Eight Complaints About Watchmen

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Permalink Reply by Lenny Diana on May 17, 2009 at 12:37am

What was wrong with the music? It wasn't that bad.

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Permalink Reply by Ryan on May 17, 2009 at 10:31am

To quote the article:

8. What Was the Deal with the Music?

Admit it. More than once during Watchmen, you laughed at one of the songs Zack Snyder chose to underscore a scene and NOT for a good reason. It's a shame since Snyder starts off so well, with Bob Dylan's "Times They Are a Changin'" effectively accompanying the film's fantastic title sequence (best part of the movie). Granted, using that song to score a montage where you literally watch the times-a-changin' IS a bit on the nose, but it's forgivable (and, yes, we do know that the Dylan song is referenced in the comic, but the point is still valid). What isn't forgivable is the director's awkward, borderline-embarrassing use of other pop ballads in either strange or clichéd-as-hell places. Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence" for a funeral? WOW. Never heard that one before. (Surprised he didn't use "Danny Boy.") And why would Snyder use Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" for a sex scene, particularly since it's perhaps THE most insanely over-used song in movie and TV history? (It was used in Shrek, for Pete's sake.) And what was the deal with blaring "99 Luftballons" during Dan and Laurie's quiet dinner? Is this The Wedding Singer where we constantly have to remind the audience that we're in the 1980s? One wonders why they didn't just show us the Comedian shooting J.R. Ewing from the grassy knoll.

But it was the awkward matching of lyrics to on-screen action that was really the worst. Playing "All Along the Watchtower" just so you can have the lyrics "Outside in the cold distance / A wild cat did growl / Two riders were approachin' / And the wind began to howl" match up to Nite Owl and Rorschach (two riders) making a crash-landing in harsh Antarctica (cold distance/wind howling) is so very lame. But nothing beats the muzak version of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" playing during a scene featuring a character (we'll be spoiler friendly) who, in fact, wants to rule the world. We're sure that Snyder thought that was pretty cute, but, man, it just reeks of obviousness and trying too hard. We halfway expected REM's "It's the End of the World as We Know It" to play constantly over the last reel of the movie.

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Permalink Reply by Lenny Diana on May 17, 2009 at 11:34am

I guess I didn't think it was that bad. This guy seems to be over thinking the music.

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Permalink Reply by Ryan on May 17, 2009 at 12:34pm

I just kept laughing at the music when I saw the film...and I don't think it was during scenes where the director was going for laughter. Actually, there were a lot of giggles in the audience when I saw the movie.

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Permalink Reply by stutterinjake on May 17, 2009 at 4:52pm

I mean, I kinda saw the songs as songs of the time. Granted I didn't live during the 80's hardly, but I could figure out why "99 Luft Balloons" is playing...foreshadowing maybe? It is a song about Nuclear Holocaust ya know.

I think the movie's story itself is so brooding and hopeless, ya know, and i kinda saw the music at times an attempt to lighten the mood of the film itself.

If there's one thing i'll complain about Watchmen, it's too much Manhattan penis, not the music really. I did buy the soundtrack f, that features the only My Chemical Romance song i've ever happened to like. Yeah, go ahead and shoot me.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Costello on May 24, 2009 at 11:10am

Like the visuals, without actual dates on the screen the music had to invoke the time and place of the movie. Wasn't "All along the watchtower" in the original GN? The previous post is correct. "99 Luf balloons" not only invokes imagery of Nuclear War but is almost universally seen as an '80s song, letting the audience know what decade it is without stating it. "watchtower" actually got a kinda weird reaction from me simply because at the time BSG was wrapping up and of course was using that song as part of its plot, so bad timing there. I thought the music was supposed to be obvious, so it didn't bother me so much

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Permalink Reply by Jacob Williams on May 25, 2009 at 12:52pm

I agree. I also found nothing wrong with the music.

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Permalink Reply by Penny on May 30, 2009 at 7:09am

Okay, the Nixon makeup was pretty cheesy. But the rest of the 'complaints".... ehhh... didn't bother me. As for Dr. Manhattans nudity? It was no big deal to me. (no pun intended *chuckles*) I honestly didn't even notice it at first. Then it was like, "Oh! Blue weiner." Then I got back into the movie, which I thought took too much crap. People are always complaining when a movie is made from a comic or book, that it is not' faithful' enough and here Snyder takes flack for being 'too faithful'. I think some of the younger viewers and people not familiar with "Watchmen", were thinking it was going to be more like an "Iron Man" type of movie, but clearly this was a comic book movie for adults.

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Permalink Reply by Jacob Williams on May 30, 2009 at 8:55am

I absolutely agree with everything you said. What made me the most angry at the showing I went to was that someone had their 4 or 5 year old child there.

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