Whoah
You have to hand it to them, that’s pretty spot-on casting.
The first six episodes have been released to critics. The reviews I have read are all pretty much enthusiastic about the show.
I will forever watch any Lindelof thing post Leftovers.
But nobody warned me that Hong Chau is in this! I just recently saw Downsizing, and I well I love that deeply flawed film, fan or not, she was incredible in it.
Very excited about getting to watch this soon.
The A.V. Club likes it too. Though they do note that they haven’t seen the final three episodes.
Does it have glowing blue penis?
I am hopeful now, as I was before Snyder’s abomination.
So… Uh, I dunno about this one.
Not what I expected but it does have my interest.
I won’t spoil anything, but absolutely weird and political. It’s totally about America’s original sin, which is probably the last thing people would expect. I’m tuning in for sure.
Pretty cool! I’m down for more of that weird universe.
Midway through the Jeremy Irons scene, my wife said, “Is this still the same show?” :D
And I didn’t realize until the credits rolled, that was Louis Gossett Jr. in the wheelchair!
“Do you think I can lift two-hundred pounds?”
That was a good first episode. It doesn’t feel very Watchmen-y though, despite building in a bunch of hooks to the lore. That’s because Moore’s big theme was how the concept of superheroes allow people to feel that storybook solutions to complex human problems are possible, even when it’s insane to think so. (I’m talking about you, Ozymandias.)
This, on the other hand, seemed to be more about two warring political factions. The existence of capes seems purely to be a fact of life in this universe, not the thematic center of it.
I’m also not sure that Reznor/Ross is the ideal soundtrack for this universe - in my head, the Watchman-verse skipped pop music since 1960 (Man in the High Castle does this very well - and yes, the Snyder Watchmen bugged me because it used Dylan.)
But again, if I put all that aside and think of it as being something different, this was a good first episode. I’m just sad we probably won’t be getting more Rogers and Hammerstein. I never knew Crockett could sing.
Infucking credible.
This show is SO watchmen.
The choice to shift the cold war panic and distrust of government to focus so heavily on anti black racism and the police is bold. It is a natural evolution of the themes of the comic for a 2019 America. The distinct choice to flip the racial roles, showing a large number of African American police officers fighting with white vigilantes is something else. The traffic stop with the visibly nervous white guy blasting rap music scared around the black cop was particularly tense and bold.
The shot at the end, of the blood on the badge, rather than the comedian pin was excellent. The Reznor/Ross soundtrack was foreboding and pervasive in all the right ways. Regina King is amazing, and she is perfect in this. The action sequence was well shot and up to the HBO standard of quality.
On top of all of that, the show did such a great job of world building slipping in shots of newspapers, background images, news reports and a squid shower to help us understand the world of the show without having a character monologue to us all of the rules.
This show is making some bold choices, which is one reason why The Watchmen comic was so good. This really feels like an evolution of the original Watchmen themes, and I am on board 100%
Been a long time since I’ve posted but Hot Damn you summed this up perfectly for me. I loved it as well.
JG
Do we need a spoiler thread? Or should we use this thread?
Probably needs its own thread, since this one was originally about the comic book. I’m not going to start it since I haven’t seen the show yet.
I got the comic book via ComiXology and am going through it now. There is a lot of text between the chapters. I think there all excerpts from Hollis Mason’s autobiography “Under the Hood” talking about the original formation of the Watchmen. How important is it for me to read this stuff. It’s really slowing down the pace to have 6-8 pages of densely written text between each chapter of comics. Is this part of the original or is this what makes this edition they’re selling now the “Deluxe Edition.”