Geek Swagger.
Posts tagged Watchmen
How Blu-Ray Succeeds : Watchmen
Jul 27th
There has been a lot of discussion about whether or not Blu-Ray discs will ever be popular enough to supersede DVD as the king of physical movie media formats. Â Most people agree that, though the quality is great, it's not as noticeable as the jump from VHS to DVD was. Â Add to that the fact that blu-ray discs are still pretty expensive compared to their DVD counterparts (not to mention the cost of a good BD player in the first place) Â and the inspiration to upgrade is somewhat lacking. Â Therefore, given the seemingly slow adoption of blu-ray many, people including myself have hypothesized that the next great step forward is in high-quality streaming content. Â Though the picture quality might not be comparable to blu-ray, the convenience factor is a huge selling point.
I have a blu-ray player but I still buy and watch DVDs most of the time, mostly because of cost. Â If I'm trying to decide between a $15 DVD or a $23 blu-ray and the movie isn't one I'm a super-fan of, I'll probably save some cash and go with the DVD. Â On the other hand I just purchased the blu-ray version of a movie I enjoyed quite a bit, and that's for a few reasons.
The reasons I had no qualms about purchasing Watchmen on blu-ray are numerous. Â First off it's a visually impressive movie, and I know I'll get a better experience from the higher-quality blu-ray. Â When I'm looking at a comedy or drama that doesn't feature much action it's hard to get excited about the movie's blu-ray version, but in this case I know the movie won't disappoint. Â Second, it comes with a digital copy of the movie. Â When choosing between a DVD with no digital copy and a blu-ray with one, I'll generally go for the blu-ray. Â It's just nice to have a copy of the movie on my myriad of devices instead of just on my TV.
Lastly, the extra features are actually worth having blu-ray for. Â There is a feature called "maximum movie mode" with which all of the people who purchased the director's cut of Watchmen in blu-ray will be able to view the movie alongside the director, Zack Snyder. Â I'm usually not one for special features unless it's a movie I care a great deal about, but that's just plain cool.
This is kind of a random and rambling post, but it was something I've been thinking about quite a bit lately.  I want blu-ray to succeed, I truly do, but in order to get there I think more movie studios have to include awesome purchase-worthy extras to get people excited.  Once the platform is being exploited to offer an experience that's truly unique when compared to  its DVD counterpart, and when price drops on discs and players, I think it'll start catching on.  There's still time for blu-ray to make a run, but in the meantime free digital copies of the movies are a good start. 
Watchmen
Mar 7th
So I literally just got home from seeing Watchmen and I figured it'd be best to put my thoughts down now. The movie is one of the best representations of a book or comic series that I've ever seen. In order to justify that they take their time with it and it clocks in at just under 3 hours including previews and such, but they utilize the time well. Some of the most interesting aspects of the original comic to me were the historical elements behind the Watchmen group, and from the beginning the movie does its best to describe as much of that back-story as you need. The only negative about that is if you're unfamiliar with the story it might seem to skip around a lot.
I suppose my only other criticism about the movie would be that it spends a lot of time focusing on the setup, the backstory, the "why," and less attention is paid to the "what." Some of the bigger setpieces in the graphic novel seem to fly by in the movie, but that's more than likely just a result of the different narration formats. When reading a comic or novel it might take you a whole day before you get through one plot line and in a movie it's forced down to 20 minutes.
Rorschach, my favorite character in Watchmen, was executed perfectly. In fact, the actor () even looks like him almost identically. They take their time and slowly develop his character by letting bits of pieces of his past and "prior work" slip, and by the end I think that even without reading Watchmen you'd get a good idea about Rorschach on the whole. As always it's really difficult to write about the plot much without heading into spoiler territory, so if it seems as though I'm dancing around the main subject here it's because I am. Just know that the characters in the movie are faithfully developed to their full potential, as was with the graphic novel (particularly Rorshach and The Comedian).
It's not a movie I'd recommend taking your kids to see, at all. There's a reason they gave it an R rating - plenty of violence which nearly ushers a Saw movie to mind, and so when I noticed that there were a couple of kids in the audience I couldn't help but cringe a bit. It's a superhero movie, yes, but not like you've probably seen before. It's gritty, realistic, and fantastic. If you have any interest at all in the work of Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, From Hell) and especially if you've read and enjoyed Watchmen, I'd say you have to go see the movie.
In fact you probably already have, so I hope it was well-received.
