Sunday, July 20, 2008
Alan Moore's Watchmen Preview Reactions
The Watchmen was arguably the most coherent and mature DC novel of its time. I came to it through DC Vertigo (Sandman, Shade the Changing Man), and was immediately attracted to it. To my mind, the Watchmen was about a set of older superheroes struggling with their individual challenges, in light of threats they were trying to understand (killing of The Comedian) or were fundamentally unable to understand (the ratcheting up of tension with the then-Soviet Union). The changes that they went through, especially as concerns them being out of step with the current day, was a key component of the drama, and gave the novel more depth than its contemporaries.
Now, the trailer that was recently released doesn’t look altogether shabby. The effects look sharp, and Dr. Manhattan looks how I imagined he would. It appears to keep to a relatively strict interpretation of the story, as there are several shots that are easily identified as key points in the storyline.
But a few things are nagging me: In the movie, Nite Owl looks positively ripped (he could give Batman a run for his money), Silk Spectre (II) looks like a Playboy playmate, and Rorschach takes a back seat. I never imagined Nite Owl or Silk Spectre as being in their prime when the storyline took place, and Rorschach was the lead narrator. Despite being the most violent and flawed of the heroes, he moved the plot forward, and ultimately was revealed to be the most fragile and mortal.
Nite Owl, as depicted in the graphic novel
Nite Owl, after seriously hitting Bally's and getting a wardrobe upgrade from The Matrix leftovers
Alan Moore is, of course, not hopeful about the movie adaptation, but this isn’t really surprising; when was the last time he was? He does have a few good points, though, particularly about relying on the Director of 300:
Who wants to try and show up Terry Gilliam? I wouldn’t.
Now, the trailer that was recently released doesn’t look altogether shabby. The effects look sharp, and Dr. Manhattan looks how I imagined he would. It appears to keep to a relatively strict interpretation of the story, as there are several shots that are easily identified as key points in the storyline.
But a few things are nagging me: In the movie, Nite Owl looks positively ripped (he could give Batman a run for his money), Silk Spectre (II) looks like a Playboy playmate, and Rorschach takes a back seat. I never imagined Nite Owl or Silk Spectre as being in their prime when the storyline took place, and Rorschach was the lead narrator. Despite being the most violent and flawed of the heroes, he moved the plot forward, and ultimately was revealed to be the most fragile and mortal.
Nite Owl, as depicted in the graphic novel
Nite Owl, after seriously hitting Bally's and getting a wardrobe upgrade from The Matrix leftoversAlan Moore is, of course, not hopeful about the movie adaptation, but this isn’t really surprising; when was the last time he was? He does have a few good points, though, particularly about relying on the Director of 300:
I would rather not know [about the movie],” said Moore. “[Zack Snyder] may very well be [a very nice guy], but the thing is that he’s also the person who made 300. I’ve not seen any recent comic book films, but I didn’t particularly like the book 300. I had a lot of problems with it, and everything I heard or saw about the film tended to increase [those problems] rather than reduce them: that it was racist, it was homophobic, and above all it was sublimely stupid. I know that that’s not what people going in to see a film like 300 are thinking about but… I wasn’t impressed with that… I talked to Terry Gilliam in the ’80s, and he asked me how I would make Watchmen into a film. I said, ”Well actually, Terry, if anybody asked me, I would have said, ‘I wouldn’t.”’ And I think that Terry [who aborted his attempted adaptation of the book] eventually came to agree with me. There are things that we did with Watchmen that could only work in a comic, and were indeed designed to show off things that other media can’t.
Who wants to try and show up Terry Gilliam? I wouldn’t.
Labels: alan moore, comics, watchmen
Comments:
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Ah, well,
My principal objection to the trailer is that it looks too comic booky, if you can believe it. Of course, Watchmen is a masterpiece comic, but a movie that attempts to use it as a storyboard is going to be in trouble. One of the principal reasons the comic is successful is that it fruitfully exploits contrasts between narrative realism, psychological realism, and comic book tropes.
You're right when you point out that movie Nite Owl is looking awfully buff, although his doofus helmet is growing on me. Fat Nite Owl plays on those tensions between comic book convention and real human experience, and he's not interesting if he's just "kinky Batman". If Dr. Manhattan is an exploration of power, Nite Owl is an examination of powerlessness; not that he doesn't kick many people's asses over the course of the comic, but his overarching mortality is writ large in his belly.
If the movie tries to be too faithful to an abstract idea of "comic book movies", as it looks like it's doing, it'll flush the best elements of Watchmen down the drain. A good medium to make the film would have been 16mm Ectachrome-- something humbling and washed-out, that'd catch the early 80's malaise the comic is rooted in.
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My principal objection to the trailer is that it looks too comic booky, if you can believe it. Of course, Watchmen is a masterpiece comic, but a movie that attempts to use it as a storyboard is going to be in trouble. One of the principal reasons the comic is successful is that it fruitfully exploits contrasts between narrative realism, psychological realism, and comic book tropes.
You're right when you point out that movie Nite Owl is looking awfully buff, although his doofus helmet is growing on me. Fat Nite Owl plays on those tensions between comic book convention and real human experience, and he's not interesting if he's just "kinky Batman". If Dr. Manhattan is an exploration of power, Nite Owl is an examination of powerlessness; not that he doesn't kick many people's asses over the course of the comic, but his overarching mortality is writ large in his belly.
If the movie tries to be too faithful to an abstract idea of "comic book movies", as it looks like it's doing, it'll flush the best elements of Watchmen down the drain. A good medium to make the film would have been 16mm Ectachrome-- something humbling and washed-out, that'd catch the early 80's malaise the comic is rooted in.
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