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A Scanner Darkly is one of those rare PKD adaptations that abandons all the big-idea philosophising and whiz-bang sci-fi and is much more of a mood piece, capturing his unsettling discomfort and sense of wrongness. It was filmed in live-action and painstakingly hand rotoscoped, giving every scene a strange skew. Characters and foreground objects are sharply drawn, while the backgrounds fade into sketch like cartoons, the whole world feels constantly half-drunk: Keanu Reeves plays Bob Arctor, a drug-cop who is in such deep cover that even his superiors don't know his identity, and he soon finds that he is spying on himself. Fuelled by drug induced paranoia, and also quite well justified paranoia, Bob slowly begins to unravel and lose track of reality. There are no grand narratives here, none of Minority Report's prognostications on free-will, or Total Recall pausing the action to question what even is reality anyway. That kind of philosophising needs a certain clinical detachment, which Bob doesn't have the luxury of. We can argue all day about whether I see the same sky as you, whether events must follow causally from each other, or if it's even possible to describe objective reality. None of that matters when your gut is the one telling you that things are wrong, that your perceptions are flawed. Narratively, Scanner the movie trims and cleans up the novella. A few characters are merged, and a completely unnecessary plot twist (the fictional drug Substance D is assumed to be synthetic in the book, only to be revealed as plant based. The movie opens by telling us its organic) is discarded, which clears the board for all the vignettes of the drifters and addicts passing through Bob's life. There's not much of a narrative, a lot of the events are disconnected from each other - one extended scene features the cast counting and re-counting the gears on a bike, another is a long car drive in which they argue about whether or not they locked/booby trapped their house. In a change from the book these are intercut with Bob's therapy sessions in which he futily tries to draw some kind of connection between them in an effort to make meaning of his life.  Reeves' trademark zen gets turned on its head. Here his introspection is completely unsuccessful, his stoicism doesn't bring any relief, and he (and the animators) does a fantastic job of channelling his inner turmoil with just a few pained expressions. The rest of the cast are top-notch too - Winona Ryder is numbed beyond all feeling, Woody Harrelson and Rory Cochrane are agitated at the slightest provocation, and Robert Downey Jr (pictured above, turning into a bug) is flawlessly cast as a fast-talking charismatic maverick, who everybody else can see is completely full of poo poo. Seriously, if you get annoyed by the million second-chances people give to Tony Stark, check out this movie, it dunks on him constantly. PKD suffered with addiction and schizophrenia for most of his life, and Scanner is partly autobiographical. The authors note makes these parallels clear, and drives the tragedy even deeper - this isn't the fall of Bob Arctor we're reading about, it's the fall of PKD, and the film ends with his role-call of dead or dying friends. A Scanner Darkly is the only film to make me cry as an adult, and it's a goddam masterpiece.
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Sep 19, 2019 23:36
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Xealot posted:My issue is that there's this slavish fidelity to a source which is from an extremely specific time and place, and it's reproduced without comment 25 years later. The context of IRL 1985 - the Cold War, the post-Vietnam period, etc. - inform just about everything in Watchmen. You actually take Ozymandias seriously at the end, because dread of a nuclear apocalypse was a real thing. Vietnam and Watergate happened a decade before, and the alternate history aspects of that were timely or relevant. The entire zeitgeist the comic was responding to just didn't exist in 2009. So instead, you're left with this aesthetic exercise that feels like any given superhero story as a period piece. This is a weird criticism. Art can’t be about the past? Do you think Moore’s Watchmen is less effective now? Positioning Watchmen in 2009 effectively contends that it happened - and the result is the “end of history” dystopic “peace” we have now
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Sep 19, 2019 23:41
