The Weekly Planet - Watchmen (Zack Snyder 2009) - Caravan Of Garbage

Episode Date: October 25, 2019

Before Damon Lindelof brought his Watchmen sequel to HBO Zack Snyder tackled seemingly the impossible with an adaption of Alan Moore's Watchmen in 2009. Ten years on does it still hold up? In many ways yes but in some ways no. This is out Caravan Of Garbage review, thanks for listening.Video Version ► https://youtu.be/NNirliS1IK4James' Twitter ► http://twitter.com/mrsundaymoviesMaso's Twitter ► http://twitter.com/wikipediabrownBuy Watchmen ► https://amzn.to/2BAoYPNTWP Itunes ► https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-weekly-planet/id718158767?mt=2&ign-mpt=uo%3D4TWP Direct Download ► https://play.acast.com/s/theweeklyplanetTWP YouTube Channel ► https://goo.gl/1ZQFGHPatreon ► https://patreon.com/mrsundaymoviesAmazon Affiliate Link ► https://amzn.to/2BAoYPNT-Shirts/Merch ► https://www.teepublic.com/stores/mr-sunday-movies Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

FX's The Veil explores the surprising and fraught relationship between two women who play a deadly game of truth and lies on the road from Istanbul to Paris and London. One woman has a secret, the other a mission to reveal it before thousands of lives are lost. FX's The Veil, starring Elizabeth Moss, is now streaming on Disney+. is now streaming on Disney+. As women, our life stages come with unique risk factors, like high blood pressure developed during pregnancy, which can put us two times more at risk of heart disease or stroke. Know your risks. Visit heartandstroke.ca.

This podcast is part of the Planet Broadcasting Network. Visit planetbroadcasting.com for more podcasts from our great mates. Getting a Watchmen TV series. A sequel to not the movie, but the comic book. That's too confusing for me. But it's also not a sequel to before Watchmen, the comic book series. Oh, you've actually cleared it up for me. Thank you.

I appreciate it. Which is good or fine? I remember it being fine. Wow. Imagine that. What a world. Yeah, right? I mean, it's famously a comic book that was both considered impossible to follow up on

and impossible to adapt. Yes, right. According to creator Alan Moore. Yeah, right. And here we go. Zack Snyder's Watchmen, again, famously Alan Moore had his name taken off the credits. Absolutely. You'll notice it's based on the graphic novel illustrated by Dave Givens.

No mention of a writer anywhere. No, that's it it i've actually got a short history of how this movie came to be i'm ready to hear about it first of all if people could leave a like on this video that'd be great leave a like what do you got against it yeah do you like content so do we leave a like hate myself anyway alan moore so well i like you at least one person in the room does alan moore sold the rights to The Watchmen in the 80s. This and also Beefy Vendetta, which I'd love to cover at one point as well. Also, once you do that, maybe you shouldn't complain so much because you sold it, didn't you?

We should do a whole podcast episode on it. I think the whole situation's fascinating. We'll get to it one day. But yeah, the nuts and bolts is Alan Moore did sell the rights to Watchmen to DC. Terry Gillian in 1989 was trying to make it work, but he couldn't make it work. He suggested maybe a five-hour miniseries at the cost of $1 million per page.

That feels like something people could do now and are doing now, but in 1989, it's not going to happen. I remember when the Flash TV series was touted as being made for $1 million an episode and people were like, oh my God. Will it be good?

And they went, oh. I mean, it might be, but also the star might become Dawson's dad in a future TV series. So that's good too, isn't it? Yeah. It's in the flash again multiple times in the future. That's true, yeah.

