CAINEv2

It just arrived nice and early this morning. Read the first chapter so far.
Thought I'd make a thread, see if anyone else has read it.
Hmm, writing like Rorschach now, I think...

P.S. Discussion of the movie is fine, too.

Simply fantastic. A great visual novel with complex characters, an original premise, and a truly stunning plot twist. I couldn't put it down from the moment I started reading it.

The movie is dreck and shouldn't be watched.
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Literacy is the best tech.

dreck dreck dreck dreck dreck dreck dreck dreck dreck dreck dreck dreck-
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"Even if you forget the seatbelt in your car, don't forget the seatbelt of your heart!"

Original post by Citrus-tan
graphic novel

I think that's what you meant...

Perhaps I wasn't unimpressed because I saw the movie before the graphic novel, but what makes people say the movie is so bad? I've never seen anyone actually say why, just "I hate this movie for reasons I refuse to tell anyone."

Looking at the movie itself, I couldn't see any grave errors in the storytelling or anything. And it's such a pretty movie, too. Maybe it's just natural for people to hate movie adaptations?

But then again, I never finished reading the graphic novel, so I'm not really one to judge. I guess I couldn't get past the panelling...
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"Even if you forget the seatbelt in your car, don't forget the seatbelt of your heart!"

I can't think of a single movie adaption that's better than the original source material. I'm sure there are some out there, but not that I can think of.

I think there are two opinions to have on movie adaptions: How good it is as a movie, and how good it is as an interpretation of whatever it's based off of.
Take the first Resident Evil, for example: Good film, obliterated most of the original story and characters from the first game. And then the third one went so far as to even place it in an entirely different environment than any of the games. But they still weren't bad movies.

This is one of the benefits, in some ways, of seeing the film first. You watch it, have an opinion on it, and then go and enjoy what it was based off of... often more than the film itself.

Original post by Nameshifter
I can't think of a single movie adaption that's better than the original source material.

The only ones that qualify IMO are The Wizard of Oz, The Godfather, and Little Big Man.  The latter was an old western that I liked so much that I read the book, which just wasn't as good. 

I'm one of the defenders of the Watchmen movie adaptation.  The comic is better, mostly because it uses comics as a storytelling medium so effectively, but the movie is far from bad.  Really, the key is not to get so hung up on the comic and try to watch the movie as a superhero movie and not as an adaptation of something you already know.  The acting performances aren't anything special, but it's visually spectacular and technically very sound, without making truly indefensible sacrifices to the storyline.  I liked it, so sue me. 
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But see, that's the problem with the movie. The graphic novel (lol my bad) uses its "superheroes" (who are really more like nutjobs in costumes than actual superheroes) as a magnifying glass to focus on Cold War- and Vietnam-era insecurities in America and around the world. Not to mention the balls-tighteningly great ending.

The movie either cannot or does not try to communicate that depth, so what we get is just another special-effects laden action film with a lot of mediocre acting and one of the most heavy-handed soundtracks I've heard in a movie of late. It betrays the entire spirit of the original work.

The movie also has to change the ending because there's not enough time for the necessary subplots; and while the ending we get is about as good as the movie can manage, it's still nowhere near as good as the graphic novel's finale.

I mean, come on. We know from Batman Begins/The Dark Knight that superhero movies can have real drama and depth while avoiding silly "bullet-time" effects and ultraviolence. There's no reason Watchmen couldn't have been the spiritual companion to The Dark Knight, but in the end that wasn't what it became.

So maybe the movie wasn't awful, per se, but my opinion of it caves in under the strain of massive expectations and equally massive disappointment.
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Literacy is the best tech.

Obviously people are upset because the movie decided to end in a way that makes sense instead of

I contest that, Tom.

On a side note, Rorschach was the best part of the movie. He was the only character who translated perfectly from the pages to the screen. Hell, on a re-read, he might've been the best part of the graphic novel as well.
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Literacy is the best tech.

For what it's worth, I really enjoyed the movie. The only complaint in this thread I agree with is that the soundtrack was really heavy-handed.

Every scene was half a montage. Ridiculous.

The soundtrack was definitely heavy-handed and strange.  I really, really liked the montage near the beginning using "The times, they are a changin'" by Bob Dylan, but only because there is so much backstory to cover that a montage actually was probably the right decision for that scene.  The rest of the soundtrack was very deliberate, probably too much so, and lacked subtlety that would have been nice to have. 
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Abandon all hope, ye short of attention span

There is nothing I could add to the praise of the graphic novel that everyone else has said already, but I have to say that I enjoyed the movie for what it is.  I am in the nearly infinitesimal minority who disliked the premise of the ending of the graphic novel.  To be as vague as possible, I found the movie ending to be more plausible.  Rather, I find the scale of the movie ending to be more plausible than the graphic novel.  If there was a slight tweak to the graphic novel's ending, then I would probably let go of most of the qualms I have it.  
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"I love blood and violence!  I have a boner for murder!" - Sarge from Red vs Blue

Well, I've read Chapter 3 now, and am looking forward to seeing this ending everyone's going on about. Unfortunately, I don't want to rush through it, so it'll be a while before I can discuss it.

So far I'm thoroughly enjoying it. The fact that we see 'the hobo' actually talking is nice, and a real shame that they couldn't get that in the movie without making it too obvious who he is. It's also a shame that they couldn't include more of the sub-plots, such as the scenes with the guy running the news-stand. The overlay of someone's dialogue, or bits taken from The Black Freighter, with another scene is amazing.

I think a reason why Rorschach "translated perfectly from the pages to the screen" may be because he's pretty much taken straight from Film/Comic Noir. When you really think about it, those characters are very simple and often repeated. Of course, Rorschach does have more depth than previous noir characters, but in essence, it's still all there... except for once it's not about some guy trying to save a woman who then turns out to be the criminal mastermind.

I think it is wisest to go into movie adaptations with low expectations and be surprised sometimes rather than go in with high ones and be disappointed often. I mean really, why would you ever expect an adaptation to be good?

ps. I liked both .
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