The overlap between the GTA IV video game and Watchmen movie fan-bases should be fairly large, but it doesn’t follow that they should use the same musical score. In early 2007, GTA IV was heralded by a gorgeous trailer with graphics that stunned players of previous installments of the game. The classical-sounding score was equally impressive, but it was not a new song.
YouTube – Watchmen (2009) Trailer 2
“Pruit Igoe” was originally written by Philip Glass as part of the score of the 1982 documentary Koyaanisqatsi. The first of a triptych of films that are described on Wikipedia as “visual tone poems,” Koyaanisqatsi consisted of “slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and…landscapes,” and contained “neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration.”
In the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi means ‘crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living’, and the film implies that modern humanity is living in such a way.
“Pruit Igoe” accompanies a scene in which the 33 building Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis, MO decays and is demolished.
I doubt there is a huge overlap between GTA fans and Philip Glass fans to this day, but I suspect the makers of the Watchmen trailer are relying on that narrow intersection to spread interest in their movie among “fanboys” and art film aficionados alike. The makers of Grand Theft Auto IV were certainly clever enough to understand the irony of using a serious (and seriously obscure) piece of music to advertise a video game.
Video game players are part of the target audience for Watchmen, but since it was published in 1986, Watchmen has garnered high praise inside and outside of the comic book world for the way it deconstructs the superhero concept and addressed the social anxieties of its time.
Perhaps serious Philip Glass fans have more of a reason to see the Watchmen movie than to play the Grand Theft Auto game, and perhaps the imagery associated with “Pruit Igoe” within Koyaanisqatsi appropriately foreshadows climactic events in Watchmen.
MTV Multiplayer » ‘Watchmen’ Trailer Inspired By ‘Grand Theft Auto’ Trailer?