Michael Bay considered jumping on board in 2003. Okay. Great. Hot off the back of the island, no doubt. Or before that. It's not important. Post Bad Boys, definitely. It was sold to Paramount in 2004

Paul Greengrass considered doing a loose modern day adaptation he's the born identity guy that's right just the first one maybe and Warner Brothers

got it back Darren Aronofsky wanted to do a modern day update with the Vietnam War changed to Iraq side note I was going to say

Paul Greengrass's version it's just the various characters in their CVs disappearing behind buses there's nothing else there's something else yeah can we make this three hours yeah or a mini series but no water brothers got it back darren aronofsky wanted to make a modern day update which meant instead of vietnam it was iraq because you know politics absolutely i mean it's pc gone mad it's pc gone mad and ripped from the headlines. That's true. Tim Burton was also interested with Johnny Depp being cast as the comedian,

but he went on to make Sweeney Todd instead, which was... I saw some of it. I didn't like it. I did not. I did not like it. Got any Sweene heads out there? Is it a good one? Sweeno's hit us up.

Yeah. But like you said, though, it was considered unadaptable. That being said, for a movie that's now 10 years old it's a pretty fair shot i would say yeah and i'm i'm you know fairly regularly on alan moore's side with regards adaptations of his work league of extraordinary gentlemen is a great comic book series and is completely unadaptable to film as was proven by the film adaptation of that correct but i think this is a pretty solid swing. Yeah.

I mean, there are some points. It's not as good. No, it's not as good. Yeah. It's true, yeah. It's visually very striking. Yeah, I agree. And there's some of the visual stuff that I think is changed for the worse,

which we'll get to. But like you said, generally, there's some good stuff in this. And there's also some de-squidification, which a lot of people would believe is for the better. Yeah, well, at the time I was like, I get it. But now I'm like, missed a trick there. Bring the squid in. Bring that giant squid in.

We'll get to it. Do you know the first image of this, though? There was a test shot, one frame of Rorschach, which was in the 300 trailer. That was the first we saw of that. Remember people used to do that? Oh, I think maybe I heard about that, yeah. Do you remember the time Mel Gibson added himself to the Apocalypto trailer? I remember that.

What an era. He's all, ah, and he's got a huge beard and crazy hair, and it's like, well, that's actually quite terrifying. That's El Mel. I'm not going to see this movie now, and also because Mel Gibson directed it. I mean, we mentioned the way it looks, and it does look pretty spectacular.

The budget for this was $120 million. It's an R-rated comic book movie from 2009, so it only made $185 million. It did not make its money back. I think it's gone on to do okay since then, but it seems a strange movie to be like $120 million on this seems like a good idea

for an R-rated film. It's a DC property, but it isn't Batman. If anything, a lot of it is a parody of Batman. I think a lot of that is reflected in the visuals. We've got the second Night Owl looks an awful lot like... All the characters kind of look like Joel Schumacher Batman characters.

The nipples on Ozymandias are an intentional throwback to Batman and Robin. And I think the trailer has the Smashing Pumpkins song. Oh, the same song, yeah. No, it's the opposite version. There's two versions of that song, that Smashing Pumpkins song. Oh, right, okay. One of the Batman movies. The beginning is the end is the beginning of the end.

And the end is the beginning is the end, yeah. Okay, well that makes sense. Yeah, so they had. One of the Batman movies. The beginning is the end is the beginning of the end. And the end is the beginning is the end, yeah. Okay, well, that makes sense. Yeah, so they had revert. There's a slow version and a fast version. Yeah, and if we're talking about Batman and Night Owl in particular, first of all, I love his ice costume that he wears. Yes. He's got a different snow costume.

I love that. That is so Batman in the 50s. Absolutely it is. I also love that clearly Zack Snyder was like, I'm in love with goggles and everyone gets goggles because Justice League Batman, of course, famously gets a pair of goggles for no reason as well. There is a reason.

He looks super cool with them on. That's a really good point, actually, yeah. But apparently also Zack Snyder was like, do we have to make Nite Owl impotent and overweight? Apparently Patrick Wilson gained like 25 pounds for this role. He still looks pretty good. He still looks great. That's kind of the point of the character.

