When I think through our Group Project, only one thing goes through my mind. That is that not only do I want people to think of Sin City, Blade Runner, and Film Noir when they watch our opening, but next March when the legend to be Watchmen invades our screen on 03/06/09, suddenly everyone will go "So that's what inspired them."So what is it? And why is it that I can safely bet most people reading this blog won't know what it is?
Watchmen is a comic book/graphic novel by esteemed writer Alan Moore and pencilled by artist Dave Gibbons. It was rated one of Time Magazine's 100 Best Novels and most comic book fans will tell you there is nothing that can challenge it. A single 12 part story arc set in a post-Vietnam America where Nixon is still president in 1985, where Nuclear War is on the brink and costumed heroes are banned. From the violent, vigilante detective Rorschach's first speech to the tremendous plot twists at the end the comic book world has not seen anything else of the sort. Heroes, with no powers, who have to fight for a better world. A genius with a plan to save humanity, a detective searching for the truth, a man who can move the very atoms inside him yet has nothing at all, an inventor longing for love. These characters are hardly the hero types, yet together it is up to them to stop something terrible from happening.
The reason this comic has inspired me in this project is through the character Rorschach (for a brief character analysis look at my group blog here). His concealing appearance, lack of morals, and general bad ass character make him such an amazing influence for both our protagonist and villain. He dresses like a film noir detective but rather than puzzling over problems will run into a building with a spray can and a lighter setting fire to policemen, or smashing a fellow prisoners head into a wall. He fights dirty, and that is why he wins. He understands the world far more than everyone else seems to simply because he sees its worst and lives to better that. I want to take all these aspects and use them to make our villain and hero have similar yet entirely different traits as we want part of our plot to be that at some time they may have been friends.
To finish off this brief review on how Watchmen has influenced our film opening I thought I'd leave you with the inspiration for our voice over, and the new trailer for Zack Snyder's 2009 film adaptation of this graphic masterpiece.
"Rorschach's Journal. October 12th, 1985. :
Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen it's true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!"...
...and I'll look down and whisper "no."
They had a choice, all of them. They could have followed in the footsteps of good men like my father, or president Truman. Decent men, who believed in a day's work for a day's pay. Instead they following the droppings of lechers and communists and didn't realize that the trail led over a precipice until it was too late. Don't tell me they didn't have a choice.
Now the whole world stands on the brink, staring down into bloody hell, all those liberals and intellectuals and smooth-talkers...and all of a sudden, nobody can think of anything to say."
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