Internet Apocalypse

And so it seems the hype has worked against the film as I thought it would. The media frenzy and months of scrutiny and anticipation built the movie a pedestal so impossibly tall so as to make delivery of anything that could live up to peoples imaginations and expectations nigh impossible.

As I sat in my favourite seat in the little cinema in Hammersmith, i sensed restlessness in the crowd of people as they watched the movie. After the initial "wow" of the first 10 minutes or so after the opening credits had ended and the story kicked in, i started to become irritated by the number of people texting on their phones, running back and forth to the bathroom, whispering to each other and generally not paying attention to what I thought was a great movie. After I got over my annoyance at them all and quelled my need to stalk the isles with a silenced PPK, picking off those who were not paying due attention and diligence to the movie, I reminded myself of what I had initially thought when reading the graphic novel... "this is ace, but how are they going to translate this into a movie??"

In defence of those... I am hesitant to use the word idiots, but there, i just said it... in the defence of those idiots who could not sit still and listen to dialogue for more than five minutes at a time, I will say this: This movie has been billed and hyped as a superhero movie and, in essence, it is just that. However, the distinction was never made between this movie and, say Iron Man or X-Men in the advertising campaigns. Therefore people who had not read the book arrived wanting to see super powers, flying robots, indestructible men and perhaps the odd one-eyed giant tentacled mutant tearing apart New York (yes, I'll get to that).
In actual fact, what they got was a dark, dialogue heavy movie which I felt sat more on the film noir side of the fence than the superhero side of things. The reasons I think this movie didn't appeal to a large section of the audience in the cinema was the very reason I liked it so much.

Apart from the ending - and there IS a spoiler alert at the beginning of this article, so please stop reading now if you haven't seen it yet - Apart from the ending which was completely different from the comic book, I thought that most of the core elements were captured in the film perfectly. The sets were fantastic and Rorschach's part of the story, which is my personal favourite, especially his time in prison, was very well done indeed. Sure, the odd detail had been changed, they used a circular saw rather than an arc welder to cut the bars off his cell door and he didn't shackle anyone to a radiator, set them on fire and give them a hacksaw, but I do understand why you have to cut some things down and out of a story in order to fit them into what is already quite a weighty film... within reason of course. What I noticed and what I found fairly annoying, was that the night owl and the silk spectre both such a mastery of kung-fu style street fighting. I understand that making them masters of unarmed combat makes for entertaining fight scenes, but in Rorschachs case, I don’t think it was necessary. His style of fighting was so awesome in the books anyway... simply pick up whatever comes to hand and jam it in the opponents eyes... maybe break their fingers or lock them in a fridge.


I think the biggest deviation from the storyline was the ending. Again, spoiler alert. It got to about ten minutes before Ozzy was about to unveil his master plan to Rorschach and Night Owl and I started thinking... "Are they gonna do it? or are they gonna pussy out?" T minus five minutes and still nothing to suggest he was going to be teleporting psychic monsters into New York. When they decided to go with the fusion generator detonation thingy, I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed but in retrospect, I think it might have taken a bit too long to explain and, since there had already been people walking out of the cinema by this point (no doubt wondering where Val Kilmer in his rubber-nippled batman costume was) I guess I can let them off. The effect was the same, but the method was different, that's all. The motive for doing the dastardly deed remained the same but the film makers obviously decided that it was just too tricky to introduce in the last fifteen minutes of the movie, which is understandable I suppose.

You have to admit though, it would have been awesome to see a massive creature mind-blast New York with psychic energy and fill the streets with death and rivers of blood.

Funk drummin never sounded so good!

Stanton Moore is an incredibly talented drummer - so talented, he has his own band, named after him and they are all pretty awesome too. Not a long post today, just an old Vid of the man, doin what he does best... Layin’ down some grooves!!