![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
straight from the 9pm IMAX screening
!!!!
God I wish I could come up with a thoughtful, joyful, geeky analysis of this film, but it's past midnight and I have a 9am lecture tomorrow and I'm just going to jot down my strongest impressions for posterity.
~
That was...faithful. Surprisingly, sometimes sublimely so. The images were there, the dialogue was there, the mood was about the closest I've ever seen a film adaptation of a comic. And even though a few of the major reveals (namely: Laurie's discovery about her father) suffered in the transition from graphic novel to screen, I thought they were acceptable casualities considering the quality of the film as a whole.
The changes that were made to the plot worked, also to my surprise. More on that later.
I don't know if Zack Snyder just has a real violence kink or what, because -- Jesus. It's a phenomenally violent graphic novel, and the film was even more violent. But in one sense this worked very well to build up the sense that the world was rotten, breaking, crumbling, hurtling towards its own destruction, and this was absolutely necessary to establish because:
We come to my #1 gripe with the film. Ozymandias. Let me state first off that I thought Matthew Goode was amazing, that his portrayal of Veidt's bleak and singleminded pursuit of what he saw to be right was flawless and utterly believable. And yet -- Ozymandias didn't smile. He delivered threats; quiet threats, but threats nonetheless. He wasn't the warm, charming, charismatic character that Moore goes to unusual pains to describe to us in the novel (using the interview/magazine article). And so -- well, I don't KNOW what it would have been like to watch the film without any knowledge of the novel (confusing as all fuck, I suspect), but it seemed like Veidt was being foreshadowed as the villain with a very disappointing lack of subtlety, simply because he wasn't at all sympathetic.
(Though DEAR GOD, his hair was made of MAGIC, and I wanted to leap through the screen and molest him pretty much every time he appeared. Um. Shallow of me. But sdkjajxnms I already found Matthew Goode attractive when he was playing the tragic noble boyfriend, so seeing him play a genius who creates his own morality through the prerogative of intelligence and power -- if you don't know how much I adore this theme in fiction by now, well, KEEP UP -- was kind of bone-melting. Gnnnn.)
There are a couple of other problems I had with the ending -- not the substitution of Jon's power for the giant psychic squid, that made an already-complex plot seem neater and more self-contained and frankly less insane than it might otherwise have, and I had no problems with it at all. But the fact that Daniel witnesses and reacts so strongly to Rorschach's death, and the fact that the audience is never quite given enough time to realise the depth of the moral decision he and Laurie end up making...that didn't quite work. The most important line of dialogue in the entire film -- 'Failing to prevent Earth's salvation is your only triumph' -- got a bit lost, it went by so fast. We NEED to hear that, and we need to be given time to let it sink in, even if we don't agree with it completely. The scope of what Veidt has done shouldn't be overshadowed by the fact that we were never able to like him as a person or the fact that we're still feeling angry on Daniel's behalf. The film couldn't slow down for long enough for the moral ambiguity, the horrible truth, to hit the audience fully.
Veidt standing there and letting Daniel punch him into the TV screens, though, that was awesome. It rescued the final scenes for me.
And I could bitch about the fine points for ages but really, I was just thrilled and floored to see the characters come so strongly to life. Jeffrey Dean Morgan was inspired casting as the Comedian; I doubt anyone could have pulled him off better. Patrick Wilson is always a strong actor, but he matched the Daniel/Nite Owl in my head (BOTH of them, yes, which was no mean feat) to a degree that was almost scary. I had initial doubts about Laurie because I thought Malin Akerman seemed too young, but her look was right, and she did a good job. No real complaints there.
Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach, though. Holy shit. He & Morgan & Goode had enough screen presence between them to carry five films on their shoulders.
And back to the shallow: the fight scenes were bordering on gorgeous when they weren't busy being overexplicit. I liked Nite Owl and Silk Spectre fighting their way through the jail, and I (predictably) LOVED getting to see Ozymandias fight at the end. They never made much reference to the fact that he's a gymnast in the film, but watching him fight, it was hard to miss. Wow.
*exhales*
Yeah, that was great.
God I wish I could come up with a thoughtful, joyful, geeky analysis of this film, but it's past midnight and I have a 9am lecture tomorrow and I'm just going to jot down my strongest impressions for posterity.