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DeimosRising posted:This is a weird criticism. Art can’t be about the past? Do you think Moore’s Watchmen is less effective now? Positioning Watchmen in 2009 effectively contends that it happened - and the result is the “end of history” dystopic “peace” we have now Art can obviously be about the past. But if you're making a period piece, it's usually using the past setting to inform some specific comment about the present. Mad Men is about the 60's, but really it's about, say, toxic masculinity or anxiety about a changing society, etc. Something like The Shape of Water is set in the past, but its point is to use the oppressively sexist and hyper-normative atmosphere of the era to tell this queer fairy tale. My specific point about Watchmen is that it's a commentary on America and American values in the 80's, but the movie is so literal in its adaptation that I didn't see what else it had to say. Even the new choices it had to make for the soundtrack were so literal and so referential to other things, it felt perspective-less. "Ride of the Valkyries" for Vietnam. "Sounds of Silence" for Comedian's funeral. The Koyaanisqatsi score for Dr. Manhattan on Mars. The entire exercise seemed to be, "what if we could've adapted a Watchmen movie in the 80's?" rather than, "why is Watchmen still an important text now?" (And I think it is, but it's a product of its time. That's not an insult, that's just a reality.) For sure, you can read into Bush-era political realities in the film. The destruction of New York vs. 9/11 or Nixon's puffery vs. "Mission: Accomplished" or what-have-you, but I'm not convinced any of that's more intentional in the film than simply coincidental of the comic. I guess there's the, "who wants a cowboy in the White House" thing. Your point about living in Veidt's "end of history" false peace is a valid one, but I kind of wish I saw a whole movie about that rather than some implied footnote at the end.
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Sep 20, 2019 01:41
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Watchmen the movie is basically pretty good. It's the kind of adaptation that's close enough to the source material that what changes there are stand out more, though. Like one little change that bugged me- "I'm not a comic book villain." I get why they changed the line- nobody knows what a Republic serial is anymore (and since it's spoken maybe people would think he said "cereal" and get really confused)- but it doesn't flow the same and goddamnit people know your history, but... it's incredibly minor. A bigger change to me is the very elegantly choreographed fighting- which is apparently not just a Snyder thing, it's explicitly in an early draft of the script that they're doing all this elaborate poo poo- when, like the thing is these are just people. They don't have powers, they're not especially brilliant or skilled, they're just screwed up enough that they started putting on costumes and punching people out. That rant aside, it's basically still a good compelling story and some of the visualizations work really well (I recall just about everything with Dr. Manhattan being kinda cool and melancholy and sad in the way it was in the comic, so, that works.) The only music choice I object to is the use of Hallelujah and even that's at least in part to the fact that the song was being used A LOT at the time. (Well okay that and the Desolation Row cover which just sounded awful.)
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Sep 20, 2019 08:28
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On a wider note I am generally of the opinion that filmmakers should do whatever the Hell they want with the source material once the rights have been transferred. Like I'd never think of something as "a good movie but a poor adaptation", adaptations are about how close you hew to the source, and can be done well or badly on any part of that spectrum. The Ralph Bakshi version of Lord of the Rings is an interesting study in this. It's arguably more faithful to the book than the Jackson films are, but is less successful at conveying the story and meaning, partly because it's hella compressed, but also because some of the changes they do make are just odd. There's this whole thing where Saruman is called Aruman, possibly because someone somewhere decided audiences might get him and Sauron confused- but after a time they call him Saruman anyway so... ? In the book, when Gandalf tells Frodo all about the Ring, it's all in Bag End, and Sam is trimming the verges outside the window and overhears. In the movie, they decide okay let's make this scene a little less static, let's have them taking a walk around Hobbiton, but now Sam is... hiding behind a bush for some reason. And I may have to rewatch but I seem to recall, the whole Council of Elrond scene never establishes that the Ring can only be destroyed by being thrown in the fires of Mount Doom. Like they talk about destroying the Ring and about taking it to Mordor but they never really spell out the point on which the whole plot hinges. It sort of illustrates how, when you make changes to a work you have to think about the effect those changes have on other parts of the work. I also just finished reading Lost Horizon and I'd like to talk a bit about the changes between the book and both film versions (the musical is clearly more a remake of the Capra film than another adaptation of the book), but it's actually been a while since I've seen the Capra film and I don't know if I WANT to watch the musical version again anytime soon.
