Wednesday, February 25, 2009

That's What Geeks Are For

The great thing about all the Watchmen trailers and 'making of' videos is that I can be disappointed by the movie before I actually see it. I'd been planning to avoid the movie altogether because it just can't be the comic no matter what goes into it. When I saw the first trailer last year, I was impressed enough that I changed my mind. I thought, "Well, it's not going to be the comic, but we'll see how close it can get." And up to tonight I've been relatively okay with what I've seen. But tonight I realized that the attention to detail isn't as attentive as I thought.

The cars are wrong.

Much of the story takes place in 1985 and if you look at the streets in the movie, you see a bunch of real mid-eighties models of cars. And that's wrong. Watchmen isn't just a superhero movie, it's an alternate reality movie. Two people in particular have made a huge difference in the world of Watchmen as it compares to our world: Dr. Manhattan and Adrian Veidt. Because of Dr. Manhattan, Nixon is still president in '85, Vietnam is the 51st state and everyone drives electric cars. And they're funky looking cars, not to be mistaken for what we had on our roads back in the day. Here's a little glimpse:






Not a great glimpse but I think you can see these things don't exactly look like the Ford LTD. Besides that, I have yet to see those funky ball pipes everyone smokes in the comic, or the goofy space cadet hats or any topknots. Here's a hat:




All of these things help make Watchmen uniquely Watchmen. But, hey, maybe they're in there. I just doubt it. I know this is all just petty bitching. I'll give you that. But that's what geeks are for.
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5 comments:

  1. Church9:48 AM

    Remember, they're now showing an alternate past, rather than an alternate present, so they probably felt the need to up the retro quotient to make sure that comes across.

    Wil Wheaton said it's the bomb", so I'm resting a bit easier.

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  2. Matthew Sanborn Smith12:49 PM

    I understand that they might want to do that to convey to lay audiences that this is 1985 and I also know that it's a lot cheaper too. I read the Wheaton thing, thanks for the link. I think it's strange that people are worried about spoilers for this movie. The hardcore nerds that want to see it should already be intimately familiar with the story. Normally I avoid all spoilers for movies, but for this one, I'm watching and reading whatever comes down the pike.

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  3. Church2:35 PM

    Yeah, the whole 'spoilers' thing throws me, until I remember that a good hunk of the target audience is younger than the book(s) and probably hasn't read them.

    All the people bitching about it on teh intertubes... well, at least they're considered that the other part of the target audience. (C.F., Star Trek XI)

    ReplyDelete
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