When I first read Watchmen back in high school, I liked it well enough, but I felt like something was missing. And that something was a guy getting his arms chopped off with a chainsaw or bones flying through arms. 'So overrated! This is the worst superhero /slasher comic ever!', I said. Thank goodness Zack Snyder picked up on this and amended it in the movie.
Likewise, when I adapt 1984, instead of having Big Brother brainwash Winston, I'm going to have him gracefully hack apart his head with a cleaver. Its more artistic that way.
That scene is a little unnecessarily gratuitous, sure, but in the book they just cut his throat, and there isn't really any reason for it -- I mean, he's still there, he's just dead. Cutting his arms off in the movie actually makes more sense. And THAT'S why I think Zack Snyder should be president.
ReplyDeleteIt's just that I know he and the screenwriters made such pains to stay close to the book, why you'd blow it all for the sake of some gratuitous violence is beyond me...
ReplyDeleteAnd that is why the assasination of Zack Snyder caused the world wars.
do you know what's slightly more gratuitous than hacking off arms? a 500-foot tentacle monster that spontaneously appears and creates a massive telekinetic shock that kills almost everyone in a very violent way that creates tons of bloody carnage
ReplyDeleteBut chopping a butcher knife in a guy's head? Deep.
ReplyDeleteI loved the tentacle monster. Its people dying because of silly comic book conventions, its a realistic Galactus, braindead. Say what you will about the tentacle monster, but that was part of the original vision. It wasn't as if Alan Moore had something to compare it against, like Snyder did. Besides, shouldn't a nuclear holocaust be a little gratuitous?
And that's why Alan Moore came back from the dead three days later.
"realistic Galactus". you sure nailed it. Chopping the guy in the head was paralleling him with the dogs, which serves a deeper purpose then leaving him with a saw to hack his arm off with before being consumed by fire.
ReplyDeleteIt does. See, Rorscharch believes in decisions and black and white. The guy claims he didn't have a choice, he's sick. Rorscharch gives him a choice. Lose a limb or die. Its the moment when Rorscharch, and his intense objectivism was born, coupled with his sick violence. Snyder just left in the violence.
ReplyDeleteOl' A.M. wasn't mastrubating on this one.
Anyway, back to the jokes...
what did Rorschach say about dogs?
ReplyDeleteRealistically? As an objectivist he probably think they're beneath him because they can't go to work.
ReplyDeleteSo he has no problem killing them. Especially when they eat a child.