Watchmen looks promising? UPDATED.

Who watches Zach Snyder? I will admit up front that I thought 300 a big pile of hateful, lame-brain junk. But it did look good. This looks pretty great, too. I just hope it retains the spirit as well as amplifying the look. Cuz I'm one of those fanboys who does indeed love this "most celebrated graphic novel of all time". I'm also a fan of Billy Crudup in most things, so that bodes well.

UPDATE: Beyond the prickles 300 sends up my spine, though, the real danger is condensing that big book into two hours (or so) draped in slow-mo "Look Ma!" shots. I'm prepared to lose some things, sure, but I keep wondering if this project would have been better suited to cable television: the only visual medium (so far) that seems designed for (or is accepted as) serialized storytelling. Because, for all the hoopla and dollar bills, I'm beginning to think twice about those Lord of the Rings movies Peter Jackson made. (And, to a lesser extent -- of course -- those books Tolkien wrote; although I dig what they're after with myth.) Thing is: not even the self-proclaimed fans of old serials (cough) can seem to make a series of films that work as a medium and not a cycle because they're so addicted to tropes, not ideas. The problem with Zach Snyder's other movie is he thought his ideas, or Frank Miller's ideas at that, would trump all his tropes -- and he was right. Cuz, shit, man, those ideas sure were dumb. (Favorite moment? When the "hero" of the piece flat out endorses xenophobia as a philosophy.) Luckily, Alan Moore is a bigger thinker; however, I don't know if I want that vision (of life, of earth, of art) to play in 2009, even if the movie does wind up working. Especially after yesterday's pitch black in-the-trenches marathon, The Dark Knight. I just don't know if I'll be ready by then. Or, you know, if the world will be. Christopher Nolan certainly doesn't think so, even if the picture ends going up, not down, into the light, not dark, for once. Table that for now, though. The point of coming back onto this post was to say: hot damn, that trailer looked dope on a big, wide screen. --RWK