Watchmen

[AmericanDragon]

Watchmen

 

[Jingus]

They did match the look of the comic well enough, especially the newsstand with the kid always sitting beside it reading the pirate comics. For the first time since hearing the horrible casting, I've got a little hope for this movie.

[tbondrage99]

I'll continue to wait until I actually see the movie to make up my mind about it.

[Jingus]

Oh yeah, I'm gonna see it, and I hope it's good, but keep in mind Hollywood's godawful track record in adapting Alan Moore's work. They turned From Hell from a deeply fascinating look at human society and psychology into a bullshit serial killer/conspiracy theory thriller, randomly fucked around with the plot of V for Vendetta for no good reason, and all I gotta do is say the words League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to make anyone who saw it throw up in their mouth a little. Moore's long, dense, challenging plots just don't translate well to the big screen.

[Scroby]

I really like the set design, it really stands out.

[LaParkaMarka]

Oh yeah, I'm gonna see it, and I hope it's good, but keep in mind Hollywood's godawful track record in adapting Alan Moore's work. They turned From Hell from a deeply fascinating look at human society and psychology into a bullshit serial killer/conspiracy theory thriller, randomly fucked around with the plot of V for Vendetta for no good reason, and all I gotta do is say the words League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to make anyone who saw it throw up in their mouth a little. Moore's long, dense, challenging plots just don't translate well to the big screen.

 

Especially with Watchmen. There's so much of that comic that is specifically tailored to the comic medium, like the panel mirroring and such. I mean, how are they going to work in Hollis Mason's autobiography or the Black Freighter comic?

 

Besides all of that, the basics of the storyline were already made into The Incredibles. That means they'll probably add a twist ending or something, which probably will not work out.

[DrVenkman PhD]

All I can think about when I hear about this is Milhouse's "Watchmen Babies: V for Vacation" DVD from The Simpsons.

[Nightwing]

This movie can't succeed. It's a story that is totally built for a mini-series, not a two, two-and-a-half hour movie. V for Vendetta was the only hope for a Alan Moore movie working, and that was ridiculously fucked up by the Wachowski Brothers.

[Cheech Tremendous]

This movie can't succeed. It's a story that is totally built for a mini-series, not a two, two-and-a-half hour movie. V for Vendetta was the only hope for a Alan Moore movie working, and that was ridiculously fucked up by the Wachowski Brothers.

 

 

I've never read the graphic novel, but I thoroughly enjoyed V for Vendetta. I know they messed with some of the original storytelling, but do you honestly think that it hurt the movie?

 

I am going to try and read Watchmen by next week to get an idea of how it would adapt to the screen.

[Anakin Flair]

I've never been a fan of Alan Moore's comics (could never get past the god-awful artwork), and I know that they changed a few things in V for Vendetta, but I thought it was an excellent movie. LXG, though, really did suck.

[Jericho2000Mark]

Watchmen had excellent artwork and V for Vendetta the movie was crap.

[Nighthawk]

I dunno, he's worked with a lot of different artists. I don't think you could say much of anything about the artwork of Moore's comics as a whole.

[ZGangsta]

I've never been a fan of Alan Moore's comics (could never get past the god-awful artwork),

...the fuck?

[Jericho2000Mark]

Does he even know that Moore is a writer?

[Jingus]

I've never read the graphic novel, but I thoroughly enjoyed V for Vendetta. I know they messed with some of the original storytelling, but do you honestly think that it hurt the movie?

Yeah, it did. They dumbed down the political and societal commentary, and played up the action scenes and romance which were mostly afterthoughts in the book. Like, in the movie's opening scene, Natalie Portman is a twentysomething beauty queen and professional office worker, who while gets randomly harassed by Evil Policemen while walking down the street. In the book, her character is a scrawny teenage street girl who is so desperate for money that she tries prostitution, and manages to solicit some really evil policemen who tell her in no uncertain terms that they're going to rape and murder her. Also the character of V is really hero worshipped in the film, while the graphic novel is much more ambiguous about him, there's a whole subplot about a woman whose life he ruins when he kills her husband which was completely dropped for the movie.

[randomguy]

I have to agree that I suspect it won't translate into a movie well, especially not from the director of 300. It will probably end up being a fairly generic action movie.

[SamoaRowe]

One of my pet peeves about people complaining about the film version of V for Vendetta is that it's some sort of "endless action movie with no plot." Granted, I haven't read the book, but having seen the movie, I didn't feel that way at all. There are some action scenes, but there's a lot of down time between them, filled with story. And as far as changing things for the movie, I can see why people might be annoyed at the way Evy was changed, but that's pretty much how it goes with Hollywood.

 

And as far as the art being horrible, I'm reading Watchmen right now and the art is just fine (and it's not the same artist from V for Vendetta, which I was looking at in Borders the other day simply for comparison).

[ZGangsta]

Anyone have the Absolute edition of Watchmen? It's oversized and 'higher res' and it has a bunch more special features. Looks pretty sweet.

It's on sale at amazon right now and I'm thinkg of picking it up but Absolute Kingdom Come is calling to me more.

[Ripper]

I have to agree that I suspect it won't translate into a movie well, especially not from the director of 300. It will probably end up being a fairly generic action movie.

 

To be fair, the 300 comic was a fairly generic action comic. They added the whole queen subplot just to give the story some more meat besides people hacking each other apart for the entire movie.

