliant work of Edward Gorey".[67]

[jyl]

I am going to predict that the box office drops off rather precipitously after the first weekend such that the movie is not a commercial success.

[jeffgrant]

Originally Posted by jyl

I am going to predict that the box office drops off rather precipitously after the first weekend such that the movie is not a commercial success.

The director (Zack Snyder) intentionally made the film to cater to those that have read the graphic novel and had some understanding of the context before seeing the movie. He also stayed remarkably true to the original content (with the exception of the ending).

Therefore it's no big surprise that the movie does not do a good job as a standalone movie, as that previous knowledge is almost required to enjoy it. Unless you're just into big blue penises and cool blow-em-up special effects.


I bet it easily makes more than enough in DVD sales that it will be a commercial success. It might even be able to do that from the box office, but it'll be close.

Many people that I know have intentions of seeing the movie, and the vast majority of them are just waiting for the original throngs of kids to die down a bit before they do. Don't forget that this graphic novel came out 20+ years ago, so the legions of old-school fans of this movie will be much, much older than the typical "rush to the movie the first weekend it's out" crowd. They would also tend to get the whole "cold war" headspace better than the youth of today.

So yes, I think the numbers will die off compared to the opening weekend, but not completely, and they will remain significant for a while yet. Also, it's important to realize that the exceptionally long running time of the movie results in a significantly decreased number of people that are physically able to see the movie on the opening weekend.


$0.02

[jyl]

I hope you're right. The movie introduced me to the "watchmen" novel (well actually you did) so I kind of got two birds instead of one. It did open very widely, which puts a higher bar on the first weekend take, and DVD sales are in a worrying decline. Plus "Race to Witch Mountain" is getting some buzz.