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Sep 20, 2019 08:49
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I feel like the best book adaptations either adapt a novella or a short story, or really pare down a large novel and focus on only a small part of it. Most of the problems with adaptations that go awry is handling the scope of a large novel and trying to convey all of it. So like, The Shawshank Redemption is fantastic and adapts, what, a 100 page length novel? Counting against my theory is what the poster above said, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which managed to convey scope with some marvelous moves, while cutting just enough out of the story to keep it humming along and not too overburdened. Mike N Eich fucked around with this message at 12:32 on Sep 20, 2019 |
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Sep 20, 2019 12:29
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I think the best novels, comic books, whatever, play to their respective mediums strengths. So, adapting them to film is going to be difficult right out of the gate. One of the problems with the Watchmen movie was that Snyder treated the comic panels like they were movie storyboards. The layout of the panels and all those details in the artwork, which is what comic books do best, are completely lost in film form. The movie ends up feelings like its just going those the story beats. Mike N Eich posted:I feel like the best book adaptations either adapt a novella or a short story, or really pare down a large novel and focus on only a small part of it. Most of the problems with adaptations that go awry is handling the scope of a large novel and trying to convey all of it. Good point. The best movie adaptions were always from the middle-of-the-road novels, like The Godfather, Jaws, The Shining, etc. They are more straight forward novels focusing on plot more so then pushing the strengths of the medium. It gave the filmmakers more room to add their own details.
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Sep 20, 2019 13:36
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Maxwell Lord posted:Watchmen the movie is basically pretty good. It's the kind of adaptation that's close enough to the source material that what changes there are stand out more, though. same problem with "i triggered it 25 minutes ago" not flowing as well or having the same punch as "i did it 35 minutes ago".
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Sep 20, 2019 14:25
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R. Guyovich posted:you've gotta be kidding me lol. the most obvious music choice ever made layered over shallow "twists" on iconic american imagery and carbon copies of panels from the comic. it's the laziest poo poo imaginable. that was the first time I heard that song plus I really like the way he did slow motion shots
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Sep 21, 2019 09:55
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frankee posted:that was the first time I heard that song lol
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Sep 21, 2019 13:59
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Hahahaa, people who don't have the exact same cultural knowledge as me are stupid!
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Sep 21, 2019 23:03
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I didn't remember where that Bob Dylan song was in the comic so I looked it up if anyone wants to compare it to the movie:http://www.watchmencomicmovie.com/watchmen-comic-songs-music.php posted:Chapter XI at the bottom of Page 32. In the supplement at the end of the chapter there’s a ad for Nostalgia perfume that uses the song title as an ad slogan.
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Sep 21, 2019 23:21
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Narzack posted:Hahahaa, people who don't have the exact same cultural knowledge as me are stupid! it's a very famous song and i'm no dylan fan.
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Sep 21, 2019 23:39
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Snyder has a level of earnestness so powerful that he can do something like play “The Times They Are a-Changing” for a film montage where he literally changes a timeline and he pulls it off without an iota of irony. In my opinion this worked smashingly for the intro, but further into the film it didn’t work at all for the “Hallelujah” sex scene. What the film needed was for Snyder to acknowledge how ludicrous these things were, wink at the audience. Let them know it’s ok to laugh at the Bat Nipples on Ozymandias’s chest. The mere presence of the Bat Nipples isn’t the problem, the problem is Snyder’s direction insisting that it all has to be taken equally seriously. This is a movie that shows you God, and then shows you he’s a naked blue nerd who’s floppy blue cock you see all the time. You’re supposed to laugh at it, at least in parts. But there are hardly any jokes in the film.
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Sep 22, 2019 02:48
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Groovelord Neato posted:it's a very famous song and i'm no dylan fan. Nah, man. It's lovely to mock someone because they haven't heard one out of sixty trillion songs in the world. poo poo, I hadn't heard it before Watchmen, either.
