This does look good (if slightly too slick...Dan Drieberg needs his paunch!). I'm worried, however, at referring to the Minutemen as 'The Watchmen'.

Yikes.

I'm worried. It looks way too shiny and not nearly gritty enough, and everyone is entirely too young-looking and attractive (instead of, you know, approaching middle age). I couldn't tell by the ad, but does anyone know if they're going to constantly shift Rorschach's splotches? Because that needs to happen.

Yeah, I'm a little worried how young and pretty everyone is. (I say, while committing the same crime on book covers all the time) These guys don't look very "last hurah".

Cross posted with Torie. Well, what she said.

Still....the trailer looks better than I had thought it would. Then again, M. Night Shymalan movies look good in previews.

Torie @ 2 and Irene @ 3 - add me to the bandwagon that is concerned about the age of the cast. They all look like they're in the early twenties. The current storyline hinges on these people's pasts - the actors need to be old enough to believe they have histories.

Torie@2:
yes, Rorschach's splotches do move... you can almost see it happen in the trailer.

Irene, now that you've discovered WATCHMEN, did you see SUPERFOLKS, which Griffin just reprinted and is supposedly one of the inspirations for WATCHMEN? (Warning: the cover looks like it's a graphic novel but it's actually a text-only novel.)

I don't know that much about the WATCHMEN plot points, so the trailer struck me as very stylish and cool, btw.

Torie @ 2, Irene @ 3, and Treebee72 @5--

I think you're entirely right that the film is going to diverge from the original material by portraying the characters as being younger, prettier, and less "paunchy". And that's too bad because one of the great things about the original story is the fact that these characters have pasts.

Sadly, I think it's probably nearly impossible to make a big-budget Hollywood genre movie with unattractive leads. (That's "unattractive" in the Hollywood sense, not "unattractive" in the real-world sense.) Frankly, the studio executives would laugh us out of the room if we tried to insist on adhering to that part of the original material.

This is entirely a guess on my part, but I'd venture that a movie like Watchmen hopes to draw in people who have no knowledge of the original material. And, well, sex sells. (Again, I'm not saying that's right or that I agree with it, but it's my outsider's interpretation of the movie industry.)

So, while the observation that the characters in the Watchmen movie are too young and attractive is spot on, maybe it's not really a critique of that particular movie. It's a critique of large swaths of the entertainment industry. :)

Doesn't make it any less valid, though.

Irene - did you see the initial Watchmen trailer? (http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1255932185/. I don't see it on the official Watchman movie site.) The one with the Smashing Pumpkins 'soundtrack'? 'Light on dialogue, but big on mood and atmosphere with the visuals and music synced so *very* well. I like the feel of the 'Smashing Pumpkins trailer' more than this new 'Muse trailer'.

Apparently *some* attempt was made to downplay the youth and pretty-factor of at least some of the characters. I know Patrick Wilson allegedly gained 30+ lbs. to play Nite Owl II...

We live in a dark time in the world of film when comic movies disappoint us roughly 75-85% of the time. This is one of the few that I believe is part of the other 15-25%. I've been burned so many times by the movie industry though, so I'm sure I'll approach the theater with hesitation, buy my snacks anticipating another let down and sit in my seat with my ticket in my pocket thinking to myself "please don't suck" over and over again.

Too pessimistic? :x

I think that what bothers me most about this trailer is the way that a lot of the lines are delivered. Watchmen, as a book, is completely over the top. That's one of the things that's great about it. There's a lot of dialogue that even the most skilled actors would have trouble delivering with the appropriate amount of emotional heft without sounding overly melodramatic and a little silly.

The little bit that I see of the actor playing the Comedian looks pretty good. Dan Dreiberg's nasal voice sounds a little too intentional to my ear. And I'm really not sure how anyone can be expected to portray Doc Manhattan.

A bit OT, but I just realized that The Comedian is played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Is the poor guy ever going to play a character that doesn't die? He just can't catch a break!

Colour me cautiously optimistic that the movie version of Watchmen will live up to the very high standards of the graphic novel. And the more I see of the trailers, the more I feel this is the right attitude to take into the cinema.

That said, I really do prefer the Spike Scream Awards of all the trailers so far. IMO, it has the best mix of imagery and music.

That's allright Irene I only read it about two months ago myself. Friends kept ranting and raving about it and I finally just said I better read it before the movie comes out. And I'm glad I did. There's going to be a few different DVD versions as well. One will be released when the movie comes out based on the Tales of the Black Freighter. Then multiple versions of the movie including theatrical, extended and Black Freighter laced in. The only thing that bothers me about this movie so far is the ending they're using which is true to the moral story but changed in terms of content. I won't say more. Forgive me if any of this has been said already.

I'm just worried that the filmakers will be worried that critics and audiences will think the story is "too dark," and therefore undercut the entire poinbt of the series, proving Alan Moore correct in his pessimism about adapatations of his work

@ 11: I agree with you completely, especially about Dr. Manhattan. I love Billy Crudup as an actor--if anyone can do it, he can, even if he's covered in special effects--but I find it a little weird that they appear not to have altered his voice in the same way they altered his appearance. The way his speech balloons appear in the book--the shade of blue with the white border--really suggested that his voice didn't sound like anyone else's, or even like anything you'd heard before. I'd always imagined it sounding almost like what it might sound like if four voices were overdubbed on top of each other, perhaps even one of them dropped an octave, then the whole thing chorused and flanged a bit so it bubbled with overtones. Music nerds unite!

I'm not saying I'm disappointed that they didn't reach into my head and pull out the voice I'd imagined. But those speech balloons really give a sound designer the opportunity to do something really interesting. I'm surprised they didn't run with it a bit.

Also, that organ music at the beginning--that's Philip Glass, right? If it isn't, it's someone doing a terrific imitation of him.