[Indi]

Rules:
No polls, just a review and your opinion on why you believe the film you've chosen should stay higher up in the list. 50 words or more, 40 is accepted if you have expressed your opinion in a satisfactory standard.

Have fun!

[ShaneHunter]

This is hard but i'll go with Kick-Ass mainly because i had more fun with it and Matthew Vaughn is a director of more substance. Zack Snyder seemed to have ripped off over 50% of the scenes from the comic book to the point they look exactly the same and the only difference being that they were running in 24 frames per second. I admire the positives of Watchmen and Zack Snyder's aesthetic signature but by the end it came off as too preachy with the subject matter and overdid the whole stylistic angle, going slow motion when it didn't have to and trying to give us an epic feel in places that didn't require it. It copied and pasted the story from the graphic novel and didn't make any real contributions other than the altered ending. I even preferred the original ending in the graphic novel. Overall i had more issues with Watchmen than i did Kick-Ass which didn't take itself too seriously and treated itself as a fun piece of entertainment with a smart and capable director as well as a great cast. If you want a hefty superhero film that treated the mature themes properly, look at The Dark Knight.

[Tyler]

Kick-Ass is a good comedy superhero that plays off the nerdy guy complex we've seen in a lot of films lately, but Watchmen was much more enjoyable for me. Despite Snyder's self-indulgent directing that sometimes comes across as completely stupid, I found the characters balanced out the style and in some parts really honed it to a T (particularly Rorschach in the prison cell and every scene that The Comedian is present in). Most of the characters were complete archetypes of their respective philosophy but despite this fact I found them enthralling, even if I completely disagreed with their style. Watchmen is heavy-handed and somewhat overly-artistic but all-in-all, it's a clear winner in this round.

[Diggdydog]

As much as I liked Kick-Ass, Watchmen was a much better film for me. I just felt it had a much more gripping story, better action sequences and much better presentation. Although, Kick-Ass does win a point back on having more interesting characters. Still, overall I'd go with Watchmen.

[Tycek]

Kick-ass is strange film with one problem. Its director didn't know what he wants to achieve. If Kick-ass was suppose to be taken as serious movie then it fails completely by being cheesy and not interesting at all. If Vaughn tried to make pastiche of superheroes movies, he also failed completely by basing the movie on exactly the same schemes he tried to joke about. Main hero is shy high school student with possibly the lowest social position. How many times we've seen that? His way to be a super hero is actually quite interesting, but then Big Daddy and Hit girl are deciding to get on the screen. In that moment whole movie's going down. We got idiot father who can't accomodate to his wife's death, so he's going to get revenge on local mafioso and is trying to use his 11 years old daughter as weapon. Great ideas guys, really. Fisher Price psychology combined with wooden Cage (his acting was pure A grade sh*t) and some girl, who's killing adults like Black Mamba with face "I think I've shat myself again" is really something I always wanted to see.
There is one more problem with psychology in this picture. I don't know if it was made especially for the movie or it was already present in the comic book, but someone really has to have some issues with his mother. Mothers in this movie are either dead (like Dave's or Hit girl's) or just mannequins (like Chris D'Amico's). Freud would probably want to look at this.

This movie may be the first one when I truly was rooting for the bad guys. During the demasking scenes or during last fights I want D'Amico people to win. I don't know if it was caused by fact that good guys were totally uninteresting or real bad guy was Big Daddy, but I want them to lose.

I think Super was far better movie about hero with no powers.


Main problem with Watchmen is fact that people watching it thinking it will be another Batman or Avengers movie. Well it won't, because it isn't movie about heroes. For me it's political debate regarding topics like law, compromise between good and evil, moral borderlines in wars and changes in human morality which are occuring in strange times. Of course movie is using heroes (maybe it would be better to call them vigilantes, because calling hero Rorschach or Comedian a hero may be bit too much) to show some points of view on these topics, but they're not main point of the movie.

I am great fan of original comic book and I must say that Snyder's adaptation is terrific. Of course he changed some things (mostly to better ones, like characters' look, their suits, ending; some to worse like characters' personalities) and he had to cut some things (detectives, prison psychologist life), but generally he made perfect adaptation. Great soundtrack, fantastic visuals, nicely made fights with balanced slow motion and what is most important briliant story are making this movie one of my favourites.



