Has anyone else read Watchmen and/or seen the trailer for the upcoming film adaptation? I was wondering what people thought of either.

I saw the trailer for the first time before Dark Knight, and was blown away. I was in a large theater with 850 other people and the crowd applauded it. I even went home and downloaded the 1080p trailer for it, transferred it to my Tivo, and I think I've watched it at least a couple dozen times.

This prompted me to finally get around to reading the book, which I've meant to for a while now. Wow. Not quite what I was expecting, that's for sure. Very dense, and I'm still trying to work out what it all means.

One thing's for sure, though, I've joined the multitude of comic readers who wonder how in hell they can turn that book into a movie. I'll probably be more interested in how it's adapted than the adaptation itself.

Thoughts?

I looked up the Wikipedia article when some friends started getting excited about the trailer. I'd never read it, and now I'm kind of interested in doing so because it sounds quite cool, except that now I don't want it to spoil the movie for me. (I even stopped reading the Wikipedia article at the point where it began discussing plot details.)

I was really interested after seeing the trailer too. I did a little looking at it, but not much. I'm debating like Tony in reading it before hand. It's not too long of a wait, so I may just read the graphic novel after seeing the movie.

I thought it was funny that the music was 'The Beginning is the End is the Beginning' from the Batman & Robin soundtrack (shown just before The Dark Knight).

Yeah, I debated reading it before seeing the movie, but after all I've heard about the comic, I felt it might be the right order to do things and I think that was the right choice. I simply can't imagine how they'll adapt it.

It's a fairly quick read, too. 12 issues of about 25-30 pages each, usually with about 3 pages of just text at the end of each issue. Plus, it's only $11 on Amazon.

Read the graphic novel first. It's a classic of the first order. It basically created modern comics storytelling. There are twists in the comic that are very clever and well foreshadowed that the movie can't possibly match simply due to length.

I'm definitely interested in seeing the movie, and I don't think that it will be bad, as many fans of the comic do, but there's simply no way that it will be able to live up to the comic itself.

That's how I'm approaching it. Do you have any links to sites that discuss the book? I just know that there's plenty of stuff that went over my head. I mean, I understand basic plot details and ultimate motives, but there's lots of symbolism and metaphor that I'm sure I'm missing.

Alternatively, I'd love to discuss it here if nobody minds another thread filled with spoiler tags

*edit*
In case people here don't follow Aint it Cool, here's something from Comic-Con.

IMO, the best set of annotations is Watching the Detectives. (Spoilers there, BTW.)

All I know it that it is drawing very large crowds at Comic-con to see more about it. Their booth is right near the one I'm working, and they had to cut off lines for things many times now.

Like Dignan, I'll be amazed if they can pull off a good movie, given the complexity of the original graphic novel. On the other hand, they sure seem to have gotten many of the visual images right. Staggeringly right.

Having loved the book for many years I can't wait. I haven't yet seen any trailers, so I'll have to check em out sometime.

Would be an awfully long film if they do the whole book....

Wow. Just stared the book now. I read Chp 1. and will need to go through it again. Tons of little details in the illustrations. I've found a few websites to "guide" you through the book, but I'm not going to look at those further until I've finished the book. This should be fun!

BTW, how did you do this? Thanks!

Well, it's in two parts. The first part is downloading the trailer (PM me for a link). The second is to get pyTivo running on your computer. If you want more help setting it up, let me know. I use pyTivo to transfer pretty much any type of video over to my Tivo. It works amazingly well, albeit a bit slow - but that's mostly my machine and the fact that it's transcoding a lot of information.

Ok, I just ordered Watchmen from Amazon. Looks like it must be out of stock as my expected delivery date isn't until the 13th, being shipped 2nd day. I'm really looking forward to it!

OK, for me to install pyTivo will require a bit of time. I don't have that right now, but on my days off I'll try and tackle it. Thanks for the link!