Alternate WATCHMEN Movie Opening Better Than Snyder's IMO

You know what will be sick, the DVD/Blu Ray release. Theatrical Version and Graphic Noval Cut on the SE version is my guess. Zach Snyder did have tons of extra footage, but what was cut and altered to fit in a film format to convey the message the source material to fit into today's culture. I am pretty sure this would satify the fans who did want more content.

yeah that opening makes more sense. in the movie, it didn't make sense to have the two detectives because they really didn't serve a purpose, snyder could have just shown a scene of cops investigating and it would have the same affect, but the way it is put in this video gives the two detectives more purpose, because they are recapping how the comedian died (spoilers, not really whatevs).

Um...I think Snyder's was just fine.  I don't think that I need someone telling me that the chain was fastened when I saw it bust on the fucking screen in the movie, and I also don't need someone to tell me that the chain being fastened meant the occupant was home at the time.  I have a brain of my own and can figure that out...and especially since, ya know...I SAW THE COMEDIAN IN HIS HOME BEFORE IT HAPPENED!!!

I don't think there was anything wrong with the beginning, was interesting seeing a different take on things. Even though I would have loved things to follow the book page for page, a film needs to work a little differently. 

Yuck. Looks like someone took that shitty motion comic and edited it into the actual opening. The live action just doesn't mesh well with the motion comic.

"I don't think there was anything wrong with the beginning, was interesting seeing a different take on things. Even though I would have loved things to follow the book page for page, a film needs to work a little differently. "

I wasn't trying to disregard the discussion, was just stating that the film needed to work in a Hollywood-esque manner. Don't get me wrong I love the book, and obviously think the original material will always be better, Watchmen itself works better as a comic book and this is a film. I'm surprised so much of the source material was in tact in the cinema cut, if the directors cut can elaborate a little it would be interesting to see. 

No worries! Anyway, looking at the book it is clear that Moore sets out each chapter as a different outlook on morality, focusing on different characters in each whilst subtly building up the main story arc. I think for the film to cater to a wider popcorn movie audience, they had to change this. But yes, I agree that certain fight scenes, and the sex scene were far too drawn out where more substantial parts could have been put in. 

You need to realize that making a movie is different than making a GN. With a movie, you are going to need something to grab the attention of it's audience. You need to make them say "Holy crap, something exciting happened on the screen. Maybe I should be paying attention now." After that, you slip them some details that structure the plot. Snyder did just a fine job with the change he made. It was a little overly dramatic, but this is the guy who made 300...

If he went with the original opening, he would have lost the audience before he ever had a chance to gain them. People who hadn't read the GN would be bored and not fully understand what is going on because they are asking their buddy next to them what kind of Superhero movie this was where it didn't show the fight.

"You need to realize that making a movie is different than making a GN. With a movie, you are going to need something to grab the attention of it's audience. You need to make them say "Holy crap, something exciting happened on the screen. Maybe I should be paying attention now." After that, you slip them some details that structure the plot. Snyder did just a fine job with the change he made. It was a little overly dramatic, but this is the guy who made 300... If he went with the original opening, he would have lost the audience before he ever had a chance to gain them. People who hadn't read the GN would be bored and not fully understand what is going on because they are asking their buddy next to them what kind of Superhero movie this was where it didn't show the fight."

Why does it have to be exactly the same as the comic?

I get how the comic was doing it...just the same that I was getting how the movie was doing it.

I liked the opening. The only thing I didn't like was a few small things they left out, like Hollis Mason's death, and the weird talk show at the start, which should not have been there.

that opening makes more sense but it kills the tone. i felt like the movie captured the tone of the book well, throwing in allll that extra stuff would drag it down and make a boring fanboy movie. ya gotta understand, the watchmen was written in a way that exploited all the clever and cool things you could do with a comic. when you read that part of the book, you play out the scenes in your head and it all has a very dark sinister mysterious tone to it like they do in the film, but if you were to literally translate that scene into film it becomes long and boring. it all has to do with the idea that Moore created that story absolutely for the comic format. its kind of hard to explain this i suppose. 

by the way dont sit here saying you think the movie was a disgrace to alan moore. first off he doesn't give a fuck about any of it, especially whether or not YOU think it sucked. second, if you are going to keep complaining about the film, how about changing your avatar from the movie version.  

To be quite honest, I actually preferred the theatrical intro to the scrapped one. I know the point of Watchmen wasn't the fights, I read the comic, but comics and movies are two completely different mediums. You brought up that some themes like the JFK assassination being done by The Comedian shouldn't have been done so in your face but when considering a movie that cannot reasonably extend over a certain time period, cuts and changes like these not only make sense but actually helped me appreciate the story much more. Yes, the comic tried to avert itself from blatantly showing these ideas, themes, and plot points to you but when you have a comic that can take its time expressing these ideas to you and a movie that has to express these very same ideas in much fewer time and in much different setting, these changes must be made.

