I just finished reading Watchmen shortly ago. Great book. Now I felt safe reading deeper into this thread. I have to say I can get past most of the casting, but the choice for Ozymandias is still bothering me. Not only does he look like a kid, but everything I'm seeing of him so far has Spoiler: Spoilers "VILLAIN! VILLAIN! VILLAIN!" written all over it, which is a big mistake IMO. The whole point is that he's NOT a VILLAIN (from a certain POV). But everything I've seen so far has him looking evil or sinister. *EDIT* My God, this is what I get for skipping ahead to make my comment. Missed this: Goode sounds like a fucking moron. I'm quickly growing concerned about this movie. If they fuck up Veidt, the movie will be in big trouble. *EDIT2* *ding* *ding* *ding* *ding* *ding* We have a winner!
^He is a kid, relatively speaking. In the book, Veidt is supposed to be 48, IIRC. The actor is 30. That's a huge difference, and I wonder if it's going to affect the background of the character.
Well he's 48 at the end of the book, it makes sense to caste slightly younger actors if they're going to be doing some of the flashback sequences.
That's one of the issues with why "Watchmen" would really be unfilmable (as Moore has always maintained). Characters like, say, The Comedian, show up at about 19, through their mid-60s. And yet have to be, consistently, "the same person." That's easy to do on paper, but far more difficult to do on-screen in a plausible fashion. Laurie has to show up at JUST 16, and nearly 40. And the list goes on. Can they "fudge" that in a 2-hour, highly-abbreviated version of the story? MAYBE. But they can't possibly do it perfectly. Veidt, the first time we see him, is about as old as the actor playing the part is on-screen... that's in the mid-60s. The film's main action takes place in the late 80s... more than 20 years later. If it were up to me, I'd have had to cast different actors for the "60s" and "80s" versions of these characters (much less the 40s versions of a couple of 'em!). You can do Sally Jupiter with "age makeup" possibly... but not Eddie Blake.... not all the way through. Ages 19 to 65 is waaaaay too much of a gap to do, believably, with a single actor. Veidt's casting by a single actor COULD have worked... but it would have had to be an exceptional actor both in terms of skill and in terms of APPEARANCE, and there'd still be one hell of a makeup chair experience involved. As it is... well, we'll see, but so far I'm skeptical.
Really? Aren't there like zillions of movies that have the same characters depicted in a wide range of ages? One of the more interesting movies coming out this year involves Brad Pitt going backwards in age, and has to depict everyone else going up in age. I don't think it's that big a deal. Even a cheesy movie like the X-men did a decent job showing Patrick Stewart at a younger age.
I'm sure the 35-year-old Laurie would kick your ass for that remark. That would only be if they tell the film in a linear fashion. The first time we see him in the book is when Rorschach visits his office in 1985.
Well, I hope not, since I'm older than that myself... though not quite as flabby as Dreiberg! That's what I meant... "first" meaning "first in the timeline" not "first in the storytelling sequence. There are actors... plenty of 'em... who could pull off the "older/younger" thing successfully, aided by makeup. And there are some where it just looks GOOFY. It takes a specific sort of facial structure and body structure and so forth, not to mention a particularly good actor. For those who just went off "lecturing" about how it CAN be done... guess ya didn't really read what I said. And for anyone who wants to see the CREEPY techniques used for the guys in "X-Men" to de-age them, well... that wasn't really a very successful effect. Anytime the audience says "wow, what a cool effect"... THAT EFFECT IS A FAILURE. The audience should never be drawn out of their suspension of disbelief by an effect... it should just be REAL to them. The trick is not to give us something that the audience will see as "an actor in makeup, intended to look older." If that's what we get, then the film has failed in that regard. What we need to get is a 100% believable transition from one age to the next... which can be done but is very difficult to achieve and very rarely done. I've seen a few cases where it has been done successfully... and lots more cases where I've seen "the actor in old age makeup" instead of seeing "the character at a later time." There's a difference. And in this flick, which needs to feel REAL if it's going to succeed in telling the story as intended, I think that the latter is what's required... far more than it would be in a more "mundane" film.
^I don't care how old you are...go try telling a woman anywhere in her 30's that she looks 40...hell, go try telling a woman who is 40 that she looks 40...then factor in the woman being somebody who can whip several times her weight in armed muggers. Go on, tell me how it works out.
It's not hard at all to age people or make them look younger, seriously. Jackass did it like 8 years ago, they made Johnny Knoxville look like 80 and another guy too and everyone believed it when they walked outside, and that was THEIR budget. I'm sure a movie budget in 2008 could make miracles
Oh, it's very difficult to do well... just look at how many flicks have had it done poorly. I'm not saying it can't be done... and I'm sure (though I have no interest in ever watching "Jackass") that Knoxville could be made up in a convincing fashion by someone really good at their art. But when you looked that that, did you see "Knoxville in makeup" or did you see "what Knoxville will look like when he's old?" Is it something that you were able to believe, as you watched that sequence... that you were seeing exactly what he'd look like if he was really that old? You can't make a person's skin become thinner with makeup, just for example... yet that's absolutely one of the effects of aging. I'm sure that you could be made up, by someone with a lot of skill, to be able to pass unrecognized as yourself. But could you be made up so that you'd be able to pass as YOURSELF at a much later time in your life? Could Nimoy play "young Spock" in the upcoming Trek movie with sufficient makeup work? Could Shatner play "young Kirk?" Could Nichols play "young Uhura?" Nahhhhhh.... This is the problem... you either end up with what is fairly obvious makeup work, or you end up with recasting. Yet we all know, instinctively, how peoples' appearance changes over time... and when we see something that doesn't match up, it can be jarring. VERY few people can do age makeup really well. Rick Baker did an outstanding job on Dustin Hoffman in "Little Big Man" for example, but that's a matter of ARTIST SKILL... and even that wasn't 100% convincing, though it remains the best example I've ever seen.
