tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3290662109425559453.post21364605904338604..comments2024-03-16T20:56:55.956-04:00Comments on Satisfactory Comics: Thesis: Zack Snyder Fetishizes BloodMikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16718383312170645138noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3290662109425559453.post-44486524194071766322010-06-17T23:44:37.550-04:002010-06-17T23:44:37.550-04:00"mostly it felt to me overly faithful to the ..."mostly it felt to me overly faithful to the surface properties of the comic while completely missing its soul. I'd compare it to a note-for-note cover of, say, an early Elvis Costello song, played on "updated" instruments and sung by someone who doesn't speak English and is only repeating the sounds of the words phonetically. Maybe all the right sounds are there, but everything about the rhythm of meaning is screwed up."<br /><br />I wish I saw this post a year ago, because this is exactly how I felt.Duy Tanohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02297797964049546420noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3290662109425559453.post-68058908949200903922009-09-02T09:57:38.355-04:002009-09-02T09:57:38.355-04:00Well said. With the movie fresh in my mind after a...Well said. With the movie fresh in my mind after a recent DVD viewing, I do say you are accurate in all of your comparisons here, with the biggest changes centering around these instances of blood on/off (like in Mortal Kombat game mode settings). <br /><br />Synder did seem to play up every chance he got to utilize gore/blood for shock/spectacle factor. I believe he wanted this movie to be thought of a really truly brutal and R Rated. He's coming off Frank Miller projects, with A LOT of excess blood. Every scene here seems like an excuse to sensationalize the action - what any director would do in a 'super hero movie' with limited action.<br /><br />But it diverts from the source materials in a distracting way to people, like us, that care (and that he seemingly tried making the rest of the movie for). A small concession to the crowd easily wowed by lots of blood.<br /><br />I mean, 'Big Figure' didn't have close to that much blood in his entire body.Peter Knoxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01686775744087298331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3290662109425559453.post-16989578294260431782009-03-28T01:56:00.000-04:002009-03-28T01:56:00.000-04:00I guess I've convinced myself that there are three...I guess I've convinced myself that there are three reasons Snyder toned down the blood and brutality in those scenes I quote last:<BR/><BR/>1. He wanted to make Nite Owl a tougher, more potent, more Batmannish (Batmacho?) superhero, so he kept Veidt from rendering him inert with a salad-bowl lid. That's consistent with a lot of the other alterations around Nite Owl.<BR/><BR/>2. He wanted Veidt to seem more effete, less macho. I'm not sure why, though I've read a lot of people who suggest that Snyder's a bit of a homophobe, and his characterization of Veidt does seem to play up Rorschach's offhand remark about Veidt's possible homosexuality. Personally, I think making Veidt a little androgynous in a David Bowie way works well, but I don't think that should make him any less fearsome in a fight.<BR/><BR/>3. Complicated problems with showing scenes of mass slaughter in Manhattan. <I>Watchmen</I>'s ending really relies on a pre-9/11 mindset, in part for its shock and in part for the reader's willingness to imagine that the fear of future devastating attacks would usher in a new utopia. (From our moment in the present, we know that the new regime powered by such fear isn't one of hope for the future, but consolidated power in the executive branch, extended fearmongering, civil rights abuses, and so forth.) For the purposes of the plot's resolution, if for nothing else, Snyder can't afford to shock us out of the mid-'80s mental framework by reminding us of 9/11.<BR/><BR/>Also, the carnage that looked garish and expressionistic in the comic would inevitably wind up looking like a <I>real</I> mass grave in the movie, and I think even Snyder might not have wanted to go there.Isaachttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06529618611083147320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3290662109425559453.post-14555438331038901902009-03-28T01:11:00.000-04:002009-03-28T01:11:00.000-04:00Crap that was a badly written comment. "part of th...Crap that was a badly written comment. "part of the adaptation wanted to use" should read "the reason the adaptation used" ... ughTom Khttp://www.transatlantis.net/blognoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3290662109425559453.post-27143433576031861722009-03-28T01:07:00.000-04:002009-03-28T01:07:00.000-04:00Hey this is a great analysis! I think that it's wo...Hey this is a great analysis! I think that it's worth noting that Zack Snyder is a horror director trapped in a super hero movie. His production company is named 'Cruel and Unusual Films' after all. I wonder if part of the adaptation wanted to use horror elements to 'mature' the film... the way the comic 'matured' super-heroes?? It clear that Snyder fetishizes blood, but I think the places where (as you point out) he toned down the blood are much more interesting. <I>Why</I> does he tone those scenes down? Does he secretly agree with Veidt's solution to the war? By de-horror-fying the ending does he make Veidt's crime less appalling? Maybe that's one reason he needed to include a 'noooo' shouting Nite Owl to Rorschach's death scene? Otherwise we wouldn't feel as bad...? Anyway, I think you're onto something interesting...Tom Khttp://www.transatlantis.net/blognoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3290662109425559453.post-64348973173168777382009-03-21T23:28:00.000-04:002009-03-21T23:28:00.000-04:00Excellent post; well thought-out and detailed with...Excellent post; well thought-out and detailed with panels that are the proof of the pudding.