Night Watch / Day Watch

So a few weeks ago, Stanman and friends and I got together to watch Night Watch.

Official Site
IMDb: User Rating: 6.4/10 (12,939 votes)
Yahoo! Movies:The Critics: B- / Yahoo! Users: B-
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 58% / Average Rating: 5.9/10
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com DVD
MY RATING: 6/10

For those that don’t know, Night Watch is a high budget Russian movie. It originally was a novel written by Sergei Lukyanenko. The story is actually comprised of 4 books:

• Night Watch
• Day Watch
• Dusk Watch (known as Twilight Watch in the U.S.)
• Final Watch (hasn’t been translated yet, but available in Russian)

Day Watch has already been released as a movie (was also recently played throughout the film festivals). Stanman and friend and I watched it 2 days after Night Watch.

Official Site
IMDb: User Rating: 7.1/10 (3,325 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: B- / Yahoo! Users: B+
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 65% / Average Rating 6/10
Apple Trailer
MY RATING: 7/10

Twilight Watch (the movie) is already in production and plans to be released later this year to complete the trilogy. I’m not sure how correct this is, but I’ve heard that the 3rd movie, Twilight Watch will end the series (film wise) and there won’t be a 4th film to compliment the 4th book.

To put in simple words, the Watch series is a Russian take on or super humans, known as the Others. The following paragraph from Wikipedia gives a good background of the story:

The division of Light and Dark had always existed between the Others. Those of the Light believed it was their duty to help the weak and the helpless. Those of the Dark shunned all obligations. They did what they wanted, regardless of morals and consequences. For many millennia, the two sides fought a vicious battle. Both were willing to use any means necessary to achieve victory. Eventually they realized that if they continued their battle, neither side would survive. The leaders of both sides forged the Grand Treaty—a set of laws to govern the way the Others used their powers. The Light Others created the Night Watch, the Dark Others the Day Watch, to ensure that neither side would violate the Treaty. The Inquisition, a group composed of both Dark and Light Others, was created to ensure that neither side became too powerful.

The first movie was called Night Watch because during the night, the Light Others who form the Night Watch are responsible in making sure the Dark Others don’t break any rules. The second movie was called Day Watch because during the day, the Dark Others who form the Day Watch are responsible in making sure the Light Others don’t break any rules.

Spoilers: (Show)

There were some major differences between the novel and the film, the biggest in my opinion is: In the movie, Yegor is Anton’s son. In the book, they aren’t related (Sergei Lukyanenko explained that this change was a result of a “glitch” in the script). In the fourth novel Last Watch, Yegor tells Anton that he had a dream in which he was Anton’s son and experienced events from the movie.

That really altered the storyline quite a bit, since the story really revolves around Yegor, Anton, and Svetlana, where even the opening scene of Night Watch, you are shown that Anton makes the decision to hire a witch to kill the baby in his wife’s womb, because he was tricked into believing the child wasn’t his.

Another big difference is: In the movie, Yegor is the Great One whose coming was foretold, who will shift the balance of the final battle between Light and Dark. In the book, there is no such prophecy and the boy has mediocre potential. He’s just a pawn the Dark put into the game to distract Anton from Svetlana, the true focus of the struggle, who really does have incredible powers.

Yegor is super powerful in the movie, but in the books, he is merely a low level Other.

You can look at the other difference on Wikipedia for Night Watch and Day Watch.

After watching the ending of Day Watch, one has to wonder, how do they plan to make a 3rd movie? It was such a nice and sweet ending. Well, not really, but as sweet and nice as it possibly can be.

One of the interesting aspect are the vampires in this movie. Not all Dark Others are vampires, but Dark Other when given the license to, can create vampires from regular humans. I have no idea if this closely resembles the Russian culture of vampires or not, but nonetheless, it was an interesting contrast. They do feed on blood like regular western vampires, but there are some major differences that Stanman pointed out. First of all, when Anton was fighting the vampires, they would disappear and the only way to see them was by looking through a mirror. In western culture, when you look at a mirror, you don’t see the vampire. Another interesting thing was Anton had to drink blood (pig’s blood since it closely resembles human blood) to get a feeling of where the vampires are. To protect oneself from vampires, they wore a chain mail / barbed wire like thing around their neck. We thought that was ingenious. Vampires typically suck blood from your neck, so what the heck is with silver bullets and garlic and crosses. You want to protect your neck!

This entry is already very long, but if you’ve watched the movies, you must be super confused by now. Night Watch was very dark and horrible at explaining what the heck was going on. Day Watch on the other hand was somewhat light and it was easy to grasp. Then again, Stanman filled us in on some key details he read off Wikipedia. Here are some excellent readings on Wikipedia:

• Night Watch (novel)
• Day Watch (novel)
• Dusk Watch (novel)
• Final Watch (novel)
• Night Watch (film)
• Day Watch (film)
• Dusk Watch (film)