Terminator Salvation's teaser was unexpectedly sweet for a minute-long glimpse, but the genre film at the top of any discerning geek's radar is Watchmen (director Zack Snyder's adaptation of the acclaimed Moore/Gibbons graphic novel that changed the face of comics in the '80s).
This teaser, which reveals a huge amount of footage for a simple teaser, will prelude The Dark Knight in cinemas from next week, and will silence any critics of Snyder's project -- for now, at least. It all looks marvellous: Dr. Manhattan's transformation, the Owlship surfacing from the Hudson River, the World Trade Center in the background (it's set in a parallel universe of '80s-era USA), the leather outfits for the "costumed adventurers", leggy Malin Akerman in a wasp-like cat-suit, iconic psycho Rorschach's swirling face-mask, the surface of Mars, etc, etc, etc. Brilliant.
Yes, it does its job extremely well. For fans, everything looks about as perfect as you could hope for. Minor nitpicking will be overwhelmed by squeals of delight. For non-fans, it looks like a very cool, slick, intelligent, unusual, mesmerizing superhero flick. But I'm already bracing myself for ignorant people claiming it's just a mash-up of Heroes, The Incredibles and Hancock next year (grrrr), but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it...
What surprised me most about the teaser (beyond the weird use of the Smashing Pumpkins' "The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning") is how unlike 300 it looks. Watchmen was fast-tracked into production (after years in development hell and numerous script rewrites) because of Snyder's success translating Frank Miller's graphic novel 300 using Sin City-style techniques -- so I expected something reeking of greenscreen again. But Watchmen looks relatively "real" and less artificial than I expected. Which can only be a good thing. No, make that a great thing.
This is guaranteed to be the blockbuster of spring-'09, and I'm excited by this teaser that the seemingly-impossible may have been achieved: Watchmen's sprawling, epic, complex and intelligent story has been turned into a film? Please let it be so!
Released: 5 March (AUS), 6 March 2009 (US & UK)
HD Download: 480P (43MB), 720P (100MB), 1080P (172MB)
This teaser, which reveals a huge amount of footage for a simple teaser, will prelude The Dark Knight in cinemas from next week, and will silence any critics of Snyder's project -- for now, at least. It all looks marvellous: Dr. Manhattan's transformation, the Owlship surfacing from the Hudson River, the World Trade Center in the background (it's set in a parallel universe of '80s-era USA), the leather outfits for the "costumed adventurers", leggy Malin Akerman in a wasp-like cat-suit, iconic psycho Rorschach's swirling face-mask, the surface of Mars, etc, etc, etc. Brilliant.
Yes, it does its job extremely well. For fans, everything looks about as perfect as you could hope for. Minor nitpicking will be overwhelmed by squeals of delight. For non-fans, it looks like a very cool, slick, intelligent, unusual, mesmerizing superhero flick. But I'm already bracing myself for ignorant people claiming it's just a mash-up of Heroes, The Incredibles and Hancock next year (grrrr), but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it...
What surprised me most about the teaser (beyond the weird use of the Smashing Pumpkins' "The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning") is how unlike 300 it looks. Watchmen was fast-tracked into production (after years in development hell and numerous script rewrites) because of Snyder's success translating Frank Miller's graphic novel 300 using Sin City-style techniques -- so I expected something reeking of greenscreen again. But Watchmen looks relatively "real" and less artificial than I expected. Which can only be a good thing. No, make that a great thing.
This is guaranteed to be the blockbuster of spring-'09, and I'm excited by this teaser that the seemingly-impossible may have been achieved: Watchmen's sprawling, epic, complex and intelligent story has been turned into a film? Please let it be so!
Released: 5 March (AUS), 6 March 2009 (US & UK)
HD Download: 480P (43MB), 720P (100MB), 1080P (172MB)
