Movie Watch: Watchmen

Alan Moore is a guy who has had a pretty rough road with movie adaptations, quite probably culminating in the completely dreadful League of Extraordinary Gentlemen but the basic trend of Hollywood running slipshod over his material.

So it is a bit of a shame, I think, that he decided in the end to "spit venom", as I believe he put it, on Zack Snyder's adaptation of the much revered graphic novel Watchmen which has, if anything, been critiqued for being too loyal to the source material.

The end result is anything but a standard comic book movie, but that's precisely what fans of Moore and Gibbon's work would have wanted. The story is a subversive and not exactly slightly deconstructive look on the genre in general, a story of "masks" running headlong into culture and history and the gritty outcome of the conflict for the characters and the world in general.

Snyder has put the somewhat sprawling novel onto the screen with a high attention to detail. The decision to avoid big name actors works extremely well and every performance in the movie is top notch, with Rorschach being particularly outstanding. The plot survives fairly intact, the major points remaining the same and no embarrassing changes to the ending or softening of some of the more controversial portions of the subplots. Moviegoers are seeing the novel here, there's little doubt of that.

So I find myself having trouble saying anything bad about the film. It's a beautiful adaptation of a great work in comics, highly recommended.

Even if you're Alan Moore.

Veidt Enterprises Advertising Contest

My spy network must be on a smoke break, because I had to read about this in The Onion of all things, but apparently there was a contest for the upcoming Watchmen flick to create Veidt Enterprises commercials - some of which will appear in the film.

Rorshach Has A Journal Online

Solace in Cinema points out that the Watchmen's Rorschach has a journal up, with the old highlighted encoded message trick:

As nerdy as it is, I love things like this, tiny little pieces of what’s to come. The site isn’t even providing any news to do with the film, but it’s enough to get the fanboys talking, and I guess that’s the beginning of what marketing people call ‘ground swell’

The current message when directly translated reads:

SAW GREBERID AND YZJEPCSKU ?40.754950-073.988058 AN AFFAIR PERHAPS?

A partial quote from the book followed by what has been revealed to be google map co-ordinates:

from geekanerd:

these numbers are in fact co-ordinates that lead to a location on 7th Ave ad 40th street, NYC. Although I originally speculated they were pointing to Midtown Comics, Geekanerd’s super-secret contact at Midtown (who also happens to be a shadowy figure behind Pop Culture Shock) said that the co-ordinates are more likely referring to the location of The Gunga Diner, a restaurant Rorschach visits in Chapter 5, page 11. On that page, Rorschach’s narration reads: “On fortieth and seventh, saw Dreiberg and Juspeczyk leaving diner. They didn’t know me. An affair perhaps?”

Sweet.

Book Review: The Watchmen

Since there seems to be near constant rumblings the The Watchmen will be made into a film, I wanted to give it another read. Questions about how viable of a transformation this could arise every time these rumors hit the surface. It doesn't help that Moore's work often gets translated into movies with all the intelluctual acumen of pig latin. V for Vendetta wasn't too bad, but League? Ouch. Simply ouch.

The work is often cited as an example of allowing comics to "grow up" ... and with good reason. The story is realistic and gritty (despite some of the science fiction elements). The structure is complicated - often flipping in between time or even narratives between or sometimes even within the frame itself. Even the medium changes as there are sections of prose tossed in for good measure (and effect). Still, I would not categorize Watchmen as difficult to read or follow. The format is complicated, but the plot isn't overly such. Not that the plot isn't good, Moore unravels a narrative very tightly in a very smart way that almost feels like a classic mystery movie than your average comic.

Obviously the book is good - but could it make a good movie? I'd say pretty soundly that it could. The problem isn't anything within the above paragraph, the problem is within the size and scope of the novel and how much a movie studio is willing to invest to properly bear that out. Just the character of The Comedian himself, who dies in the first scene of the book, has such a complicated and expansive history that touches nearly every other character - it could occupy ninety minutes of film by itself. So how much time do you give to Rorshach's past or the Martian ponderings of Osterman?

It would almost require a four or six hour format. It's actually better suited to a miniseries than movie because I'm not sure there are good endings that would appease fans in theatres at the end of one two hour section or the next (assuming a four hour movie would be split into two).

So I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Thankfully movies like Sin City and 300 has shown that faithful adaptions can pay off for studios. We'll just have to see if they're willing to roll the dice on a larger gamble.

Fun Fact! However, to avoid continuity issues with the recently acquired characters, and due to the fact that some of them would have become useless for future series, Moore decided to create new characters, using the recently acquired Charlton Comics characters as templates. This allowed for a more dynamic and unique set of characters. The Comedian (Edward Blake) is based on Peacemaker with elements of Marvel Comics' Nick Fury. Doctor Manhattan (Jon Osterman) is derived from Captain Atom, while the first and second Nite Owls (Hollis Mason and Dan Dreiberg) are based upon Blue Beetle. Thunderbolt serves as the inspiration for Ozymandias (Adrian Veidt), while the Question and Mr. A do the same for Rorschach (Walter Kovacs). Finally, the first and second Silk Spectres (Sally Jupiter and Laurie Juspeczyk) are based on Nightshade with elements of Black Canary and Phantom Lady.[18][19]
Although the cast of Watchmen are commonly called "superheroes," the only superhuman character in the principal cast is Dr. Manhattan — the others are normal human beings with no special abilities aside from peak physical condition and access to high-class technology and weapons. In the comic, they refer to themselves as "costumed adventurers." Rorschach calls them "masks." (Wikipedia)