That's why I said it's best to cast someone roughly in the middle of the age range of the character as you're never going to get someone in their 60's to look like a teenager (for the record, the X-Men effect was weird and looked waxy) just as it'd be increasingly hard to age a very young person. On the other hand, getting a middle-aged person to look younger is something Hollywood is famous, nay, infamous for and making them look a few decades older isn't so big a deal. Casting multiple actors per role works fine on some films and quite necessary in the kind of film that follows a character from childhood onwards, but there's usually one or two significant jumps in narrative so the new actor doesn't jar. Not so much of a big deal when, most of them are just going from early to late 20's (if memory serves) to late middle age. A single actor and a little fineness in make-up and lighting makes for a much smoother progression. Also, hiring several actors per part would cost a fair bit more while asking lead actors to spend 4-6 hours in the make-up chair is hardly unusual, even on some TV shows, never mind the movies.
This whole discussion is giving me bad "Too Short a Season" flashbacks...*shudder*. In this case, if they do plan to address the character's age via make-up, I'd say the age difference isn't so great that it would require a lot of effort or suspension of disbelief. I guess it all comes down to how convincing the actor is.
I finished reading the graphic novel. I like a lot of it but I'm not sure I like the ending. I have kinda similar problems with it as I do with the ending of The Dark Knight. They both end with the people being fed a big fat lie because the main characters believe that it is "better" for them than the truth. Creepy as it is, I find myself siding with Rorschach a lot. He may be grim but at least I think he has a firm grasp on the truth. And if humanity can't make good decisions with the truth, maybe we don't deserve to survive.
Maybe, but the way things were going in that timeline, to tell the truth was to bring about nuclear war. The price for the truth was simply too high for anyone other than Rorschach.
I don't know how far back you go, Corpse, but the story is definitely very much of its time. Even though Glasnost and whatnot was right around the corner, we didn't know that, and were in the height of late Cold War paranoia. Just look at some of the stuff that was being put out in the mid-80s--The Day After, Red Dawn, Amerika. People my age were raised with the grim belief that nuclear war would be inevitable in our lifetime. So the idea of a magic solution to stave that off was a lot more compelling then. I think the story does gain something in retrospect, though--the irony that in a world without super-beings, none of that was necessary, and such a high price didn't have to be paid. The U.S. thought that Doc Manhattan was a godsend, but he really just escalated pressures to the point that when he left, the lid was off and all hell was ready to spew forth. Look what they were about to press the button over--Russia invading Afghanistan in 1985! Happened in our world around '80. When I first read the story, I had more problems with the tease at the end that things might not be so neatly wrapped up...but I grew to appreciate the Twilight Zone-ish aspect of it with age and rereadings. "Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."
And that's typical Alan Moore writing... no question. He's never been one for "harsh black vs. white" morality tales, nor has he ever been one for giving "easy answers." He likes to shake things up a bit... which is why I've enjoyed everything I've ever read that he's done. I HATE being "talked down" to. As for the ending of "Watchmen," well... his ending is very much a "1970's" style ending... go back and watch any serious "morality tale" from the period, and they almost never end up on a high note. The most well-recognized example of this is the ending of the original "Planet of the Apes." About Rorschach... well, I tend to agree. The reality is that 99.999% of humanity would end up doing as Dreiberg does, however, not as Rorschach does. He was more willing to DIE than to give in to a moral compromise. I'd like to think that I'd be more likely to do what Rorschach did here, but honestly, can any of us really say that we wouldn't "weenie out" like Dreiberg did? Maybe the point Moore was trying to make is that society needs its fanatics, too... because they're the only ones with the moral courage to do what's necessary? Or maybe he's saying the opposite... that those with moral courage are really nutjobs? Hard to say... like I said, no "black and white" answers there. In my case, I'd like to think that he's wrong... that people can have moral courage without being crazy. But there are so few I've personally met who are that way... I'm not "black and white" certain about that!
*cough*1968*cough* ***MAJOR STORY SPOILERS FOLLOW*** ******************************* ******************************* ******************************* Having discussed this at length with the last friend to whom I loaned my issues, I think there's a bit more going on with Rorschach at the end than being fanatically willing to die for his beliefs. One has to contrast his last act with his diatribe on the first page of the comic. He holds up Harry Truman as an example of what people should aspire to, alongside an idealized vision of the father whom he never knew. In the text materials for #6, we learn that Walter particularly admired Truman for using the atomic bomb--the best real world example of somebody having committed a horrible act to arguably prevent greater horrors. He also says that someday the people of the city will ask him to save them, and he'll refuse. Then Veidt plays Truman, and the early indication is that it has worked. Rorschach finds his black-and-white, no-compromise worldview shaken to the core. Veidt just did what his hero Truman had done--yet Rorschach couldn't support it. Veidt's plan was working, it was serving that arguable greater good, and Rorschach knew that he couldn't live in a world of such moral ambiguity, a world based on a lie. He wanted to die, so he made a big show of walking out, expecting to be stopped. And the gesture that he chose to die performing? It was done on behalf of those millions of people whom he'd previously claimed he'd refuse to save. As my friend offered, he'd probably been crying under that mask the entire time.