Imagine this guy, he stopped being a superhero, but he was still cool looking, get boners and had abs. Imagine. And I think that is, you know, he's taken and something that has been taken away from the comic book and that is, you know, a lot of people are critical of. And I cannot argue with that is that they've gone,

let's not make it real people who've decided to dress up in masks and fight crime. Let's make them superheroes, like in the traditional Batman kind of mould, where somebody can survive being punched through a wall. Yeah, they're just knocking granite off the wall. Yeah, exactly. Which, look, if you want to logic your way through it,

I'd be like, well, if you fought crime, if you went outside and you punched people all night for years there would be very little left of you you know what i mean you'd have like artificial hips and replacement knuckles or whatever you probably could punch through a granite wall and not feel anything but i don't think that was zack snyder's intention i think it was just like oh my god everybody in this universe can punch through yeah because i think they're definitely heightened comic book characters in this. They're that little bit more enhanced. I mean, I think a lot of the action in this is really good,

like the alley fight, for example, but the prison riot in particular where they just kind of stroll through and kind of clean up all the prisoners in there. I think this is some of Zack Snyder's best action in moments in here, but it's definitely not like, they don't feel like real people. No, for sure, yeah. The bad guy's clearly ozymandias they do not they do not bury that that was that was my that was my criticism at the time it stands now and i think that you know that's partially a function of dave gibbons work you know his illustration at the time yeah uh ozymandias character is sort of portrayed as a kindly you know he's a very beatific nice man and he sounds nice he's jovial and having a good time you can give him whatever

voice you want when you read the comic book and but in this one i watched this with a friend of mine at the time in the cinema and i think there was like a scene change ozzy mandy's was in the scene yeah and it changed over and in the transition my friend leaned over and went like there was never any even for the completely uninitiated to this movie, you're like, well, that's definitely the bad guy. And you look at the build of the guy who kills the comedian. Yeah. It's clearly the same guy.

There's actually a moment. It's at three minutes 43. Oh yes. On one of the cuts, whatever cut we watch. We'll talk about that. If you go to 343 and it's not there, you're just in the wrong cut. So try a different cut. You see his face.

Yeah. Right. It's a stunt man, which I guess kind of throws throws you off but that doesn't help either way but yeah and even things like actually i do like this touch that when he's talking publicly and he's talking to the press he uses an american accent but because he has german origin when he's private he speaks with a slight german accent and i like like little tweaks like that what i think the the issue was zack s Snyder was like, well, if you make a movie with a superhero in it,

you need a bad guy, and you need a bad guy quick. Yeah. Because Matthew Goode, who plays Ozymandias, I've seen him in other things, and he's perfectly capable of portraying a very nice man. Yeah. And I'm sure he'd be capable of playing an evil man

who's appearing as a nice man, but they clearly gave him the direction, be sinister. Yeah. Be weird and sinister in Germany. That's right, yeah. So I like the opening credits of this where it gives you that alternate version of history, you know, with Bob Dylan.

That's great, yeah. There's no ambiguity concerning did the comedian kill JFK? He definitely did. Or maybe he was about to and then somebody else did and he's like, oh, man. Well, good ads, I guess. I guess I could claim this or not claim it as required. Well, in the comic, I believe, the original, it's hinted at.

Yes, it is. But then in Before Watchmen, he was the friend of JFK. And he's actually very surprised. Yeah. He's like, what a... Oh, I've never heard of such a thing. There's also a moment in the introduction where... I guess it depends on which one you would prefer.

Yeah, exactly. How would you prefer JFK would die? That's a pretty good question. I'd have to think about it, but gruesomely. Yeah, exactly. How would you prefer JFK would die? That's a very good question. I'd have to think about it, but gruesomely. Yeah, absolutely. If you could, yeah. Also in the intro, you see Night Owl stop a mugger out the front of a cinema, the original Night Owl,

and that's supposed to be Bruce Wayne's parents. Yes. So they kind of divert that happening, which is interesting. You also see, and this is, I wonder if this is just parallel thought or it's a deliberate homage. In the comic book and in the movie, we see Dollar Bill, who is a- Dollar Bill's the old-

Exactly. He's a Limp Bizkit album, and also he's the Banks mascot who decides to start fighting crime on his own. And he is killed when his cape gets caught in a door, and then he's shot. And I'm wondering, in The Incredibles- It must be, right? 2004? Yeah, right must be, right? 2004?

