The Watchmen

[Foxbat]

Just purchased the complete Watchmen the other day and, although it's many years since I've read this, just flicking through the pages begins to remind me how much of a dark, brooding masterpiece this is. It makes me ponder that surely in this time when the movie market seems to be flooded with characters from Comics/Graphic Novels that this is an untapped resource.

Handled properly, this could make one hell of a film

 

[Green]

Hmmmmmm tricky. Great graphic novel... terrible film?

I re-read this recently too, and really enjoyed it all over again.

The only problem I have with this masterpiece (nothing's perfect, afterall), is the dense story of the marooned sailor told in the kid's comic.

I mean, it's all very well balanced and perfectly placed, but I've always had trouble with densely-worded comics, and that feature was a little tiresome on the eyes.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

But the sea story itself really tied in with the overall examination of heroism as self-perceived and in actuality, I thought.
Watchmen is the most thoughtful and enduring statement about the superhero comic genre ever made in the format of a work in the superhero comic genre. I wouldn't really like to see it made into a movie though - the plot density is integral to Moore's vision here, and wouldn't easily fit into a 2 hour stretch without excising huge chunks. I suspect it would be more amenable to a mini-series treatment.

But I'd rather they didn't. Like I just said, one of the great things about Watchmen is that it's a comic which in the course of telling a great story also comments on aspects of the comic genre. It would just loose a lot of its relevance or magic in any other format. Everything doesn't have to be made into a movie, especially not a Alan Moore creation - all the movie versions of his comics or his creations (Hellblazer) have been such tawdry travesties of their originals. And anyway it seems unecessary, like that band who do reggae versions of Led Zeppelin songs.

 

[Foxbat]

Everything doesn't have to be made into a movie,

True. But, personally, I feel that work as good as this deserves a wider audience and that it is stunted by its very own genre. Granted that, often films can be the worst things that happen to a piece of literature but the success of Batman Begins and its ilk shows there is a market for the more gritty, down-to earth hero. There are people who would not read this just because of its Comic Book/Graphic Novel format.

If it wallows in its own little niche then it may always be regarded by the wider public as the domain of the geek\freak\ 'comic book guy'. I just feel that it deserves much more than this.

 

[Shoegaze99]

The only problem I have with this masterpiece (nothing's perfect, afterall), is the dense story of the marooned sailor told in the kid's comic.

It's absolutely essential to the themes being tackled by Moore, though. That pirate story, in a very stylized way, offers direct commentary on the situation of the “real” characters in the story, a cautionary tale within a cautionary tale about the nature of instinct, responsibility, moral obligation, and the ends justifying the means (among others). It’s an important part of the layered storytelling Moore so effectively engages in, with interwoven plots and themes strengthening and supporting one another.

 

[Shoegaze99]

True. But, personally, I feel that work as good as this deserves a wider audience and that it is stunted by its very own genre.

Stunted by its own genre? (And I think you mean art form; comics aren’t a genre). Quite the opposite. The means Moore uses to craft his tale are very much specific to the comic form, riddled with deliberate structuring and presentation techniques comics are best equipped to tackle. Take something like the “Fearful Symmetry” chapter, for instance. You just can’t present the very deliberate, symbolic structuring in the same way on film and have it come across properly. Or the overlapping narratives regarding the kid at the newsstand and the pirate story, each of which comment on one another (by using the text of one on the images of the other, and vice versa), and in turn comment on the overall story. That simply can’t be done on film. At least not without it turning into an avant garde jumble.

Watchmen is a perfectly crafted, finely-honed example of what the comic form can be and do. To suggest that it is somehow “stunted”, needing to be legitimized by popular appeal and a transfer to another medium, is very insulting to the art form, in my opinion.

 

[polymorphikos]

It wouldn't be hard to rework The Watchmen as a commentary on film/tv heroes instead of comic-book ones, and since its a statement about the concept of superheroes, deferment of responsibility, etcetera and so-forth more than about comic-books specifically, the medium is not essential. And a lot of what Moore was saying could be fit into a two-hour film by trimming the plot and perhaps a few peripheral characters.

The most important thing to understand would be, if your just going to try and transfer the comic to the screen verbatim, there's no point. We already have it in technicolour with full audio on the printed page. It would have to be an adaptation,a slightly-loose one, and fanboys be damned, but it could work quite easily if you got a savvy writer, highly-visual director and a clever editor. You'd just have to restructure the entire thing to work as a film, and not as a comic-book that moves.

From Hell was better and we've survived them mucking that up, anyway.

They filmed Moby Dick, and it wasn't half bad.

Plus, I would pay a lot of money to see Bruce Campbell as the Comedian.

EDIT: and Shoegazer, he was basically suggesting it as one big publicity stunt to get people to read the comic, which whilst very well-constructed tells the reader nothing they shouldn't already know.

 

[Shoegaze99]

If you’re going to slice up the tale and reinvent it as some new commentary on television and the like, why bother? If you’re not going to adapt the comic book and take advantage of the very things that make it such a special work, why bother with such a film save to co-opt the name? Just go ahead and write a new story inspired by Watchmen. If you’re going to drop the very things that make Moore’s classic such an important work – much like all that make From Hell more than just another Jack The Ripper story were dropped – better to not bother at all.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

I agree with shoegaze. I see no reason to encourage further derivative hackery - if someone wants to make a commentary about tv/film heroes akin to Watchmen, they can just go ahead and make one from scratch. In the meantime, for all that people claim that film is a more mature genre than comics, it's worth noting that the closest that the action film genre has come to the sort of self-examination essayed in The Watchmen is something called Last Action Hero.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I would like to see a relatively faithful telling of Watchmen on screen - of course, you'd have to ditch the castaway subplot and similar, because the subtleties wouldn't work very well on screen.

Somebody somewhere could take the cream from Watchmen and make it a movie worth watching...but considering Moore's lack of interest in helping steer his movie projects, I'm not convinced yet that anyone could make the movie worth watching.

Which is a sincere shame and overall loss.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Let's put it this way - the less chance there is of The Watchman movie ever being made, the less chance there is of Kevin Anderson getting to write the novelisation. Which would be a real shame.