[Nighthawk]

Speaking of bad art... 300. It was a stylistic choice, but I didn't like it.

 

I have the Absolute Watchmen. It's pretty awesome. I pretty much had to get it when I decided on a Watchmen tattoo sleeve.

 

I would love to get some of the other Absolute editions (Dark Knight Returns first, most likely), but they aren't cheap.

[Nightwing]

Absolute Watchmen is worth it for both the improved art and the absolutely great extras. Reading Moore's original ideas are great for the original characters are great.

 

And on V for Vendetta:

 

"[The movie] has been "turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country… It's a thwarted and frustrated and largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values standing up against a state run by neoconservatives—which is not what the comic V for Vendetta was about. It was about fascism, it was about anarchy, it was about England."

 

That quote nails it so exactly on the head. I don't like Bush at all, but I didn't want to see one of my favorite stories dumbed-down into what essentially was an extended rant against neo-cons. The changes made in the movie range from stupid (The entire conspiracy subplot) to story-killing (The change in the ending and the change in the character of the Chancellor). Seriously, read the book and you'll understand so much better why some people utterly despise the film.

[Jingus]

One of my pet peeves about people complaining about the film version of V for Vendetta is that it's some sort of "endless action movie with no plot." Granted, I haven't read the book, but having seen the movie, I didn't feel that way at all. There are some action scenes, but there's a lot of down time between them, filled with story.

Every single action scene and fight in the book was reproduced for the movie, AND they made up a bunch of new ones as well, most notably that big stupid final shootout which was completely invented for the film version. The violce

 

And as far as changing things for the movie, I can see why people might be annoyed at the way Evy was changed, but that's pretty much how it goes with Hollywood.

Yeah it's common, but that doesn't mean it should ever be acceptable. How many examples can you name of Hollywood making big changes in something they were adapting which ended up making the film better? Any at all? Meanwhile, there have been plenty of cases of a book or other property being adapted in a faithful manner which turned out a damn good movie.

[LaParkaMarka]

Yeah it's common, but that doesn't mean it should ever be acceptable. How many examples can you name of Hollywood making big changes in something they were adapting which ended up making the film better? Any at all? Meanwhile, there have been plenty of cases of a book or other property being adapted in a faithful manner which turned out a damn good movie.

 

Dexter is about a billion times better than the horrible books it's based on. Some scriptwriters are very good at their jobs, they just need to snag the right concept from somewhere and expand on it. Also, I'm pretty sure Eragon was a faithful representation of the book, and both the movie and the book were utter pieces of shit. It works both ways.

 

Anyways, most movies aren't exact remakes of the source material. For Watchmen, you know some things are going to be changed or dropped, like the rape of Sally Jupiter, Doc Manhattan's nudity, the gay relationship between Hooded Justice and Captain Metropolis, Comedian shooting that pregnant Vietnamese woman that was carrying his child, etc. If you're a fan of the source material, it's probably best to walk in expecting nothing. That way you'll be pleasantly surprised instead of bitterly disappointed. Keep those hopes down, friends.

[Jingus]

So your argument is "Well, they're gonna castrate the source material no matter what, so we might as well grin and bear it"? No. Movies like Sin City, Batman Begins, and the Lord of the Rings flicks managed to stay mostly loyal to the source, be damn good films, and make piles of money. What's the point of adapting a property in the first place if you're gonna just change everything about it that the fanboys liked in the first place? The worst about it are the video game movies, which almost always mutilate the plots of the original until the unrecognizable finished outcome is just another Hollywood action flick, but there's plenty of examples in the literary and comic worlds too. I simply don't see the point in paying a ton of money for an existing property instead of just coming up with your own original one, but then changing everything that everyone enjoyed about said existing property.

[Giuseppe Zangara]

The talk of Watchmen being unfilmable is overstated. Yes, some streamlining will have to occur, but it isn't as if doing that for film adaptations of books is unheard of. The only real limitation is just how dark a Hollywood studio would want a big budget movie to be? Homosexuality—which plays only a small part in the book, anyway—isn't exactly verboten. Neither is a scene of attempted rape, nor the scene where the Comedian kills the pregnant Vietnamese woman. This is nothing that couldn't be in a R-rated movie. A movie that the studio very likely wants to be a huge hit? That's all I can see standing in the way of the translation.

 

As for Doc Manhattan's aversion to clothes, eh. So they put him in an outfit. Acceptable loss.

[Nighthawk]

Oh shit, I just now realized that the guy playing Rorschach was the child molester in Little Children. That actually gives me much more confidence in his ability to play the role.

[Ravenbomb]

The more disconcerting thing to me is that the few plot summaries I've read suggest that they're doing a role reversal with Ozymandias and Manhattan on the villainy.

[LaParkaMarka]

I'm not sure how that works, considering Manhattan is basically God. How do you stop God? There would be no reason to have the giant island conspiracy since Manhattan could just create a giant monster if he felt like it. I guess they might neuter Doc's character a bunch, but it's still a strange twist.

 

Edit: Raven, this wasn't an attack on your post, just commenting on the weird decision by the filmmakers if that's true

[Ravenbomb]

I'm not saying it makes sense, I'm just saying what I read, and saying that it sounds disconcerting.

[Giuseppe Zangara]

Honestly, I thought Ozymandias was pretty dull as a bad guy. Not to say they should give the evil part to Doc; making the only one of them with remotely superhuman powers the evil one would be far too predictable.