And lets take the added fight scenes into consideration. Watchmen did not show very many of these in the comic and when it did, they were pretty short and quite honestly, bland. But that's ok in a comic because one of the fundamental things you learn when reading a comic is filling in the spaces with your imagination. In one scene I see the hero jump out a window and the next he's on the floor subdued by the police. I can put in my mind whatever I decided happened in that scene to make up for these "missing" panels. In a movie however, these spaces need to be filled. When a movie leaves that much up to you to imagine, it tends to seem off and jumpy. So we get a scene of The Comedian fighting to save himself from his imminent death, we watch Rorschach continue to try to escape even after he is obviously overpowered, we see just how skilled and athletic Ozymandias (sp?) is in his snowy haven. To be quite honest though, I do not see the movie as having that many fight scenes. If we want to put up the comic as being this rebel that went against the grain of your typical super hero graphic novel, The Watchmen had a surprisingly small amount of fights when compared to your typical superhero movie. If I remember correctly, there's even a good hour or so that goes on without any significant confrontation and is just filled with story and development of who these characters are and the problems they are now experiencing in this world that probably needs them but doesn't want them. I actually thought the spirit was pretty well presented by the movie judging by my friend's reactions who hadn't read the comic at all and just watched the movie. They understood the Watchmen was something that concerned itself more with story rather than flashy scenes.

As people who read the comic, its really hard to truly say whether the message was properly depicted because we come in with a bias (good or bad) towards the film already which is why I mentioned my friends who came in as Watchmen virgins. They understood very well what the Watchmen was about, why it was important, and why the lack of fights and confrontation of the physical kind took a back seat to the mental and emotional confrontations. When we left, they weren't talking about the jail breakout but discussing how Rorschach became who he was. They didn't comment on Manhattan's schlong but on how he seemed to be so separated, distant, and beyond the humans. Is this the best adaptation of The Watchmen we will ever get? I don't know that, for all we know a child in South Africa eating his morning cereal may have the perfect vision for this movie. But from what we got, I say it was a pretty good job.

P.S. That sex scene, however, was way too over the top and unnecessary.

Also I just got the Black Freighter DVD today and I haven't watched it yet, but it looks like even THEY understood it better than Snyder. They realized that the Black Freighter was a metaphor for Veidt's exploits throughout the comic (it says it in the description on the box). This gives me hope for the Director's Cut being better since at least these parts will have known what they were doing.

I just finished the novel after seeing the movie(never heard of watchmen before that) and I was STUNNED about the stuff they left out of the movie.

I actually loved the pirate story that went along the with plot

I ending up feeling short changed quite a bit buy the movie,but if I had not read that novel I still would've loved the movie

"TwoOneFive said:

"by the way dont sit here saying you think the movie was a disgrace to alan moore. first off he doesn't give a fuck about any of it, especially whether or not YOU think it sucked. second, if you are going to keep complaining about the film, how about changing your avatar from the movie version.  

Also, why the hell would you want a direct adaptation of the book? then everyone would be saying wow snyder has no creative abilities as a director whatsoever. he made his version buddy, not alan moores. 

i'm not arguing the intro they could have done it that way with slightly different dialogue coming from the cops and better editing all together in that scene and it probably wouldnt add a lot of time at all to it. 

but there are many many many MANNNNYYY things they just had to leave out because they weren't too important (except for lauries struggle, i think the chic who played her was mis-cast, she had poor acting skills and never really made it clear how much distress she was in)"

First off, I never said that the film should have been a direct adaptation of the comic, I only said that Snyder's changes served no purpose intellectually. I suppose it makes sense to reel audiences in by starting out the film with a fight scene, but it's not my fault that they marketed the entire film as an action superhero flick. Plenty of films have a slower, more methodical and intellectual pace and I think it's stupid to defend this version by saying that audiences would have been too dumb and impatient to get farther than the first ten minutes of the film without a poorly shoehorned-in fight. Getting back to the point of direct adaptation however, what I was saying was that someone with more talent should have adapted it while being conscious of what's actually important in the comic. The main plotline is really just a MacGuffin for the themes to come through lampooning the superhero genre and the way the plot plays out is really only there to transition into memories and stories of inevitably doomed New Yorkers. The kind of Cold War paranoia that the entire comic was really about is completely removed. When Dr. Manhattan leaves, nobody gets nervous really, he just goes and comes back. In the comic he's gone for like 3 or 4 issues and you see how the city starts going to shit when their undeserved secret weapon is no longer there to fight for them. 

What I was saying throughout the whole thread (and what no one seems to want to accept, just assuming I'm trying to say it should have been the comic in cinematic form) is that Snyder seemed to think that the important parts of the comic were either the places where the superheroes fight or the parts where he just happened to get one of the double entendres, and the only parts where they're not fighting are either special effects showcases or explanation for why they're eventually going to fight later on in the movie. I think you don't give audiences enough credit by saying they wouldn't accept a movie that doesn't focus on the superhero fights, but understand this: I'm not saying that the film should have been more slow and brooding while still having the kinds of trailers it had now. They really marketed it as a superhero flick, so if they tricked audiences into going and they didn't get what they paid for I'd understand why they wouldn't want to stay after realizing it's not about action. If there was a clean slate however, and Terry Gilliam had the ads reflect more of what the final product would have been and audiences could have expected something more intelligent going in, then it would have been completely appropriate to make the kind of WATCHMEN I'm talking about.

It's really just a cop out for people to say "They obviously had to leave a lot of stuff out." That's not the point. The point is that Zach Snyder didn't get what he was supposed to leave in. Once in a while you could tell a certain line blew his mind (when Nite Owl asks Comedian "What happened to the American dream?" the scene soars to a completely inappropriate level of seriousness) but all in all we needed to either get some scholar who understood the story to explain to Zach and the entire cast what they should have been focusing on or just gotten a different director altogether.

"