I find it hard to believe that if the author of a comic has doubts about his comic being turn into a film why do it to begin with. In an article I found Alan Moore said “It spoon-feeds us, which has the effect of watering down our collective cultural imagination. It is as if we are freshly hatched birds looking up with our mouths open waiting for Hollywood to feed us more regurgitated worms. The 'Watchmen' film sounds like more regurgitated worms. I for one am sick of worms. Can't we get something else? Perhaps some takeout? Even Chinese worms would be a nice change.” Is this true? Other films like V for Vendetta, which he wrote, turned out to be a huge hit but as he said in the article that he has never seen those films. He also believes Watchmen is unfilmable. But V for Vendetta was a success, but then again others films like Spiderman 3 or the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen were viewed by the public disappointments. Will Watchmen be among them? Then again those movies have supernatural events, which Watchmen has but not much of it the story mostly focuses on the central idea that people don’t need super powers to be evil. Maybe this is why V for Vendetta was a good movie because there weren’t many unexplained, over the top supernatural things happening like on other comic book based movies. My thoughts are that the movie can be done but to a point, and though the plot of the story seems realistic because of the war, fighting , crimes, and heroes with out powers, a reenactment of Mr. Manhattan can be hard to pull. And because Mt. Manhattan is a huge part of the story I don’t think the film will portray him as the comic did and will make the movie unsuccessful.
What are your thoughts? Do you believe that a comic like this can be turned into a film even with its realistic plot about the war and crime?
By Alejandro
1 comment:
I agree that Watchmen will be difficult (if not impossible) to translate well into movie form. I have seen the previews, and I think the representation of Dr. Manhattan is horrendous and does no justice to the book. I also found an article that mentions the comic within a comic- Tales of the Black Freighter. The producers plan on releasing a separate video with Tales, and I think this just further alludes to the mistake of making Watchmen into a movie
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2008/05/
black_freighter_on_dvd_watchme.html
Tales is meant to be simultaneous with the main story, not on a separate DVD. The experience just isn't the same.
I also think that the movie is susceptible to the values of today's society. Even though the setting and situations are mostly realistic, the producers may likely change them to appeal to viewers. For example, the previews portray some characters (namely Nite Owl and Silk Spectre) as more attractive than in the book, which alters the mood. This is more speculation- but I have a feeling that the movie will also have more superatural and/or unrealistic heroism in order to appeal to the masses. I think some other movie adaptations of graphic novels (such as Spiderman 3) were changed by pop culture, which may be why they were not as successful.
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