MovieChat Forums > Watchmen (2019) Discussion > Damon Lindelof is Such a Hack

Damon Lindelof is Such a Hack

posted 3 years ago by cyberbob (3488)
4 replies | jump to latest

Something about his writing is just unwatchable to me. I've tried watching The Leftovers, which at least I'll say is much better than this show

His film work is a joke, I think we can all agree that for the most part his movie resume is full of trash

I just made a 2nd attempt at watching this show and this time made it halfway past the second episode and I'm tapping out again

I don't care that the story focuses on black characters or that it deals with issues of race and police treatment of blacks, that's not my problem with the show. I'm a leftist myself

My problem is Lindelof just isn't a good writer

"You and me, Topher, we don't do lollipops and rainbows. Cause we know that those are just pretty colors that hide what the world really is: black and white. Your Uncle Judd is dead."

LMAO, who the fuck breaks the news to a child that their uncle died in that way? Actually, what human talks that way under any circumstances ever?

I'm not surprised that Lindelof wanted to tackle Watchmen. From Lost to Prometheus to Tomorrowland to The Leftovers, you see a pattern of him wanting to tackle big, complex, philosophical ideas

Except none of those movies/shows really ever make any interesting philosophical points. They BRING UP big ideas, but they never do anything with them. And from what I've seen of this Watchmen its just more of the same

Aesthetically it has nothing in common with Watchmen the graphic novel. The show is basically The Leftovers with superheroes. It's just bland small city neighborhoods and suburban homes. It's BORING. At least Zack Snyder, for all his faults, nailed the comic book look in his film

Lindelof's only contribution to Watchmen seems to be to set the record straight for the masses that Rorschach was an unhinged fascist psychopath and not a cool antihero. In the show he's the inspiration for this KKK group, which I suppose is more comic-accurate than what Snyder did with Rorschach. That's about the only good thing I can say about the show

Everything else is just bad. BORING, terrible dialogue, no idea what the fuck it's even trying to say about the racial issues that it seems to be exploring. Which is on brand for Lindelof. After seeing Prometheus I had no fucking clue what he was trying to say about the origins of humanity

I'm not surprised that it has a 55% audience score on RT, I'd say that that's truly reflective of its quality. I'm also not surprised that critics ate this shit up, since it's just the kind of "timely" bullshit that they regularly eat up

[–] Torniojaws (102) 3 years ago

I just watched it today, and I have zero knowledge of the comic book. And at least to me, Rorschach started out more as a driven has-been superhero kind of character. Something like the time passed him by, and now he's just hanging out "useless", until he finds something to do. And then all of a sudden, in the prison, he "fingersnap* becomes this archetypal evil criminal mastermind, and then *fingersnap* he's back to normal after getting out. And then suddenly they just dispose of him nonchalantly with zero gravitas. Very very very poorly written character in this film. But at least he had something going on at points. Dr Manhattan had nothing going on and being a whiny "I don't wanna" teenager for almost the entire move. It's like he was a last-minute side character in the movie.

[–] raymondoz2007 (2045) 3 years ago

Rorschach is the only hero.

[–] cyberbob (3488) 2 years ago

That's the movie, I was talking about the HBO show

But I agree with some of your criticisms. I think Silk Spectre, Ozymandias, and Dr. Manhattan were all miscast

The movie does not do the Dr. Manhattan character justice. Dunno if it was Snyder's direction or Billy Crudup. In the comic the idea behind the character is that he's basically becoming God and his manner is completely detached from everything going on around him. Like you said, in the movie he comes across as whiny and self-righteous

Rorschach is always a "mastermind" when it comes to dealing with the type of low-level thugs you see in the prison. It's only when it comes to issues that are morally complex that he is basically a child

[–] Socklaybleu (34) 2 years ago

He's the worst. It's like he tries too hard to cram too many half-assed ideas into one story rather than writing one coherent story from start to finish he gets too cute and adds all these elements that don't tie together at all. He's like the king of incoherence. I'm noticing other writers are starting to copy the style it's lazy.