Uncle Ick's Top 10 Initial Reactions To The Trailer for Watchmen

(for reference, the trailer is here)

10. It's gonna suck.

9. It's gonna suck, but people who have never read the graphic novel will think it's great. Then they'll read the graphic novel, and they'll think it sucks. 'Cuz they're stupid.

8. THIS is Dan Dreiberg.



This is NOT Dan Dreiberg.



Come on, you assholes, fat people have exactly ONE super-hero we can be proud of. And you're gonna take him away from us?

7. "Well, let's see guys. Sally Jupiter is a good-looking, curvy gal who looks like she might enjoy a hamburger once in a while. So who should we cast..."



"OH! An anorexic super-model! I never would've thought of that! Good job!"

6. That one shot of The Comedian right after he burns the Vietnamese soldier makes him look a lot like Robert Downey, Jr. But it isn't Robert Downey, Jr. I think they did that on purpose. Fuckers.

5. Where the hell was Doctor Manhattan's cock? It was in the comic! If I go see this and we don't see Doctor Manhattan's little Doctor, I'm gonna demand my money back. (to my non-comic-book-geek friends - Doctor Manhattan is the blue guy)

4. I know it's gonna suck and I know I'm still gonna go see it. And then after I see it, I'll say, "It sucked." Making me feel the same way about an upcoming adaptation of the greatest super-hero story ever told as I did about Revenge of the Sith and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is fucking mean and I'll never forgive it.

3. You can't do Watchmen in an hour-and-a-half. Or two hours. Or two-and-a-half hours. Or three hours. Or four hours. You can't do it. It's stupid to try. The only proper way to adapt it (and Jesus Christ, does every fucking comic book need to be adapted) would've been to make a maxi-series out of it on HBO or an all-ages channel like HBO. Can't do it, guys. Can't do it.

2. Stan Lee has no reason to make a cameo.

1. Zack Snyder, the director of 300, huh? Oh, oh, wait, the visionary director of 300. Sorry.

This, more than anything, is why I think Watchmen will be sucktacular.

Let me be clear, I didn't particularly enjoy 300, at least not enough to refer to the director as a visionary. It wasn't horrible, but it also wasn't good enough for me to put in on a list of favorites, make me hungry to see it again, or to buy the DVD. And that's without even considering how well a film like that could be used as right-wing propaganda, or simply how every single non-white character in the film was portrayed as a mutated monster. By the way, I've never read the graphic novel so any differences/similarities between the film and the source material has nothing to do with my feelings toward it.

Regardless, my like or dislike of 300 has nothing to do with my feelings towards the choice of director here. 300 could be the greatest film ever made. It could be the reason why film was invented. I don't give a flying shit. if you asked me to write a list of the WORST directorial choices for a Watchmen adaptation, Snyder would be right at the top of the list.

The reason is because, in my humble opinion (and I'm pretty sure in the opinion of everyone who has ever read Watchmen and who has a brain that works better than a solar-powered flashlight - whether or not they even liked it), part of what's going on in Watchmen is that the super-heroes are having all the bullshit stripped away and looked at in a more realistic light. What would real super-heroes be like? What would our world really look like if they were a part of it? And maybe most importantly what would their real motivations be for doing what they do? That's why the "hero" of Watchmen who most closely resembles what we think of when we think of the traditional super-hero - Rorschach - is absolutely, completely bug-fuck out of his fucking gourd insane. Because someone who devoted every night of his life to beating the shit out of strangers in the name of justice would be a scary fucking person. And more importantly, there would be some scary fucking things going on in his head. The Rorschach of Watchmen is one of the most disturbing characters (in the graphic novel at least, who knows about this adaptation) you will ever come across. Heath Ledger's Joker and Hannibal Lecter will seem like serene pictures of sanity in comparison.

My point being that a director of a Watchmen adaptation should have the idea in his/her head that the super-heroes under his/her care shouldn't be treated like traditional super-heroes. They shouldn't look like super-ninjas every time they hit the ground. They shouldn't be all sexy in tight leather and look as formidable and heroic pissing against a tree as they do when they're fighting bad guys. Every frame shouldn't resemble some iconic comic book cover with the hero in a check-out-how-super-I-am pose.

So who did they pick? Well, judging by 300, they picked a director who is physically incapable of shooting ANYTHING or ANYONE without making them look like fucking super-heroes. Snyder couldn't shoot a fucking squirrel without making it look all violent and heroic and homo-erotic. Unless, of course, it were an African or Middle Eastern squirrel. Then it would look like a fucking demon.

And hey! You know what? That's great! Put him on a Hulk movie or Iron Man or Superman or Batman or anything, anything, ANYTHING other than Watchmen. Those are all good movies. They have their place. But they're different animals.

I might feel a little precipitous judging this film by a trailer, but by the looks of it, I'm not wrong. The casting choices for Jupiter and Dreiberg are enough to show that. See, I don't care if how Spider-Man shoots his webs is different from comic to film. I don't care if Bruce Banner got injected by nanobots instead of getting blasted by a gamma bomb. That's because those changes, in my opinion, are largely cosmetic. Having Spider-Man's webshooters become a part of his body rather than some mechanical wristbands he invented doesn't really change the spirit of the story. The soul of the character is intact. But taking some former super-heroes who have been forced into retirement and look like they've stopped at quite a few Burger Kings since they were last fighting crime, and making them look like bad-ass, buff super-models, DOES change the spirit of the story.

Know who should direct Watchmen? Sofia Coppola. The Coen Brothers. Alexander Payne. Fuck, I'm just pulling names out of my ass here. Anyone, ANYONE other than Zack Snyder.

Know what I would do to do Watchmen right? I'd find a director who had never directed a super-hero movie, an action movie, an adventure movie, or a mixture of any of the above. I'd call them and say "Hey, would you ever, under any circumstances, direct a super-hero comic book adaptation?" If they said, "No," I would hire them. And if they refused, I would find some way to blackmail them into doing it. And if I couldn't do that I'd manufacture a way to blackmail them. Like hiring a hooker to seduce them. Or getting a picture of them reading a book and photoshopping the words "Hitler: He Was Right, Wasn't He?" on the cover. Or just getting a picture of them shaking hands with Pat Buchanan.

Watchmen is going to be flashy and cool in a very Matrix kinda way. But it's gonna suck. And you won't know it.

So anyone who hasn't read Watchmen, let me know. I'll either let you borrow it, or I will BUY you a copy and mail it to you. That way, at least, you'll know why the film sucks when it comes out.