Many smart cinephiles and comic book geeks will avoid watching Watchmen this weekend. Not to avoid the crowds of opening weekend, and not to patiently await word of mouth from friends and reactions from critics. No, these bright few will ignore the out-of-season blockbuster event because there is absolutely no reason to see this movie. They recognize that any Watchmen adaptation (particularly this one that’s been made) is completely unnecessary. Well, for anyone not out to profit from it, anyway. Of course, even Warner Bros. might have been better off not producing the thing, since the studio won’t be making as much money as it had initially envisioned thanks to that profit-participation settlement with Fox.

The point of this post is not to call Watchmen watchers stupid. Rather, our list of five reasons the film is unnecessary is to help moviegoers get smart. After reading this, though, if any of you are still determined to waste your time sitting through almost 3 hours of redundant, rehashed, irrelevant, ridiculous and inescapably disappointing superhero cinema, we’ll be left with no choice but to consider you mindless sheep, the kind that deserve to be duped. And if Dr. Manhattan chooses to vaporize us (or fans choose to curse us out in the comments section) for exposing the truth about this enterprise of excess, then so be it. We believe we’ve served justice here.
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So Warner Brothers showed about 2 minutes of Watchmen footage on an awards show this week, and they’ve now put that footage online. I’m pretty sure this is the same as the brief “sizzle reel” they showed alongside the three full scenes at the roadshow a couple of weeks ago. So there’s not much new for me to say about it, other than that I really do wish Zack Snyder was a little less enamored with motion effects, but then, post-Changeling, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to take slow motion seriously again. What say you?

I knew from the recent Hollywood Reporter feature on Twilight that Summit Entertainment planned to release a new trailer more geared toward a male audience, but I never would have guessed they’d do such a damn good job of it. I’ve been hating on this movie from the beginning, but now part of me is actually thinking I’d like to see it. And I bet a lot of teenage boys will be thinking the same, only more so.

This is pure genius marketing, and it would have been in Summit’s favor to have gone this route all along. What with superheroes so huge right now, why hadn’t they already tried to sell this thing as being like a comic book movie rather than a sappy adaptation of goth chick lit? Wasn’t that bit of dialogue referencing Spider-Man and Superman in the film the whole time? Such a line needs to be exploited, and it’s a shame the fledgling studio took so long to employ it. This trailer is seriously what Summit should have shown at Comic-Con.

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We were invited to a Warner Bros. event tonight to see 26 minutes worth of footage from the Watchmen film that’s due out on 03.06.09 next year, and it was pretty impressive stuff. Even the ice cold comic book fan inside of me enjoyed it, and I didn’t think The Dark Knight was worth all the hype everyone was laying on it. As far as a graphic novel turned into a film goes, Watchmen looks like it’ll set the bar for future adaptations.

Director Zack Snyder was on-hand to setup the footage and talk about what’s been done so far, and he was joined by costume designer Michael Wilkinson and production designer Alex McDowell. Interestingly enough, it took place in the same place where they held a similar event for 300. Head after the break to get a full rundown on the footage we saw, and what Snyder and company had to say about the film that’s still six months away. Forgive me if I slip into a bit of fanboyism, because this is one of my favorite comic book properties.

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It’s been almost two weeks and Hancock has grossed almost $350 million, so it’s time to start the academic discussions — with spoilers, of course (anyone who wants to avoid knowing the “twists” should discontinue reading now). Maybe it’s just the film scholar in me, but I have been desiring a good analysis of the film’s allegorical meaning since viewing the less-than-perfect superhero movie last week. While others may feel that the movie is hardly worth reading into (especially over-reading, as I’ve always felt my M.O. to be) or that it’s too obvious that the first half is really about the role of the U.S. as a superpower, I’m nevertheless eager to figure it out.

Basically, I’ve been wracking my brain trying to understand where the allegory goes, or was meant to go, once Charlize Theron’s character is introduced as Hancock’s super-powered wife. Does she somehow fit in with or in response to Hancock’s representation of America (the patriotic name, the eagle emblem on his uniform, etc.)? I’m still at a loss, but I’ve come up with 5 possibilities (some a lot less likely than others) for what screenwriters Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan intended for her character to be.

1. The United Kingdom - So sue me if part of my reasoning is inspired by Theron’s role on Arrested Development, in which she also seemed to be harboring a secret from beau Jason Bateman (if only Hancock had stolen Jeffrey Tambor from Hellboy II, it could have been considered a reunion), but if Hancock represents America, then Mary (Theron) is some other superpower, right? I don’t recall any hints that she signifies the Soviet Union, so she must be a stand-in for the British. Is her desire to be a housewife representative of a desire by the British to no longer be a world-stomping empire? Is Mary’s defending of the French boy a nod to Britain-France relations in contrast to U.S.-France? But then is the movie also saying that the UK and the U.S. are less powerful when united together? History would say otherwise.
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• Hollywood loves the energy crisis! Not only is there evidence that “higher gas prices boost boxoffice by prompting consumers to opt for the local multiplex over longer trips,” but foreign oil investors, prompted by a desire to avoid taxes on windfall profits, “look more favorably on the film biz — any film, really — because it means that even if a movie loses, say, 20% or 30% of its money, investors still come out on top because those losses pale compared with what a government might have taken.”
• “There’s a superhero summit under way at Warner Bros,” says David S. Cohen at Variety, as the studio and subsidiary DC Comics meet to work out a “master plan” for shilling superheroes going forward.
• The Chinese censorship board is demanding that cuts be made to the third Mummy movie––which shot for three months in China, and incorporates a replica of the Great Wall––but they’re not publicly specifying what it’ll take to let the film be shown in the country. Is anyone else starting to suspect that the Chinese censors just have really good taste?
• The AMPTP won’t accept any of SAG’s counter-offers, and SAG won’t settle for the AMPTP’s “final” deal. So what now? No one knows for sure, but with SAG members continuing to work with no contract, it’s possible that the studios will “declare an impasse and impose the terms and conditions of the new offer.”

• The Playlist recaps highlights from Diddy’s (is that his name now?) video review of Hancock: “‘As a black kid you’re like, ‘well, why ain’ there no super heros that look like me?’ Why aint’ there a black super hero?’ They got Wonder Woman, Underdog…[pauses, thinks about the absurdity of this for a minute and then catches up] They even have a dog super hero, they got no black super hero! (aside). That’s my white boy answering the phone.’”
• “[C]ertainly a lot of the greatest directors (and artists, musicians, etc.) have also had some of the most fucked up sex lives. There’s definitely not no connection between wanting to play god with a camera and thinking it’s a great idea to marry your dead wife’s twenty year old sister (that would be Peter Bogdanovich),” Molly Lambert notes, on her way to considering how and why Cameron Crowe’s “ambition to be a great American director…collapsed like a sad soufflé.”
• Friends: The Movie? Be afraid.