My vote goes to Watchmen of course, because this battle got one clear winner and it wasn't Kick-Ass. Watchmen is simply more interesting and more entertaining.

This post has been edited by Tycek on Wednesday, Sep 5 2012, 08:04

[Iminicus]

Kick Ass follows the premise that anyone can be a Superhero. In exploring this, it does a damn fine job of showing us how f*cked up life would get ( Not as bad as Super, which is the superior film ). Matthew Vaughn's take on the comic is really close to the source material, which helps the movie overall.

Watchmen, based on what is considered The Greatest Graphic Novel of ALL TIME, is an outstanding achievement from Zack Snyder. Especially, considering it was deemed unfilmable.

However, both have flaws. Kick Ass suffers from focusing on the wrong character, Kick Ass over Hit Girl. Watchmen suffers due to Zack Snyder being more of a visual director and not a director of subtle exposition.

Now, this comes down to which movie I would prefer to watch. Unfortunately, I'd rather read Watchmen than watch the movie. So my vote goes to Kick Ass.

I could easily write an essay on each movie but I don't think that is needed for this.

Kick Ass > Watchmen movie wise
Watchmen > Kick Ass graphic Novel wise
Hit Girl > Kick Ass

[StoneHead37]

I'm not usually a big fan of comedies, which is why Kick-Ass didn't initially appeal to me. I was basically dragged to the theater to see this movie, instead of getting familiarly drunk in front of the TV as I had hoped. Although the plot is unique and such, it's not really my type of movie. Things got very stupid after Dave becomes a superhero. The acting and the like was nothing special, though I did think Lyndsy Fonseca was the only decent one in the film. I did happen to like the ending though.

With Watchmen, I really enjoyed their comics from the late 80s that belonged to my brother, so I was very excited when this came out. Instead of dragging out a long story, the movie is funny at all the right moments, perfectly reflects the great comic books series, has (at the least) good acting and has a great plot and idea to go on. Each hero is well depicted in this movie, especially Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan. It's not the greatest movie ever, but it's good for what it's worth. I had a bunch of nostalgia while watching this in the theaters. All in all, a very good movie.

+1 for Watchmen

[finn4life]

Finally i have seen both films battling it out.
Onto my thoughts, sorry if it's just a steaming pile of sh*te i don't normally write these things.

Kick-ass was a decent movie, the storyline was a geeky guy goes out and gets a hot girlfriend (cliche) and becomes a super-hero.
The whole super-hero thing was a bit muddled, by that i mean that the movie tried to be a comedy and a super-hero movie but it kind of ended up being a joke, for example "The Green Hornet" had a similar idea except that movie was intended to be a total joke and it succeeded.

Kick-ass on the other hand tries to be serious with a little bit of humour but just ended up being a joke. There was no big deal when human lives were taken, it was casual killing with little/no emotion to it at all, i would think a film trying to be serious would be able to convey some emotion when it comes to these things but it failed in my eyes.
The movie to me seemed silly, i didn't find it that funny and that's too bad since humour was the only thing i could see in it.

Watchmen on the other-hand was a serious film, it had a fairly dark, gruesome storyline, there were a few things in the movie i didn't like and some of the decisions the characters made seemed really dumb and didn't make any sense (I haven't read the book though), however the film was sticking to one genre and it succeeded mostly in what it was attempting to portray.

Plus it had some of the coolest fight scenes i have seen in any films, you actually got to see the fight from cool angles rather than a Tom Cruise-esque fight scene where the camera angle switches 20 times every few seconds to show a connecting blow from 5 directions.

I think Watchmen was a better film that knew where it was going and its intentions were clear, Kickass was a muddled film that required more direction.
1 Vote for Watchmen.

Sorry, 40 words weren't enough.

EDIT: That's funny, i just read Tyceks post and it seems he has pretty much the same thoughts on the film as i did, obviously the muddling is very obvious.

This post has been edited by finn4life on Wednesday, Sep 5 2012, 00:00

[Indi]

Bump. Last chance to vote.

[Indi]

Voting stopped.

Watchmen wins.