Dinhternet

If your Latin is rusty, that phrase means, “Who watches the Watch­men?” (From Least I Could Do.)

I just saw it today, and before I went into the the­ater, I sent out a Tweet that said, “On a man-date with Will N to see glow­ing blue penis.” And now I think one of my old friends thinks I’m gay.

Any­way, I don’t want to get into too many specifics, but I feel like the movie was enjoy­able, but it was a cleaned up ver­sion of the comic.

The fights pushed the lim­its of human abil­ity. (Remem­ber, every­one is just a nor­mal per­son in a mask until Dr. Man­hat­tan came along.) Rorschach was def­i­nitely glossed up to make more sym­pa­thetic; a lot of his ultra-conservative/vulgar mate­r­ial was cut. A lot of the lit­tle touches that built spe­cific char­ac­ters weren’t really there. The cli­mac­tic attack was changed, and I’m not sure why. It changes the dynamic between the Watch­men, though, and I didn’t hear one of the most impor­tant exchanges in the story. (It is men­tioned by another char­ac­ter after­wards, though.) So as not to spoil it for peo­ple who haven’t seen or read it yet, I’ll put the quotes with­out the speakers.

“The ends jus­tify the means.“
“Noth­ing ever ends.”

I feel this quote is so true, too.

Also, I read the book so I knew the story already, but if you saw the movie with­out read­ing it, did you know who the vil­lain was ahead of time? I felt like it was so obvious.

So yeah, if you haven’t seen or read it, I would rec­om­mend both, but if you had to do only one, def­i­nitely read it. There is so much more depth, it’s amazing.

I came across a post-modern take on Bat­man recently at JayPinkerton.com:

It’s hilar­i­ously offen­sive! Both in gen­eral and to the Bat­man mythos.

I tend to like post-modern stuff when char­ac­ters are genre-savvy. Who doesn’t like it when Road Run­ner takes advan­tage of the “you won’t fall if you don’t look down” rule to get away from Wile E. Coy­ote, or when Spider-Man men­tions tropes in his banter?

I some­times like it when char­ac­ters break the fourth wall, but it has to be done in a par­tic­u­lar way. I like Dead­pool, but didn’t like Filth.

I think that for me, a big part of it is the humor. I like usu­ally self-referencing par­ody, but only in things with an estab­lished light side. And seri­ous post-modernism is just some­thing I usu­ally don’t get. How do you feel about post-modern art? What are your favorite and least favorite examples?

Oh, and since I’m talk­ing about comics… I’m off work tomor­row. Does any­one want to hit up Won­der­Con with me? It’s only $12 if you pre-reg online.

Besides being my first day of work, today was also the first day of my week with­out TV. It was kinda weird, since basi­cally all I do at home now is watch TV (on my com­puter). I got home from work, and din­ner wasn’t ready yet, so I was about to catch up on some Daily Show when the lit­tle reminder in my cal­en­dar hits my eye.

So instead, I caught up on some manga that came out over the week­end, and now I’m going to actu­ally crack a book for the first time in a while. The first time ever at my new house.

This also means that I’m even more down than usual to hang, so please give me a call. As an added bonus, when I hang out with peo­ple, there’s more of a chance of a Quote of the Day!