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Sep 22, 2019 04:50
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Mike N Eich posted:Snyder has a level of earnestness so powerful that he can do something like play “The Times They Are a-Changing” for a film montage where he literally changes a timeline and he pulls it off without an iota of irony. Snyder made a slavishly devoted adaptation but decided the one thing that had to be changed was Dr. Manhattan needed to hang a heavier pipe
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Sep 22, 2019 05:49
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Narzack posted:Nah, man. It's lovely to mock someone because they haven't heard one out of sixty trillion songs in the world. poo poo, I hadn't heard it before Watchmen, either. lol
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Sep 22, 2019 13:13
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Mike N Eich posted:Snyder has a level of earnestness so powerful that he can do something like play “The Times They Are a-Changing” for a film montage where he literally changes a timeline and he pulls it off without an iota of irony. It's a really awkward scene, because if you've not read the comic it's incredible forced and painful, and if you have read the comic, it's hilarious. Snyder's biggest fuckup was cutting the ironic commentary from the TV during Nite Owl's boner problems. "so powerful, this is a man in his forties" "ahh, a graceful dismount" etc etc which sets up the hyperbolic eroticism of the Hallelujah scene.
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Sep 23, 2019 11:14
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Mike N Eich posted:Snyder has a level of earnestness so powerful that he can do something like play “The Times They Are a-Changing” for a film montage where he literally changes a timeline and he pulls it off without an iota of irony. I don’t see the benefit of adding a laugh track and an applause sign
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Sep 24, 2019 00:19
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Zack Snyder needs to direct an adaptation of Pax Americana.
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Oct 2, 2019 21:14
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Imagine where you are in life that you think laughing at people hearing a song for the first time is a good choice to make.
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Oct 3, 2019 18:09
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it isn't a choice.
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Oct 3, 2019 19:53
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At this point it's beginning to look like a great argument for the Watchmen movie being good is how uninspired the TV show looks by comparison.
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Oct 5, 2019 20:57
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Finished I am Legend and just as i was told its a million times better than the movie
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Oct 10, 2019 01:30
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clean ayers act posted:Finished I am Legend and just as i was told its a million times better than the movie The movie misses the point of the book which is He becomes the monster
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Oct 10, 2019 02:18
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Honestly the film version of I Am Legend is still a perfectly fine movie, you just have to accept that it's an adaptation in name only, kinda like with Starship Troopers
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Oct 10, 2019 02:23
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drrockso20 posted:Honestly the film version of I Am Legend is still a perfectly fine movie, you just have to accept that it's an adaptation in name only, kinda like with Starship Troopers Not to mention that the original ending made the film a LOT better and acknowledged the theme of the book, but idiot test audiences and studio fuckery meant we got whatever the hell that ending was. If you haven't seen it, check it out on youtube or something. He realises that the head vamp is coming to rescue his girlfriend and that he's the monster living in a fortress snatching the residents of the city away and performing experiments on them . But of course, 'test audiences' were scratching their heads and confused so we get butterfly bullshit and an explosion instead. Yay! Dog_Meat fucked around with this message at 13:55 on Oct 10, 2019 |
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Oct 10, 2019 08:24
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Knight2m posted:The movie misses the point of the book which is He becomes the monster And strangely, there are hints of that plotline in the movie, but they don't go anywhere.
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Oct 10, 2019 12:02
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Sodomy Hussein posted:At this point it's beginning to look like a great argument for the Watchmen movie being good is how uninspired the TV show looks by comparison. What I'll say is both Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns are very reactionary to the time and place they were being published. So, when you get an animated TDKR adaptation, all the satire seems toothless because it's all thirty years old. Just telling a new story that explores more contemporary anxieties through superheroes is more interesting than another adaptation of the book would be.
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Oct 10, 2019 22:11
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Timeless Appeal posted:Really? I'm actually a bit hyped for it. I dunno, I thought the animated adaptation of Dark Knight Returns was overall pretty drat good, and that the satire kept from the comic was still very much relevant cause most of those issues from the 80's are still around today, they just sometimes have different faces
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Oct 10, 2019 22:20
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drrockso20 posted:I dunno, I thought the animated adaptation of Dark Knight Returns was overall pretty drat good, and that the satire kept from the comic was still very much relevant cause most of those issues from the 80's are still around today, they just sometimes have different faces But who knows if it'll actually be good. I also just found the TDKR adaptation pretty lifeless in general.
