A Reasonable Forum on Religion, Science, Skepticism, and Atheism

Register or Log In

1. 

   phrankygee
   Member

   LRA, you reminded me of a similar story. After a pretty bad car crash many years ago (I flipped my car on its top in the middle of the road), I was at home recuperating, more emotionally shaken than actually injured. My dad was going into town and wanted to know if I wanted him to rent me a couple of movies to watch.

   "Any requests?" he said.

   "Something without any car crashes!" I said.

   He brought home two movies, and the first was "U.S. Marshals", the sequel to "The Fugitive" starring Tommy Lee Jones. In the first 10 minutes of the movie, an armored bank car ends up flipped over on its top in the middle of the road.

   Oopsie for him.

   Posted 3 years ago #
2. 

   Elemenope
   Moderator

   I generally don't watch movies with rape scenes. It disturbs me too much.

   Well, there goes my Watchmen recommendation. Of course, it's out on DVD now, so I suppose you could just fast-forward.

   Posted 3 years ago #
3. 

   Ty
   Moderator

   Well, to be fair, the rape is a failed attempt followed by a severe ass kicking for the rapist.

   It might even be cathartic.

   Posted 3 years ago #
4. 

   Elemenope
   Moderator

   Good point, not to mention the guy doing the ass-kicking is 7 feet tall and dressed in a hangman's outfit. And is gay.

   Posted 3 years ago #
5. 

   phrankygee
   Member

   Ex post facto spoiler alert! Unless you are LRA, don't read the preceding 3 posts if you haven't seen/read Watchmen.

   Which is an awesome movie and a super-awesome book, BTW.

   Posted 3 years ago #
6. 

   rodneyAnonymous
   Member

   I love the Watchmen book and thought the movie was... not good. Lots of little things were the same, but a couple things that are kind of fundamental were different. In the book, no one but Dr. Manhattan has any powers, they are just men in masks and it's pretty silly / pathetic. Ultimately, they fail to stop the world from being saved. The "point" is completely different... I couldn't tell exactly what it was supposed to be.

   Also, the author Alan Moore was not involved with the movie in any way.

   Posted 3 years ago #
7. 

   Ty
   Moderator

   That's mostly because Alan Moore is a nutcase. A brilliant nutcase, but a nutcase all the same.

   But aside from that, what powers did anyone other than Dr. Manhattan have in the movie? And they failed to stop Ozymandias in the movie too. And they were portrayed as sort of pathetic (impotent without the costumes, in Night Owl's case).

   I think the point was exactly the same.

   Posted 3 years ago #
8. 

   phrankygee
   Member

   I'm with you here, Ty. It was severely abridged, but the point was ultimately the same.

   Anybody seen the director's cut? It was supposed to be the "true" version for the book fans, but IDK if it will live up to the hype.

   Posted 3 years ago #
9. 

   rodneyAnonymous
   Member

   They totally had powers. Maybe just super strength and speed, no x-ray vision or anything. They look cool. Rorschach's grappling gun pulls him up to Blake's apartment. Silk Spectre II's costume was made of latex. Silk Spectre. The characters didn't look the way they looked because Dave Gibbons couldn't draw any better, they looked that way because they were supposed to. The Minutemen costumes looked great, it's too bad they weren't all like that.

   (Jon notwithstanding) Adrian is the closest thing to "super human", and he's, like, The Perfect Man. The movie's fight scenes all outdo anything Adrian does in the book. I mean, take the aforementioned Comedian/Silk Spectre scene: in the book, a man punches a woman, breaking three of her ribs; in the movie, a superhero exchanges super karate punches and kicks with a superheroine and beats her.

   In the movie, they are super-heroes. In the book, they are people.

   It's different. The point maybe attempts to be the same, but it's garbled.

   Posted 3 years ago #
10. 

    Ty
    Moderator

    I disagree. Even in the comic Night Owl and Silk Spectre were good enough fighters to fight there way out of the mugging and into Rorschach's prison. In the comic, Oxymandias still caught a freaking bullet in his bare hand.

    They were never portrayed doing anything in the movie that they didn't do in the comic.

    Now, if your main complaint is costume design, well that's pretty subjective, so I won't argue that.

    Posted 3 years ago #
11. 

    rodneyAnonymous
    Member

    Now, if your main complaint is costume design, well that's pretty subjective, so I won't argue that.

    No it's not, the movie is based on a graphic novel. There are pictures of what the costumes look like. They're wrong.

    I don't like the way Dr. Manhattan looks; he glows too much. That is subjective.

