Don’t get me wrong, I love Alan Moore’s work, I love Watchmen in particular but he’s a hypocritical angry old hash addict. In the lead up to the Watchmen release the media have been writing the usual stories about Alan Moore. We all know that Moore doesn’t like the idea of film adaptations of his work… he liked it fine when he took the money to sell the rights to various things in the first place, but that’s a whole other argument. Regardless he can do whatever he want then come screaming back later about how he disavows it and know that the hard-core fanboys will blindly follow his lead and ignore the fortune he’s making.
There’s no question the film will not be a direct representation of the original, that’s simply impossible. I just hope that it’s a great movie that tries to keep the spirit of the original alive while appealing to a broader audience (not LCD, but broader). Comic book zealots who think only a frame by frame translation will do are completely deluding themselves. It’s impossible both in terms of a watchable time frame for the movie (no matter how much I love the subject matter I’d have trouble sitting through a 4 or 5 hour movie :p) and also in terms of content.
Many fans are up in arms about Director Zack Snyder extending fight scenes and pumping up the action in the movie. I hate to say it folks, while I’m also a bit hesitant about his touch (I was not a huge fan of 300) the movie does need to have more action. People who aren’t familiar with Watchmen will expect a certain level of action and if they don’t get it, the movie will not do well. No matter what, if the movie was only tailored towards hard core comic book fans it would crash and crash hard. If a few more action scenes are the price I have to pay to get a think-piece like Watchmen out there and get more people to read the actual book (and that sort of comic in general) I’m all for it. The movie most of these fans want would cost an absolute fortune and make no money (no, book fans alone can not support that kind of budget) and we’d be stuck with “safe” crap like Spidey and xmen 3 as our only superhero flicks while anything with a brain was left to rot in development as “too risky.”
My biggest level of disgust comes with the total wanks who are complaining about what the marketing machine is doing to Watchmen. They see the book being featured in stores and toys being marketed and they start whining about things being contrary to the spirit blah blah blah… I’m with you on things like coffee tie-ins and fast food (though I don’t think I’ve heard of one, at least not yet) but how the fuck is it a bad thing that I can walk into chapters and see a display of Watchmen. It’s a great book with some great topics and if someone walks in and picks it up because the movie looks cool and really really loves it… how is that a bad thing? Am I missing some fundamental connection where the fact that I can now have a Nite Owl or Doctor Manhattan figure on my desk from Toys-r-us ruins your personal enjoyment of the book? Someone new is being brought into serious graphic novels is a bad thing? Get your head out of your ass and if you don’t want to see the movie, don’t see it.
And Alan, quit bogarting the good stuff.