Wednesday 25 February 2009

Certify! Watchmen's an 18?!


My head of service (my boss' boss' boss) came up to me today and sad "I notice from the ads on TV that Watchmen's an 18!". I'd only seen TBC notices but found it it is actually an 18 but I couldn't really think why. A 15 maybe but an 18? Other than a pair of giant blue knackers (which remain intact, so I definitely won't be watching this in Imax!) I could only think of the dog's split skull that lurks in Rorshach's memory but supposed there may be some nasty stuff in Vietnam (I don't even think the GN's labelled for mature readers is it? Mind you, that was another bone of contention between Moore and DC...). A little digging finds that the high rating is due mainly to sustained graphic violence, namely repeated blows to the head with a meat cleaver and a knife shoved through somebody's viewing (prison riot scene and Mr Rorshach, I'm looking your way).


Despite a two and a half hour running time, early reviews are positive so I'm finding I'm actually now pretty looking forward to this. I passed on the Rorshach figure last month but may pick it up this weekend. Rorshach was always my favourite Watchmen character by far...which may say some worrying things about me...


Anyway, thought I'd better get on with things and try and get some drawing done. I wasn't sure I was ready for sequentials (plus there are two problem panels in the next page of pencils that are wrong but can't seem to fix--lightboxing should hopefully help me move some figures up and resolve one panel though) but as things turned out, I soon wished I had done so. Not only was I surprised at how easy it was to actually draw at the minute, I soon started drawing myself up the wall as what had I chosen to draw? The background of the Supergirl piece, which is mainly buildings...which I hate only less than vehicles. Drawing little buildings isn't too bad but ruling line after line on these buggers drove me up the wall to the point where I had to give up before starting the final building. I was canny and photocopied a pic of the unadorned Supergirl in case I cock up the background, which I think I may have done. I'm off work on Friday while I wait for two gas men to come round so I'll probably try to complete the final building in this piece tomorrow and then get some inking or pencilling done on Friday.

3 comments:

thekelvingreen said...

I believe there's an attempted rape in the film too. I suspect that they've upped it to an 18 because it's based on a comic, and comics are "for kids", and they want to make sure kids don't see it.

Unknown said...

This being Snyder, I can only think there's probably lots of like, really cool stuff, like people having their limbs chopped off and set on fire and their heads exploding. Not to mention plenty of gayness.

Nice background. Drawing all those building windows and whatnot would do my head in. Which explains why I don't draw the Ultimates.

Rorshach's cool.

thekelvingreen said...

Apparently, Snyder's now being hailed as a creative genius, and everyone is somewhat overlooking the fact that his three films so far have been a remake which no one really liked, and comic book adaptations which could only have been less creative if he'd just filmed someone showing pages from the book to the camera.

If he comes up with an idea on his own, then perhaps we can talk about creativity. I'm really bored of all the hype around nowadays.