Trailer Blogger

Click to watch the Watchmen trailer at Zuguide.com

Hollywood has been turning comic books into movies for years, but more recently, with the success of Sin City, V for Vendetta and 300, there has been an overwhelming rush to seek out the darker material offered by graphic novels. The latest addition to this burgeoning subgenre is Watchmen. Apparently, it’s the most celebrated graphic novel of all-time, but I had no idea until I went to the theaters to watch The Dark Knight and saw the trailer. Like many of the other films based on graphic novels, it looks like Watchmen is banking on legions of longtime fans to create online buzz after viewing its visually stunning teaser trailer. So far, it seems to be working, but I’m not sure how much longer this tactic will hold up, especially for the films based on lesser known graphic novels that are still in the works.

The Watchmen trailer starts out by showing Billy Crudup trapped in some kind of chamber. When the machine turns on, the former lead guitarist of Stillwater begins to disintegrate, atom by atom, before turning into pure energy. The next sequence shows a dark, grim world where superheroes and villains are commonplace. Apparently, there’s a little backlash against the masked vigilante population, which has embittered the heroes, who were likely only trying to help the only way they knew how. The rest of the trailer shows the heroes in action, but reveals very little of the film’s plot.

From what I’ve read, Watchmen takes place in an alternate 1985, where tensions between the US and the Soviet Union have pushed the arms race to another level. The main story revolves around Rorschach, a washed-up crime-fighter who wears a mask that has ink blots for eyes, reuniting with a group of retired heroes in order to diffuse a plot intended to kill and discredit their kind. The biggest surprise I came across is that, despite appearances, it turns out that only Crudup has what can actually be called superpowers, while the others are merely determined, highly skilled humans. My favorite part of the trailer is when a glowing, blue Crudup appears in the middle of a cafeteria surrounded by bolts of electricity, mainly because it reminded me of the scene in Powder when Sean Patrick Flanery makes his classmates’ silverware magnetize into a giant, floating ball. Watchmen opens March 6, 2009. Check out the Watchmen trailer at Zuguide.com.