<BR/><BR/>Mmmm, pudding.Bullyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11708103213119467419noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3290662109425559453.post-67506174580893366652009-03-21T23:16:00.000-04:002009-03-21T23:16:00.000-04:00Well, I might want to quibble a bit about that: yo...Well, I might want to quibble a bit about that: you can see what appear to be fragments of tree flying off at unlikely angles for merely burned-up branches, and at least one of the silhouettes (on the far right) is being flung into the air; so even if he personally isn't being blown up, there is some concussive force very near him.<BR/><BR/>However, that's just a quibble. My more important comment is to agree with your general point about Snyder's treatment of Doctor Manhattan the "crimefighter" by adding that the way the blood splatters all over the women in the club is of course a translation into gore terms of the facial cumshot beloved of pornographers. (Which perhaps you were delicately refraining from spelling out so bluntly, in which case I apologize for coarsening the discourse on the blog.)Mikehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16718383312170645138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3290662109425559453.post-8822334857041725162009-03-21T23:03:00.000-04:002009-03-21T23:03:00.000-04:00Still, that panel makes him like a walking avatar ...Still, that panel makes him like a walking avatar of napalm and agent orange, not a personally cruel Shiva or Jehovah. They're getting burned by the fire he starts, not individually blown to smithereens.Isaachttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06529618611083147320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3290662109425559453.post-16090109163371682682009-03-21T23:01:00.000-04:002009-03-21T23:01:00.000-04:00Oh, one other other thing: the word is not "getten...Oh, one other other thing: the word is not "getten" but "getting" (where did "getten" come from? "Gotten," via the influence of "Manhattan"? Yeesh...).Mikehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16718383312170645138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3290662109425559453.post-30504049117979243142009-03-21T22:58:00.000-04:002009-03-21T22:58:00.000-04:00Oh, one other thing: you actually CAN see some Vie...Oh, one other thing: you actually CAN see some Viet Cong getten blown up in that large-Doctor Manhattan panel, but they're not in the foreground. Check out the little black silhouettes on the ground near where Doctor Manhattan is pointing.Mikehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16718383312170645138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3290662109425559453.post-22363588940376569912009-03-21T22:57:00.000-04:002009-03-21T22:57:00.000-04:00Thanks for a thoughtful post about one of the elem...Thanks for a thoughtful post about one of the elements of the <I>Watchmen</I> movie that bothered me the most--and I say that having enjoyed a lot of the movie, to my great surprise.<BR/><BR/>I was surprised not least because I saw about thirty minutes of <I>300</I> in a hotel room last May, and it was god-awful. I also was put off by the first <I>Watchmen</I> trailer, with its slo-mo indulgence and lack of spoken dialogue: two warning signs for a talkie trailer, in my book. My expectations of Snyder's <I>Watchmen</I> were low bordering on hostile.<BR/><BR/>But a number of things in the movie worked for me, even if I didn't see it as a necessary addition to the comic itself. But one thing I REALLY could have done with less of was precisely the ultra-violence. During the knot-top fight when Laurie (I think it was) broke the gang member's arm into a compound fracture, I was physically repelled, jerking back in my seat and involuntarily shielding my eyes (I think I even said "Good God!").<BR/><BR/>You see, by this point Snyder's visual fidelity to the comic had been emphasized to SUCH a great extent that I never expected such gross excess beyond the sanction of Gibbons’s art. But you’re right that violence and big bangs are added repeatedly in the film. Two other examples, which I’ve also seen mentioned elsewhere online, are the crushing destruction of Eddie Blake’s apartment (with his nigh superheroic punching through a wall and breaking a stone counter with his FACE) and the Owlship rescue of the residents trapped in the burning apartment building, where the exploding fireball that “threatened” Laurie was the definition of gratuitous.<BR/><BR/>I can actually imagine a more enjoyable fan-edit of <I>Watchmen</I> (kind of like the version of <I>The Phantom Menace</I> I heard about that relieves that film of Jar-Jar Binks), which would trim the worst of the violent additions (and take Dan out of Rorschach’s final scene, where he never belonged). I admit I am somewhat curious, now, to see just what gets added back into the film in the inevitable director’s cut DVD, but I worry it might be little more than a lot of extra ultra-violence.<BR/><BR/>As for the fetishization of blood, one of my film-studies colleagues has mentioned a theory of human fluids on film as a real index of what viewers seem to crave in terms of a physical response to what unfolds onscreen: blood in horror movies, tears in dramas (or, well, tear-jerkers), and cum in porn. So if Snyder’s into horror instead of porn (and his first movie would suggest as much), then yeah, blood’s the fluid of choice for his money shots.Mikehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16718383312170645138noreply@blogger.com