Storytellers Unplugged for March

[truepenny]

Post here.

It's about the movie of Watchmen, which we just got back from seeing. There aren't any spoilers.

There is a spoiler here, though.


The movie made several changes, most--although not all--of them for the better (at least in terms of meeting the storytelling needs of its particular medium). But the one that just filled me with glee is that when Laurie accidentally activates Archie's flamethrower, she's not down in Dan's basement cleaning. She's snooping. [ETA: buymeaclue, a more alert reader than I, points out that Laurie's snooping in the book, too. Mea culpa!] And she doesn't press the button for the flamethrower because she thinks it's the cigarette lighter. She presses the button for the flamethrower because she wants to know what it does. My inner twelve-year-old tomboy is so vindicated.

Also, while all the casting is eerily perfect and the performances likewise, Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach is solid-state awesome.

Comments

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

I like the snooping, but...they used to fight crime together, no? She's been in Archie before. She knows there's a flamethrower. So she really ought not be surprised that pressing a button-with-flame-on-it in a closed space is not the best idea she's ever had in her life.

ETA: Actually, just had a look back at the comic; she's snooping there, too.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's not at all clear that they did fight crime together. Adrian's attempt to revive the Minutemen was a dismal failure, and insofar as we see Laurie with anyone else in flashback, it's Jon. And we see Dan with Rorschach and the Comedian. I don't think, in either the book or the movie, that there's any indication Laurie's been in Archie before or that she has any reason to know there's a flamethrower.

You're right, though. She wasn't cleaning; I'd remembered that wrong--I think because of the weird white apron-thing she's wearing and the emphasis on the dust.