With the Watchmen film coming out (cunningly timed to coincide with Lib Dem Conference – cheers!), I thought I’d run a couple of films by you.
Firstly, with the film itself cutting the story to the bone, if you want an even semi-complete Watchmen movie experience, you have to buy the DVD of Tales of the Black Freighter – an animation about a bloke running away from a big pirate ship. Can’t work out what that has to do with a film based on a superhero film? Clearly you haven’t read the original – it is this sort of juxtaposition that makes Watchmen the classic it is. Essentially, the story in TBF parallels the main narrative, while the pirate theme is an illustration of how in a world with real superheroes the comics industry is likely to be flogging some other genre to death. A bit like how, um, the movie industry is currently flogging the whole supernatural pirates story thing to death at the moment. Go figure.
Anyway, here is the trailer:
Meanwhile, Happy Harry has produced this “reimagining” of Watchmen as if it were an 80s era Saturday Morning Cartoon. Fantastic stuff, although the Simpsons sort of got there first with the Watchmen Babies:
Finally, this Mac/PC parody (part of a Marvel/DC series) hits several nails on the head, even if it does lapse into fandom on occasion:
Can’t get enough? You could always track down Watchmensch. Oy vey!
I won’t get to see the actual film until Monday, and even then I’ll probably hate it. Bah.