March 10, 2009

Who reviews the reviews?


Welcome again to another review made by Spike Valentine (made famous by the time his dog bit him while jumping a fence), but, this time, in post-Watchmen movie period of history (which actually didn't do as good as it projected to be, box-office-wise, and there are many reasons for that), where everyone is a self-important, pseudo-intellectual that thanks to the internet, has an opinion. I will make my idiocy be heard by reviewing the reviews!

First of all, the one made by the guys of Comic Book Club (follow the link to see the review, dumbass...). Like Pete, I wasn't fond of the new ending, but, ok, I think that will work for new audiences. This one I think is a very good, objective, and unpretencious way to see the ups and downs of the picture with the eyes of people that actually reads comics, not just read Watchmen because of the film. You can catch their review of the comic-book right here as well ;)

Next, from NEXTNEWNETWORKS (former house of "the Stack" which was the show now known as Comic Book Club) we have the reviews from Beyond The Trailer and Movie Math.
These ones have more of a mainstream point of view to it, looking at it as mostly a movie and giving us the opinions of attendants (fans of the comic-book and civilians), the numbers behind the movie, and the opinion of the hot hosts. The only point I want to make here is, that, well, the yuppie girl in Beyond The Trailer said a movie should stand by itself, and I say it depends, for instance, The Dark Knight is not based on any specific comic-book arc or issue, in that case I think it's ok to think this way. BUT Watchmen is the adaptation of an specific, twelve-issue series and in this case, I think it should stay as faithful to the source material as possible. Grace Randolph, I think, is hot, but, didn't get Watchmen and it seems to be the only "graphic novel" she has touched, her personal review is mostly dumb and it shows that maybe she hasn't read Watchmen after all. I don't mind people that have not read it, just, say you haven't, don't try to be all "down" with culture you don't get.

Now, this blogger Blunty (alleged geek), he does have access to interesting sources (Zack Snyder, Malin Ackerman, Jeffery Dean Morgan) and saw the movie almost before everyone on earth. But, there must be a reason for it, and I didn´t realize it until I saw the film, this one mostly looks like propaganda. The guy is well informed, but if you see his review, for instances, claims there is almost no slo-mo, that is an actual lie. And what he says about the ending, is quite over the top, casting is either very good or very bad (Silk Spectre II), there´s Warner money behind this guy, which isn't bad, just don´t invest a lot in this guy's blog.

Now this idiot Cumonass, one of those morons that says the movie sucks to seem "cool" or "intelligent" (which he is not). He mostly reads some reviews and calls it a review on the film (as opposed to the review of the review). Doesn't add anything to the subject, don't waste your time, and now, for a real review...

Hollywood Elsewhere impresses the eye with this article on Watchmen named "A Staggering Failure". This review has some points other not-so-negative reviews have made about Malin's casting; Carla Gugino, for me, did quite a job with her watered-down role, Nite Owl II works very, very well as well. It also says storytelling is all over the place, which is not, I have seen it twice, once with comic-book devotees and once with civilians, in both cases, me and the rest of the people I watched it with liked it and understood the plot very well. Here we se the suspicion of WB paying for good reviews, well, dude, that happens all the time with most of the movies! Plus this review seems to be there with "I don't like it, so I must be cool", I would say this is biased by pretention.

Te common man review, the one's I've heard mostly agree on distracting music, the hideous casting of Malin Ackerman (there are so many way hot girls that also act way better), (most comic-book fans and I) weren't impressed with the new ending, and me and one friend agree on Rorschach's character was not a good adaptation (though this doesn't affect the movie, as a hardcore fan of Rorschach, I would have rather seen the monotonous one, though I realize that wouldn't have worked with new audiences, which is the main target).


"To hold a pen is to be at war."
-Voltaire-

2 comments:

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  2. I appreciate you posting this mainly because, as you know, you are my strongest link to the world of wonderful (geekyverse) therefore this post opened up a window into who is saying what about this film, and perhaps even a door to step into (like comicbookclub). The post also reminded me of the shock I had when watching Watchmen's ending. I think the original ending is more, uh, original? I thought the whole Veidt situation of recreating Dr. Manhattan's powers and letting him take the blame was a bit too Dark Knighty for me. Well I've said enough, if not too much.

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