Yeah, I'd say... Spoiler: If you haven't read the book, you don't want to read this. they're giving him a moustache twirl. And the point of him giving away his parents' money is that he's a closet megalomaniac who wants to be Alexander the Great. He wanted to be able to say that he made himself. Plus, as I recall, while he said one thing, his casual disregard, possibly contempt, for his ordinary parents was shown by an image of him casually sitting on their gravestone. You've got everything you need to work with right there.
Now I'm a little curious...has anyone from earlier in this thread who said that they planned to read the book for the first time read it yet? Or are those people now avoiding this thread for fear of spoilers?
With all this buzz I'm definately going to be re reading this comic again. I've read this comic so many times that I've lost count but everytime I read it, I get a different insight. For those that haven't I totally recommend getting the Absolute Edition. Bigger is Better!
Same with me. I've been working my way through some other stuff, but the urge to delve back into Watchmen is getting stronger. And I may have just turned my nephew onto reading it! But a lot more expensive. How much new material is in the Absolute Edition? Enough to offer a substantial amount of insight?
Readers with a hankering for bonus material might want to buy this instead: http://www.amazon.com/Watching-Watchmen-Dave-Gibbons/dp/1848560419
Yeah... seems like this is going to be a BAD thing... but it's consistent with the loss of the other key defining elements of the character. Still... by turning this rich, morally-ambiguous (and yes, sexually ambiguous) character into a conventional "mustachio-twirling villain" and worse yet, that overwrought, over-used "white supremicist/Nazi" stereotype... well, maybe it's necessary to cull the film into a 2 1/2-hour max length, but I think it does harm the story.
I believe it is ~ $75, so it cost a lot more but you feel the quality. You also get the scripts and proposal which Alan Moore pitched to DC. Personally I love comics so it was worth it for me. Also you can examine in greater detail Gibbons put in those panels. Yeah I'm not feeling Ozy's actor for the reason of his actions. I don't think he got it or even read the comic. I wonder how Zach will decide to fit symmetry into the comic.
I discovered the Watchmen trailer when getting a look at this thread, but after I watched the trailer multiple times, I went to my usual bookstore to get the original material. I read it, and then I read the thread (and I re-read and re-watched V for Vendetta while I was at it) I agree that the trailer looks like a window opened to the book and find it very impressive, and I can't wait to go and watch that movie. I noticed people didn't like the video clip format but it gives a specific atmosphere to the trailer and I enjoyed that a lot.
Did you read the quote? The actor is supposing that Veidt *gave away* his parents money because it was tainted by Nazi profiteering. That he wanted to earn his fortune honestly, so to speak. I'm not wild about the idea that everyone is making up their own backstory. The original source is dense enough. But, on the other hand, this detail sounds like it will be buried - I can't imagine he's going to make a speech about his dead Nazi parents - and it's in the spirit of the graphic novel to have a dense, barely felt history to everything. If it helps the actor... why not?
I never got that through Veidt. He wanted to do it to prove to himself that he was brilliant enough that he could start from nothing and become something.
In my limited experience with actors, I've noticed thus far that they tend to want to add things beyond the text instead of relaying on it and trusting that the writer put everything they need into it. I coached one actress when she was up for a play here in Los Angeles and I told her don't add anything because the writer put everything she need into the dialog and stage directions. However, in the case of Watchmen, the source material provides more than enough to understand each of the characters and their motivations. Everything else about this movie I am excited for but the actor playing Veidt is the least thing I am looking forward. From the pre-press and the few glimpses of the character, I get a not so fresh feeling about him.
It is a good idea to have an idea of your character's background in the context of any production (so you can "react" naturally,) but that doesn't mean you fucking invent shit that isn't at all in line with what the story establishes in terms of themes and plot. For example, if you wanted to play Adrian as gay, that's perfectly acceptable. Not only does Rorschach suspect this early on, but his idol was Alexander the Great (who is at the very least bisexual), and this also explains his impeccable body and fashion sense. However, making him a goddamn Nazi is insane. Although it's fine that his immigrant parents were Nazi supporters (and lets face it, much of America was okay with what Hitler was doing before we entered the war,) he himself cannot be a Nazi. Why? Because that makes him just another goddamned Nazi trying to take over the world, which makes any of the actual material from the comic worthless. His emulation of Alexander and other Greek and Egyptian rulers becomes nothing more than a Nazi with a fetish for ankhs and togas. Now, I'll admit, it's possible for him to be curious about the "leader" phenomenon because of what Hiter managed to accomplish, and this curiosity leads him to discover Alexander, someone who managed to build a world-class empire without resorting to wholesale manslaughter and genocide. But that's not what Matthew Goode was saying.
My other problem with him - is that he doesn't look very handsome and he has big black bags under his eyes like a drug addict.
His costume makes him look tiny, which is sad because aside from being skinny, he's got very nice muscles. You'd think that the man who made 300 could have just thrown one of the Spartan costumes at Goode...
I still can't get past the FUCKING NIPPLES on the suit. Didn't Zack Snyder get memo about how much Batman and Robin was hated? Joel Schumacher sucks by the way.