~
That was...faithful. Surprisingly, sometimes sublimely so. The images were there, the dialogue was there, the mood was about the closest I've ever seen a film adaptation of a comic. And even though a few of the major reveals (namely: Laurie's discovery about her father) suffered in the transition from graphic novel to screen, I thought they were acceptable casualities considering the quality of the film as a whole.
The changes that were made to the plot worked, also to my surprise. More on that later.
I don't know if Zack Snyder just has a real violence kink or what, because -- Jesus. It's a phenomenally violent graphic novel, and the film was even more violent. But in one sense this worked very well to build up the sense that the world was rotten, breaking, crumbling, hurtling towards its own destruction, and this was absolutely necessary to establish because:
We come to my #1 gripe with the film. Ozymandias. Let me state first off that I thought Matthew Goode was amazing, that his portrayal of Veidt's bleak and singleminded pursuit of what he saw to be right was flawless and utterly believable. And yet -- Ozymandias didn't smile. He delivered threats; quiet threats, but threats nonetheless. He wasn't the warm, charming, charismatic character that Moore goes to unusual pains to describe to us in the novel (using the interview/magazine article). And so -- well, I don't KNOW what it would have been like to watch the film without any knowledge of the novel (confusing as all fuck, I suspect), but it seemed like Veidt was being foreshadowed as the villain with a very disappointing lack of subtlety, simply because he wasn't at all sympathetic.
(Though DEAR GOD, his hair was made of MAGIC, and I wanted to leap through the screen and molest him pretty much every time he appeared. Um. Shallow of me. But sdkjajxnms I already found Matthew Goode attractive when he was playing the tragic noble boyfriend, so seeing him play a genius who creates his own morality through the prerogative of intelligence and power -- if you don't know how much I adore this theme in fiction by now, well, KEEP UP -- was kind of bone-melting. Gnnnn.)
There are a couple of other problems I had with the ending -- not the substitution of Jon's power for the giant psychic squid, that made an already-complex plot seem neater and more self-contained and frankly less insane than it might otherwise have, and I had no problems with it at all. But the fact that Daniel witnesses and reacts so strongly to Rorschach's death, and the fact that the audience is never quite given enough time to realise the depth of the moral decision he and Laurie end up making...that didn't quite work. The most important line of dialogue in the entire film -- 'Failing to prevent Earth's salvation is your only triumph' -- got a bit lost, it went by so fast. We NEED to hear that, and we need to be given time to let it sink in, even if we don't agree with it completely. The scope of what Veidt has done shouldn't be overshadowed by the fact that we were never able to like him as a person or the fact that we're still feeling angry on Daniel's behalf. The film couldn't slow down for long enough for the moral ambiguity, the horrible truth, to hit the audience fully.
Veidt standing there and letting Daniel punch him into the TV screens, though, that was awesome. It rescued the final scenes for me.
And I could bitch about the fine points for ages but really, I was just thrilled and floored to see the characters come so strongly to life. Jeffrey Dean Morgan was inspired casting as the Comedian; I doubt anyone could have pulled him off better. Patrick Wilson is always a strong actor, but he matched the Daniel/Nite Owl in my head (BOTH of them, yes, which was no mean feat) to a degree that was almost scary. I had initial doubts about Laurie because I thought Malin Akerman seemed too young, but her look was right, and she did a good job. No real complaints there.
Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach, though. Holy shit. He & Morgan & Goode had enough screen presence between them to carry five films on their shoulders.
And back to the shallow: the fight scenes were bordering on gorgeous when they weren't busy being overexplicit. I liked Nite Owl and Silk Spectre fighting their way through the jail, and I (predictably) LOVED getting to see Ozymandias fight at the end. They never made much reference to the fact that he's a gymnast in the film, but watching him fight, it was hard to miss. Wow.
*exhales*
Yeah, that was great.
no subject
The music. OH, THE MUSIC. Most of it I adored to pieces, especially the use of Sound of Silence, but I was giggling all through Hallelujah. I think what saved it was my satisfaction at the fact that the movie reclaimed the Leonard Cohen song from the bazillions of covers and popular versions that have been used in every TV show since Shrek (of all things) resurrected it in the first place.
no subject
I also loved how intricate the world that'd been built was - the cowboys instead of other costumes and the montage at the beginning was sheer genius.
And god, Rorschach carried that role. He totally lived it in a way that didn't quite click for me in the comic.