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Oct 10, 2019 22:40
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nonathlon posted:And strangely, there are hints of that plotline in the movie, but they don't go anywhere. Blame the test audiences.
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Oct 11, 2019 07:01
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Maxwell Lord posted:Blame the test audiences. There are so, so, so many films where this is the case 
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Oct 11, 2019 12:12
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The I Am Legend movie is just so bland, it doesn't want to upset it's audience. The main character is isolated and depressed and how does the film show this? He watches Shrek, how cute! Don't be too hard on test audiences, they are not exactly objective. The producers usually guide the results to what they want.
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Oct 11, 2019 20:39
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Joe Chill posted:The main character is isolated and depressed and how does the film show this? He watches Shrek, how cute! That rules, though?
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Oct 11, 2019 21:11
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Test audiences saved Noah from being turned into a bog-standard Biblical epic when Paramount had a cut like that made, assuming test audiences would put it through the roof and they could snub their nose at Aronofsky for making a weird version of the story, only to test the cut and find that, while Aronofsky’s version tested poorly, the Paramount cut tested horrendously. But yeah, much like political polls, test audiences are more tools to control perception than reflect it.
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Oct 13, 2019 23:24
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Jenny Agutter posted:If you take project mayhem at face value it's basically prototypical mgtow. "a generation of men raised by women" I.e. equating women with weakness and spiritual malaise. They try to find meaning through outbursts of violence in a completely masculine setting. In modern parlance the narrator would be a cuck or soy boy. See the last shot of the film where he and Marla are nearly indistinguishable vs. earlier in that scene Tyler is wearing a jacket with porno covers printed all over it. Narrator and Tyler were the Chad/virgin dichotomy before the contemporary meme This is maybe true if you divorce Fight Club from its historical context. But it also has the line "we're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression," which is very clearly not true for the current generation, and is where these people came from. It's a movie very much of its 'end of history' time and that's a big reason why its rise as cultural/critical darling halted in the mid 00s. Pedro De Heredia fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Oct 14, 2019 |
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Oct 14, 2019 17:45
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Pedro De Heredia posted:This is maybe true if you divorce Fight Club from its historical context. But it also has the line "we're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression," which is very clearly not true for the current generation, and is where these people came from. It's a movie very much of its 'end of history' time and that's a big reason why its rise as cultural/critical darling halted in the mid 00s. This is an excellent take. Because yeah, the immediate post-Cold War era was replete with these "frustrated masculine ennui" narratives, and they fell off almost instantly after 9/11. Their complaint became irrelevant-feeling almost immediately; it was like cultural whiplash. American Beauty was another one of those stories, that felt relevant or insightful when it came out and now feels like the most fragile, entitled white male bullshit playing the world's smallest violin.
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Oct 14, 2019 20:00
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You can say that frustrated male ennui is not a thing anymore but I think the rise of the alt right and election of trump kind of speaks for itself. Films like American beauty and office space share the same criticism but they were specifically about white collar middle class shitheads, in fight club the majority of the members were poor service workers. Those people certainly didn't benefit from the great recession but their alienation from society and the levers of power hasn't changed. If anything is outdated about fight club it's that the targets of project mayhem were those actually in power. But then fight club always portrayed project mayhem somewhat sympathetically compared to real world exemplars like Timothy McVeigh.
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Oct 14, 2019 21:30
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One hill I will die on is that The Chocolate War movie, in particular the ending, is a lot better and more hard-hitting than the book. Happy to elaborate if anyone's seen/read it and gives a poo poo (e: if you haven't read/seen it, give it a try! Both Robert Cormier and Keith Gordon should be a lot better known than they are. Also Doug Hutchinson playing the first of many sleazy creeps) Clipperton fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Oct 21, 2019 |
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Oct 21, 2019 21:31
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