Second, I got volume 1 of The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore.  I had heard about this book for years but had never picked it up (as with Scott Pilgrim as well).  I felt that the beginning was too much like 28 Days Later in why the main character, Rick (a small town police officer), doesn’t know what’s going on (he was shot on duty and in a coma for a month), but overall I enjoyed it.  There were a couple of times when reading it, however, that I had to double check the pages to make sure I hadn’t missed something; at times, there is a slight jump in time, but there’s no obvious indication of it.  Other than those two quibbles, it was good, and the art style helps to capture the creepiness of a world overrun with zombies.

Third, I finally bought Night by Elie Wiesel.  I’ve wanted to read this book for a while, and I found it in the used the section.  I’m considering teaching it in my Reading class, given its shorter length.

Fourth, I got C.S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea: In Support of the Argument from Reason by Victor Reppert.  The book is an examination of Lewis’s argument that the existence of rational thought proves the existence of the supernatural (an idea Lewis explored in Mircales).  It was fortuitous that I found this book at this time, as I was listening to a podcast in which the hosts briefly discussed recent scientific developments in brain research that suggest that there is no free will (something atheists have been claiming for years).  This “discovery” (if it’s held up) basically proves Lewis’s argument: in a “naturalist” system (in which nothing exists but nature), there cannot be true rational thought (because everything is cause and effect); thus, reason is a supernatural miracle.

Let me know if you’ve read any of them.  I may post fully reviews as I finish reading these books.

GeekNights is one of my favorite podcasts, and they are huge Watchmen fans.  Scott, one of the two hosts, posted a short audio response to the change in the ending of Watchmen in the film version.  I have to admit that it had been so long since I read the original that I missed the ending change, but Scott’s argument is very well made, althought he admits that he hadn’t seen the movie yet (this was posted on March 5).  I’m going to be rereading it and posting my thoughts about it, so I’ll cover my thoughts about the ending when I get there.  If you’ve already watched the movie and read the graphic novel, then give this a listen.

By the way, the purpose of this article, as the title says, is just to get a few thoughts down, to sketch my initial impressions of the movie. It might be a while before I see it again (when the DVD is released, perhaps), so I want to jot down a few things before the memory fades.

I also want to follow up this article with a series of posts chronicling my rereading of the graphic novel. I got the idea from a series of blogs on tor.com, in which someone reread Lord of the Rings and chronicled their impressions of it. I think that might be an interesting idea to do for this and other works that I regard as classics, so look forward to that in the (hopefully) near future.

Now onto the sketch.

On this first viewing, I definitely liked the film. With my admittedly murky memory of the original, I thought this film stayed true to the comic’s theme and plot. It didn’t pull any punches in depicting the violence found in the comic; the film was very visceral, and especially gory in places. In fact, the only negatives that I can think of now were 1) the music choices in several places, particularly the sex scene between Dan and Lori in Archimedes, and 2) the length of the aforementioned sex scene. Beyond those two minor quibbles, I enjoyed the film.

Several scenes stand out in my mind. The opening sequence was, I thought, wonderfully done. It did a great job showing the audience the effect that costumed heroes had on the world, how they changed its history from ours. That’s something that I think is often missing from comics, specifically long-running series that have spanned decades. We know that costumed heroes would have affected history in many ways, but series like Spider-Man and X-Men can’t really drastically change history, which does create a distorted timeline (to say nothing of the actual ages of the characters; Peter Parker should be in his 60s). The film does an excellent job showing the changes the world and the characters have gone through.

One final thought. This film, like the graphic novel, is not easy to watch. Its messages about human nature are difficult, not to understand, but to accept. Human beings are shown more often at their worst; for a superhero story, heroes are lacking. That was something that was innovative about the original comic. Somewhat ironically, perhaps, this movie does the same for the superhero film genre that the original did for the superhero comic genre. Hopefully, for those viewers whose primary exposure to superheroes has been movies, this film will have the same effect.

Grouchy-old-geek addendum: the audience we saw the movie with, while on the whole okay, displayed moments of pure stupidity and ignorance. I could tell that this would not be a great audience when the majority of them laughed uproariously at some been-there-done-that comedy movie about stupid people doing stupid things. (I think the title was The Hangover.) Anyways, they sniggered like middle-schoolers during the sex scene, let out comedic interjections at the demise of one of Big Figure’s goons, and totally failed to get the meaning behind playing “99 Luftballoons.” Oh well. Stupid kids… get off my lawn!