Who watches the...the hell?

[sigma7]

Sorry if my comments went nutty on y'all this morning; my LJ connection went wonky and some of my comments...propagated themselves an inappropriate number of times. Temporal loop.

However, there've been some character shots posted online from the upcoming Watchmen movie. ("Look! It's Jeffrey Dean Morgan! And he's not dead!") Yet.

(Edit: link to the official site: One Year to Midnight. I'm a sucker for references to the Doomsday Clock.)

The first thing that strikes me is how much Morgan's Comedian rings true, and ditto for Rorschach (well, his is a pretty simple design, but effective). The second thing that I realize is that amid everything else that's happened in the last (gulp) 23 years between the book's publication and today has been Tim Burton's Batman movies -- the influence of which you can obviously see in the Nite Owl and Ozymandias outfits (sculpted abs!). Veidt looks way young, which I'm okay with -- he does look a bit too much like Seth Green in that shot (which would've been an interesting bit of casting...), but I'm willing to cut Snyder some slack. The Eye of Horus belt buckle...I don't know how I feel about that.

Not sure about the Silk Spectre's outfit; we don't see much of it, what's there is hair. Lycra, hair, skin and fists. The shopping list of gods.

So the original drowning-in-primary-colors costumes are more or less gone, and I'm good with that. The comic managed to give the heroes plausibility that I don't think would've extended to a cinematic incarnation in the same outfits. A little reimagination is just fine here (just keep the ending). It's just a little...unnerving to see them, realizing, oh my God this is really going to happen....

Comments

[alexlucard.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

The images are of the Watchmen in their prime, not the mid 80's. Supposedly "modern time" Night Owl looks more Adam Westish.

[(Anonymous)]

Nite Owl looks much cooler here than in the books. Looks doofy in print.

I can't wait to hear the negative press Moore will give this one, lol.

[jerrygarciuh.livejournal.com]

Heh, that was me.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Well, he's supposed to look kinda doofy. :)

[rainfletcher.livejournal.com]

(sigh) I guess now I'll finally have to read Watchmen.

What? Don't look at me like that. I've been intentionally avoiding it, though I doubt even I could tell you why anymore. Probably something to do with the way so many people would say to me "Oh, so you're a comic book reader? What did you think of Watchmen?"

But I guess now's a good time to finally read it so I can truly enjoy the WTFery that's no doubt going to come from the more vocal corners of the fandom.

I can truly vibe to your last sentence. I imagine I'll feel exactly the same way should there ever be a legit shot at an Elfquest movie.

[jkgriffin.livejournal.com]

The one thing I can say is I would have known who these people were (well, maybe not the Spectre) without any cues at all.

It is a little alarming to see the movie is really going to happen. I'm still not sure it really should.