I know I’ve been slack and not kept up with the last stretch of episodes. Of the three between “No Exit” and “Daybreak”, I really liked “Someone to Watch Over Me” and was underwhelmed by “Islanded in the Stream of Stars”. I’ll probably go re-watch the former and hopefully review it, while glossing over the others.
But seeing as it was the finale, I don’t think I can delay writing something about “Daybreak”. Possible spoilers after the jump.
Watchmen is one of those dangerous works in contemporary culture for anybody to touch. It’s a seminal work in the superhero comic genre, which comes with all kinds of nasty fanboy baggage, as well as being highly political. It also presents many challenges for a film maker, even given today’s amazing technology and recent successes with comic book adaptations.
And so it was with a little trepidation (mitigated somewhat by FSR‘s coverage of the whole thing) that I went to see it. I’ve only recently read the original graphic novel myself, but I could already see that the plot was compex and the visuals and narrative subtly nuanced such that there was plenty of room for error.
Overall, I was happy with Zack Snyder’s work. Obviously his previous successes with adapting comics to the big screen have not been flukes. The script kept the essentials of the long and detailed plot together coherently, and captured the essence of the story, and the dialogue was engaging enough (in that stilted comic book way) that I kept my disbelief suspended for the whole movie.
Just quickly. In an effort to stay “hip” and “with it” (despite turning 29 today), I have joined the Twitter crowd.
It’s a nifty little thing that, on the surface, seems to be nothing more than a very limited self-promotion platform. “Microblogging”, it’s called; posting every little minutiae about your life. It’s the Facebook status update, without the Facebook.
Just quickly before I head to bed. Somewhere out in the blogosphere, I stumbled upon this little nugget: BSG 1980 had Cylons that looked like humans!
Furthermore, it sounds like the explanation for such anthropomorphism is brought across from old to new:
Dr. Zee gets a lengthy scene to explain how this came about. His explanation seems a bit long and ponderous until you realize he’s just spent 4 minutes explaining what the new series has taken 4 whole seasons to get around to. Huh.
I might have to watch these episodes. I should have realised that all that nonsense about it all “has happened before and will happened again” was more than just spiritual nonsense from inside the setting. It’s breaking the fourth wall.
Grr.
It’s good to see that the boys at Penny Arcade are passing on the important things about Dungeon Mastering. Keeping the Old Ways alive is very important, especially since D&D 4e is nothing more than a wargame with named units. I don’t care what they say about Skill Challenges and roleplaying, they’ve stripped out almost everything that wasn’t about fighting.
Of course, some would argue they haven’t gone far enough. Certainly, the blog post that accompanies the strip remembers:
His group can scarcely believe the stories I tell them about earlier versions of the game, of sundered stats and experience loss and THAC0, when players could win and still lose.
Oh for the good ol’ days…