Yeah, right, right, right. Because, yeah, is that why Edna Mode is like, no, no capes, because that gets you into trouble because of watching the comic book back in the day? Yeah, I think so. I think that's probably a callback, yeah. Jackie Earl Haley in this is terrifying and great. Oh, for sure, yeah.

What a good version of Rorschach. Unbeatable. And I love that mask. Well, not that he gets beaten. He explodes, I believe, at the end. You mean he's... FX's The Veil explores the surprising and fraught relationship between two women who play a deadly game of truth and lies

on the road from Istanbul to Paris and London. One woman has a secret. The other, a mission to reveal it before thousands of lives are lost. FX's The Veil, starring Elizabeth Moss, is now streaming on Disney+. Acting's unbeatable. Unbeatable, Mason! Not physically, he explodes. But I like the way they represented the mask.

It's obviously CGI. You can actually buy masks that kind of do that similar thing now where you breathe in them and they come out and change. Couldn't have done it back in the 80s, though, could they? Definitely not. And that definitely adds to this is more comic book world than the original Watchmen because the thing about the original Watchmen is the only otherworldly element is Dr. Manhattan. That's it.

Well, there's some hints. There's some hints. There's the idea that there might be some psychics out there, I think. Okay, right. But other than that, than that nothing overtly like no nothing exactly yeah it's mostly normal people doing normal stuff i mean when they say psychics they also might mean people like laying out tarot cards yeah in a shopping mall or something it's never really well you say normal people doing normal stuff how well do you think the bullet catch translates to live action oh that's a big part of the comic where he says that maybe I can catch a bullet.

Yeah. And then at the end, he does. And his hand's kind of covered in blood. And it's implied sort of that, because he doesn't seem to be, his hand's not really padded in the comic at least. Yeah, right. He just hits it at a particular angle where he's able to kind of hold it or kind of fall into it and catch it.

Sort of a mind over matter situation. Yeah. And it seems it's like, you know, it seems like very much in the comic book, like it's kind of down to the wire. Like he, even he is amazed that that happened. Yeah. And in this, it's kind of just like, pa-ding, pa-ding.

Yeah, well, that's true. Yeah. It's got stuck in his leather glove. All right. Yeah. I'm not sure I'm sold on the Dr. Manhattan effect. Like it looks good. Oh, yes.

But I think it's too glowy. And what they did, they put Billy Crud up in like a glowy suit. So the light would reflect on everybody. And I think that, that works well. And what they did, they put Billy Crud up in like a glowy suit so the light would reflect on everybody. And I think that works well to make him feel like he's really in the scene. They wrapped him in Christmas lights. Pretty much. That's essentially what they did.

But I think could have maybe dulled it down a bit where he's just like blue with a slight, like a faint kind of. Do you think that, is that just me maybe? I don't think Zack Snyder, Zack Snyder's not into subtlety, all right? Yeah, that's true. What I did think was interesting about that character, though, is his backstory's told really well, for one. But also, they kept his human voice.

And the reason they did that was because he wanted to relate more to humanity. And you see that, and that's a big part of the comic as well, where... Probably could have not been blue then. Yeah, and also... Because he can not be blue if he doesn't want to. And also put your dong away, mate, obviously. Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Yeah, but that was an element of, well, he can speak however he wants but you know i'm gonna use my my regular human voice no i will not put my dong away in this supermarket do you want to talk about the uh the squid yes of course do you want to explain the comic book ending so in the comic book spoilers for watchmen yes ozymandias's plan is to unite the soviet union and the united states by suggesting to them that there is a alien threat somewhere out in space and they've sent another dimension yeah another dimension and they've sent some sort of scout or some sort of probe into onto our planet and that probe is a giant squid monster giant

alien squid monster which ozymandias has built in a lab and then killed everybody involved with the creation of it so no one, he's the only one who knows that he's truly behind it. But in the movie, he's like, I'm just going to blow up New York and say Dr. Manhattan. It's like New York and London and probably Sydney, I assume. Absolutely. Did you see anyone cheering in front of the opera house?

