I waited and waited and finally the other day I found the Ultimate Watchmen DVD package. It seemed more than a fair price relative to the prices for the individual parts.
This is the director's cut with the Black Freighter material interpolated. I've not watched it yet. I've only gandered at a few of the special features and I'm currently watching the Motion Comic version of the story.
In regard to the latter, I'm pretty impressed. I grew up with the old Marvel Super-Heroes cartoons, so using actual comic art and manipulating it to create "animation" is a technique my genetic code responds well to.
I'm not a diehard Watchmen fan by any means. But I am a diehard Charlton Action-Hero fan and this is as close to a movie featuring my Charlton faves as I'm ever going to get. Rorschach is the Question through and through after years of bitter battle against crime. It makes perfect sense. Dr.Manhattan is what Captain Atom might become after he realizes he's not human anymore. The Nite Owl is the Blue Beetle, Bug and all, but at a quieter time in his life. And Ozymandias makes an ideal dark image of what Peter Cannon might become if his attitude slipped a bit out of kilter. Great stuff.
I liked the movie when it appeared last year. It was pretty entertaining, and I'm not one of those folks who thinks a movie must adhere slavishly to its source material. This is a pretty good adaptation, and I'm very interested to see it in its ideal form.
More later.
Rip Off
does it have the Under The Hood feature woven in there, as well, Rip?
ReplyDeleteNot laced within the narrative. Under the Hood is on the special features disk intact.
ReplyDeleteI watched it all this past weekend and I liked it pretty well. The Black Freighter stuff was neatly narrated by Gerard Butler, and it was well blended in terms of transitions. I did find the change in styles a bit disconcerting at first, but the use of classic animation techniques was likely the best way to do this.
The movie is a lengthy beast with all this stuff in it, but then so is the original material. I have to say that while it worked for me in the theatre, I missed the giant squid monster this time around in the movie. I understand the change, but it makes the ending less satisfying somehow.