    But the problem isn't "costume design", even if the costumes are related. Summarized: in the movie, they're cool; in the book, they're not.

    Watchmen is one of my favorite books of any kind. I recommend people read it, but skip the movie.

    (Also, whether or not he is a nutcase, Alan Moore didn't sever ties with DC Comics because he is a nutcase. The movies adaptations of his books -- From Hell, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V for Vendetta, Watchmen -- are varying degrees of "wildly different" from the source material. V for Vendetta is a good example: awesome movie, but extremely different from the book, which the author thinks is "specifically about things like fascism and anarchy. Those words, 'fascism' and 'anarchy,' occur nowhere in the film. It's been turned into a Bush-era parable...")

    Posted 3 years ago #
12. 

    LRA
    Member

    omg. you all are such geeks!!!! That's ok. So am I. Geek power!!!

    Posted 3 years ago #
13. 

    green411
    Member

    I think I may be the biggest geek out of all of you here. I play a lot of paper and pen rpg's, I still buy toys like nerf guns and action figures, I love comics, horror movies, anime, video games, and I work as a video game tester currently. Can any of you guys out-nerd me?

    Posted 3 years ago #
14. 

    Sock
    Member

    I can come close. I role-play, and I'm a huge movie fanatic. As this thread demonstrates, I know South Park very well. There are other, darker secrets. But I wont mention them because they cross into the "geek you pity", as opposed to the "quirky geek".

    Posted 3 years ago #
15. 

    green411
    Member

    good to know I'm not alone, Sock.

    Posted 3 years ago #
16. 

    Comassion
    Member

    I do much of the above (Never was into comics though, but I have read and highly approve of Watchmen), and then I go out and attend wargaming conventions. The ones where men have spent countless hours painting hundreds of French and Austrian Infantry figures in appropriate historical uniform colors so they can re-fight the Battle of Marengo.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Marengo

    On Wednesdays, one of the people I play with is crafting his own pewter molds in order to make alien figures exactly the way he wants for a sci-fi game.

    On Tuesdays, one of the people I play with successfully filed a freedom of information act to declassify information about the fight for Hue city so he could use it for his Vietnam scenarios.

    Not to be outdone, one of the other people in that group actually travelled to France so he could see the terrain that was fought over in his Normandy scenarios for himself.

    Posted 3 years ago #
17. 

    Joe B
    Member

    I'm probably just as geeky as the above, but mine is dressed in jock-y trappings. I'm a diehard sports fan (Go Cubs and Go Colts), a sports blogger, a big stats in sports guy (a statgeek in fact).

    Is it really more geeky to know enough about Watchmen to have issues with the movie costumes than to know the rules for NFL practice squad eligibility off the top of your head or two be able to find online how many games a lineup consisting of 9 Aaron Miles' would win with average pitching and defense*?

    *=17....of 162.....the man can't hit.

    Posted 3 years ago #
18. 

    green411
    Member

    for all of the non-geeky things that I do, they are inspired by geeky things. For instance, I love martial arts because of movies, anime, and video games. Those things inspired me to do the real deal.

    Posted 3 years ago #
19. 

    rodneyAnonymous
    Member

    "Nerd" and "geek" are not synonymous. I am no nerd! Well, a little, I guess.

    ...next you'll be telling me you think Family Guy is funny. *shudder*

    Posted 3 years ago #
20. 

    green411
    Member

    honestly, I'm sick of family guy, its a one-trick-pony cartoon.

    Posted 3 years ago #
21. 

    LRA
    Member

    "I'm probably just as geeky as the above, but mine is dressed in jock-y trappings"

    Sooooooooo, JoeB, how you doin???

    :)

    Posted 3 years ago #
22. 

    Ty
    Moderator

    I have the most geek street cred of anyone on this website:

    I ran a D20 game in which one of the best selling fantasy authors in the world was a player. I don't just hang out with one of the biggest fantasy authors of all time, I am his DM!

    Feel free to tremble in my presence.

    Also, I know the practice squad eligibility rules. Not much of a baseball fan though.

    Posted 3 years ago #
23. 

    phrankygee
    Member

    Ty, please tell me it is who I think it is...

    I may have to bow and scrape before your well connected nerdiness.

    One of my favorite authors killed off a DM (who happened to also be a werewolf) in his last book.

    Posted 3 years ago #
24. 

    Ty
    Moderator

    I won't mention him by name on the web, so that I don't attract googlers and then link him to my atheism.

    Posted 3 years ago #

RSS feed for this topic

Reply

You must log in to post.