They did the greatest hits of destructing Cities around the world. Yeah, I can see why they did it because I think it kind of, it still works, I feel, but I think it's weird that they went, well, that otherworldly element we're not going to incorporate, but we'll do the bullet catch and the moving mask and the big glowing man or whatever, but we're taking the squid out. I think if Zack Snyder had his way way he would have changed a lot of i think if zach snyder had his way he would have changed a lot more than just the squid you're probably right i think and i think maybe

that's why this movie to me at least is one of his strongest offerings it's because he couldn't have changed much without rule without the entire house of cards kind of collapsing i'm surprised how faithful it is. I guess I think, though, coming off the back of 300, he would have been like, and the studio would have been like, well, that works. If you just take the core elements of that and adapt it exactly, then you're going to be primo, goodo, slow-mo, speed up.

Make that happen if you could. You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. I've got some notes here on the original draft from 1989 by sam ham i know sam ham personally but he did i think he did a lot of uh novelizations of movies back in the day i think he did the batman 1989 novelization i hope he did because if not you're gonna look like a right fool i know so this is a vastly different version than what we got in the in the final film it's well it's 20 years prior. But Veidt's plan to change the world was to travel back in time and assassinate John Osterman via sniper rifle

before he becomes Dr. Manhattan. Okay. But Dr. Manhattan subsequently kills Veidt instead of letting him live. Another change is Dr. Manhattan subsequently kills Veidt instead of letting him live. So at the end he's like, did I do the right thing? And he's like, no, man. Then this is like, you've been exploded by me.

That's right. Yeah. This is signifying my disapproval of what you've done. I've blown you up. Additionally, in the ending, Dr. Manhattan destroys himself in the past before John is transformed into Dr. Manhattan, causing a rift in space and time.

You'll love this. Then Laurie, Dan and Rorschach are sucked into an alternate dimension and discover a world where they are characters in a hit comic book serial and decide to pick up crime fighting oh yeah now they are so meta and they'd have their own crime fighting serial too definitely watch my nose side note sam ham co-wrote the screenplay for tim burton's batman and the story for batman returns there you you go. But not the novel. Not very good movies. Who did the novel? Who did do the novel? Don't know. I bet it was bloody...

Alan Dean Foster. Yeah, I was going to say it's Alan Dean Foster. In a different draft though by David Hayter, Dan and Laurie still spend the night at Karnak

after Vite assassinates the leaders of almost every country. However, Laurie wakes up later and then gets seriously drunk on champagne possibly because of the loss of John and Rorschach.

She then discovers that Dan is fighting with Veidt, which ends with Dan killing Veidt with a boomerang. So that's a good version too, isn't it? And then we'd absolutely have some cheering in front of the Sydney Opera House, wouldn't we? He's bloody got him, hasn't he? He's got it, mate! There are multiple releases of this. Which one do you watch?

Do you watch the cinema release? Do you watch the director's cut? Do you watch the cinema release? Do you watch the director's cut? Do you watch the ultimate cut, which is the one with the Black Freighter animation with Jerry Butler put into it? Well, obviously you watch the one with Jerry Butler. Well, apparently Zack Snyder's like, don't watch the Jerry Butler one

because we couldn't really find a way to make it work. So we made it, but it's just on the DVD separately. But also, do you trust Zack Snyder's opinion? I mean, it's his version, so sure, yeah. I mean, I watched it independently, and it definitely works as a standalone thing. I think when you weave it in and out of the graphic novel, it definitely would flow better than animation.

Yeah, exactly. Because if you didn't know what was going, you'd be like, what is this? Exactly, and especially from that kind of hyper-real, like colour-soaked reality to sort of flat comic book animation, that is quite? Exactly. And especially from that kind of hyper real, like color soaked reality to sort of flat comic book animation. That is quite jarring. Yeah. That's a big deal.

Yeah. I got a couple bits of trivia to wrap things up if you don't mind, Mason. Please do. Okay. So we talked about Alan Moore. He was like, I hate people making things that I made, making different things. Yeah. Only I can take things that were created by other people and adapt them to other works.

