Posted on 2/18/2009, 3:08:25 PM by Mobile Vulgus
If you thought the last Batman movie, The Dark Knight, was dark and cynical, wait until you see Watchmen, arriving in theaters on March 6, 2009. Brooding Bruce Wayne will have nothing on a "hero" that rapes his sidekick, another one that has no interest in mankind at all, one that is a megalomaniac, one that is psychotic, and one that is overweight and sexually impotent all set against a backdrop of a United States that is many shades of despair and evil. It makes Batman, The Dark Knight, seem like a festival of sweetness and light. This is the Watchmen, soon to be released by Warner Brothers. If this new flick at all follows that anti-American, nihilism of the original comic books we are in for some dark stuff, indeed.
Why do contemporary artists all seem to think the end of the world is nigh? Why has art become a thing of ugliness, instead of light? With all the beautiful things we see every day, the delicacy of a flower, the turn of a woman's arm, the grace of a bird in flight, we are treated only to the bizarre and horrid by our artists. These days we see sculptures that look like molecular mistakes writ large. We live in architecture with the image of a jumble of blocks thrown to the ground in the midst of a temper tantrum by a gigantic, petulant child. We view paintings that appear more accidental than planned. We have movies full of violence and anti-social behavior. On the radio we hear music that celebrates all the worst in man. We even have comic books that belittle heroism, that deconstruct the good and exceptional turning their heroes as cartoonishly flawed as the most obscene head case on the Jerry Springer Show.
When did entertainment turn so dark?
Read the rest at Publiusforum.com...
I’ll be there on opening night. It looks incredible.
Going to find out if it’s any good. So long as they are not depicting the East as innocent white lilies, this would be a fitting movie for out dark and hopeless times.
I don’t even want to watch cheery movies anymore. I find cheery movies to be even more depressing than the depressing ones. Just the apparent fact that everything in reality is getting shot to hell.
Looks to be a great movie. Great book and looking very well adapted. It’s a different story, generally credited with moving comics to the an area where they can tell grown up stories.
Many years ago National Review had a lengthy article contrasting Batman as conservative hero with Superman as an emblem of the leftist one-world philosophy.
It was great, I wish I had kept it.
I'm a graphic novel guy. JO Barr's The Crow. Gaiman's Sandman. Johnan's JHTM and Squee. Miller's 300. Alan Moore's V and Watchmen. Excellent stuff.
And yeah, I really do think V for Vendetta could have been done correctly without "Hollyweirding" the message as they did.
Zack was under pressure to change 300. He didn't. It made a ton of cash. This one will too...
You should meet Lazamataz...
The Prince of Darkness is "on-task" in these days...
Powers and beings that certainly exist...
And are capable of exerting extaordinary influence from the invisible spiritual realm...
...Are being dreamed about, and seen in the imaginations of these "artists"...
We are seeing glimpses through the eyes and creativity of our right-brained and free-spirited authors, screen-writers, producers, cartoonists and CGI-specialists of the movie industry....
So the questions are begged:
Are we going to continue to immerse our souls in what they are selling these days?....
OR.....
Are we going to choose to embrace the Light of The World??
*****************
*****************
And subsequently live -- acting and speaking --
...As Children of the Light??
Again... IMHO...
To "not decide" is to in fact... decide...
And a default affirmation for the dark side...
There is only one true source of Eternal Light!
Whichever choice we embrace -- Light or Dark -- then has our own permission to influence our thinking, values, and eventual behavior...
Choose life.... and enjoy it!
Walk in the light... without fear... or apology!
And be greatly encouraged....
Greater is He that is within you...
Than he (& his minions) that [remains] in the world
You are BAD!!!
Thanks for the info, I’ll check it out.
Just because a person likes dark entertainment doesn’t mean they’re under thrawl of Satan. It just means they understand not all of life is happy. I’ve always found dark entertainment to be very life affirming, I can focus my negative energies into dark stories like Watchmen or dark music like everything by Steely Dan or Metallica and then the story or song is over the dark energy stays there and leaves me with happy thoughts. It’s like an emotional vacuum cleaner, sucking out the dirt and leaving clean carpet behind.
Thanks. I loved 300 (so did my wife, although I don’t like to examine why too closely) and I enjoyed V simply as entertainment. Sin City was great as well. I choose to take out of these movies what I want, V was obviously skewed left, but the themes are applicable to my personal beliefs regardless of the Hollyweird spin.
The decided to censor a comic book, because “it depicted rape”.Yes, but thanks to their bold action, there have been no further actual rapes in Canada since.
Right?
It has been a long time coming, waiting for technology to catch up to the story. How faithful an adaptation remains to be seen. It's a long story with a lot of layers to it, so a lot will be chopped to fit it into the correct timeslot. And it'll get changed a bit because it's Hollywood.I've been watching the Watchmen "Motion Comic" from the Playstation online story (also available on iTunes, I believe). It's basically an audio book with pictures. It's very faithful to the original book. The narrator does a great job, overall, but he does all the voices, including the women, which takes a little getting used to.
Amen.
“The Passion of the Christ” was not a cheery, feel-good movie, but it was about a very important topic in Christianity — the circumstances surrounding the execution of Jesus Christ.
From what I’ve seen, it looks like they’re trying to copy the book exactly, which means it will be very dark. Rorschach is, IMHO, the most fascinating character. If they have to cut something, I hope it’s the Pirate comics Moore inserted. I didn’t think they added that much. Of course, what do I know? I thought the best part of LOTR was leaving out Tom Bombadil and I heard a lot of fans were upset about that.
V was very skewed. Evey's motivations, the Socialist/Fascist/Big Brother nature of the government, FATE, and the stupid little "unmasking" at the end of the movie. Too many changes for me to say I enjoyed the movie as much as the novel.
From what I've seen of Zack's work, that isn't the way he operates. The only real changes I think he may be making would be in Adrian's motivations/schemes and the excision of the Black Freighter from the theatrical release movie.
As long as the original themes come through, I'll be ok with that.
Now, you see, I would agree with you on that. I remember thinking that that comic was pointless. I've been told by many that, apparently, there was a point and I totally missed it. I've heard it foreshadows everything and I've heard that it mimics Shakespeare. (Again, it was a long time ago that I read it -- I actually read the 12 individual issues.)
Rorschach is great, although I wonder what they're going to do with his origin. I guess it depends upon if they set this story in the 1980s, which would make sense because part of it takes place during WWII, and the timing of everything is important. Rorschach's origin was based based on an actual event in NYC history (a low-point to be sure).
I thought the best part of LOTR was leaving out Tom Bombadil and I heard a lot of fans were upset about that.
I figured Bombadil would get the boot -- he didn't really add anything to the story or the quest that couldn't be added in some other, faster way.
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