Only I can do that. I'm a wizard people And adapt them to other works Only I can do that I'm a wizard and I live in a cave Carry on Zack Snyder was quoted as saying Worst case scenario Alan puts on his DVD player On a cold Sunday in London And watches and says

Yeah, that doesn't suck too bad Alan Moore commented back saying though That's worst case scenario? I think he underestimates what the worst case scenario would be That's never going to happen in my DVD player I'm never going to watch this fucking thing also he doesn't own a dvd player he owns like some sort of magic lantern situation and a wicker basket filled with different herbs that's exactly right yeah but reportedly though on another occasion a better tempered moore said that's probably a good movie in its own right but he's indifferent to movies

based on his own work if you thought that bit of trivia was amazing, how about this? Is this one more or less amazing? It's more amazing. Oh, wow. This is from IMDB. Snoop Dogg admitted on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, episode 4.9 in 2009, that he fell asleep during this movie. Wow.

Can you imagine? I can't imagine, but also what context? Was it in the cinema? Was it on a plane? Was it while recording a rap video? These are all good questions. Isn't it though?

Tweet at Snoop Dogg. At what point did he fall asleep? But yeah, that's been The Watchmen 2009. I think it's got merit. I think so too.

Yeah. And you definitely have to separate it from the comic book material because if you kind of compare them too closely, it's not as good, is it? No. Take some time.

Don't shotgun the graphic novel and then go straight to the movie. We haven't seen any of the new show as of yet, but I feel like setting that decades after the graphic novel is a good way to continue the series instead of trying to adapt it again. Oh, absolutely, yeah. Then again, it might be bad regardless. We just don't know. We just don't know. We just don't know.

I mean, you know, the dam is broken on successes to Watchmen. And you can never put a fish back in a dam, as the saying goes. Yep. Is that what happens at the end of Doomsday Clock? Yeah, man, you couldn't get that fish back in the dam. My goodness. Anyway, this has been Caravan of Garbage, but we also have a show called The Weekly Planet, a podcast where we talk movies and comics and TV shows

that comes out every Monday morning. You want to come along? You can. It's free. Check it out if you want. You don't have to. Join the party. That's what we say.

That's what we always say. There's no party. There's never been one and there never will be. But also if you want to look at something else for Caravan of Garbage, you've got a suggestion, we'll look at it. I've got some Alan Moore stuff here that we could look at. I'm excited to hear about it. V for Vendetta.

Yep. From Hell. LXG. LX stuff here that we could look at. I'm excited to hear about it. V for Vendetta. Yep. From Hell. LXG. LXG. There we go. Constantine. That movie, a lot of that's based on his work. The Killing Joke, the animated one.

All right, all right. Where Batman has sex with Batwoman. It's weird. It's a weird movie. I reckon LXG. Give us a suggestion. But we'll probably just do LXG, all right? Yeah, that's right.

We've got our hearts out on it. We're doing it. Anyway, I'm at MrSundayMovies on Twitter. I'm at WikipediaBrown on Twitter. Have a good time, everybody. Grab a jam, you guys. We'll see you next week. Also, it's Batgirl.

You're going to get letters. I want the letters. I welcome them. Look, who made the bigger mistake in that scenario? Me saying Batgirl instead of Batwoman? Or the people who wrote that into that movie? Good question. Or Batgirl boned in Batman.

I mean, guys got issues. It certainly does. No problems, you know? This podcast is part of the Planet Broadcasting Network. Visit planetbroadcasting.com for more podcasts from our great mates. I mean, if you want. It's up to you.

As women, our life stages come with unique risk factors. Like when our estrogen levels drop during menopause, causing the risk of heart disease to go up. Know your risks. Visit heartandstroke.ca. FX's The Veil explores the surprising and fraught relationship between two women who play a deadly game of truth and lies on the road from Istanbul to Paris and London. One woman has a secret, the other a mission to reveal it before thousands of lives are lost.

FX's The Veil, starring Elizabeth Moss, is now streaming on Disney+.