Amen, Brother! For the dave chapelle reference. Laughing my fucking ass off.

Alan Moore’s work = Genius on every level

Watchmen = The first graphic novel I ever read and by far my favorite

300 movie = Visually stunning, but “sublimely stupid”

Watchmen movie = Cannot be judged until viewed in its completed entirety

Just my opinions

I understand completely. I’ve read Watchmen perhaps over a year ago, but whenever Moore says that he did things that can only be done in comic form, those articles/excerpts/comics/reports/stories are EXACTLY what come to mind.

HOWEVER I still disagree with the sentiment that something like that couldn’t be translated. This is a close-minded way of thinking; no medium is inherently better than another, and adaptation from one to the next doesn’t mean that much has to be lost, nor does it mean that more can’t be gained.

Ever see Memento? That movie, aside from the main plot-thread, had a seemingly separate anecdotal story being told in small excerpts between major scenes. If a director wanted to do so, he could incorporate such those excerpts into moving pictures. Not as articles/excerpts/comics/reports/stories, but instead as snippets of documentaries/exposes/cartoons/news-reports/interviews. And the video excerpts could be just as informative and immersive as the written/illustrated excerpts.

Adapt the old medium to the new medium and all the bonuses the new medium allows.

I very much doubt that Watchmen the movie will include excerpts like that (though I’d think it would be cool, geek that I am), but I’m quite tired of people (Moore included) saying that his work can only work in its present medium.

Regarding Moore, I understand how bad he feels with his works in the past being bastardized by Hollywood. But everything I’ve seen about Watchmen is different. It’s been made by people that know and care, and don’t want to change things just for the sake of meeting demographics. IF Moore wanted to have input in this, he wouldn’t be (or have been, I guess) ignored; he’d actually have some say so this time around.

My thoughts/concerns is that, even if Moore realized that he could more-or-less direct Snyder to make whatever movie Moore deemed fit, he still wouldn’t. I think he would have that closed-minded view of “comic book only,” and he wouldn’t explore the possibilities of what moving pictures would allow him, opting to keep his mindset of old.

I won’t say that if Watchmen sucks, it’ll be because of Moore. But I will say that there’s a great chance that he could have kept it from sucking had he got involved.

I often wondered what I would do if given the opportunity to create musical score and sounds for a movie release of Watchmen. After watching the trailer and hearing Billy Corgan’s voice I became extremely let down. The Watchmen is it’s own world and I truly hope that any iconic washed alternative singers are stricken from the actual movie, including the credits, (please no sell outs). The director has enough stigma to deal with as there is a big difference between “300″ and Alan Moore’s imagination.

I have a good feeling that visually this film will stay true to the Dave Gibbons images. PLEASE DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN IN POST PRODUCTION TO ELIMINATE ANYTHING IN THE SOUNDTRACK THAT IS NOT UNIQUE TO THE WORLD OF THE NOVEL… otherwise you will kill the experience. Thank you for using fairly non famous actors and I pray that Zack’s adaptation is word for word as far as the original dialogue is concerned. Please do not pull a Peter Jackson and need an extended directors cut later for DVD… at least he has a valid excuse as those novels are much longer than the Watchmen.

Sure you can read this and say you can’t please everyone. Some things are meant to be pure. In the final analysis… God will sort it all out.

Drewbdoo, you’re right about the relative qualities of disparate media; I think comics are marginally better for some storytelling techniques than others {and the same could be said for any other medium}, but bad adaptations are a matter of execution, not form. A bad adaptation and a bad film are different things, even if the former is often a subset of the latter. Based on the trailer I saw, this will be both.

As for this,

“Oh, one more thing that occured to me. I really like how Moore says that films can’t do what comics do, and then goes on to say that the the reasons he didn’t see 300 were because they amplified the things he didn’t like about the comic. Uh, hypocrite maybe?”

There’s no contradiction there.

I knew it.

To be fair to Moore, while I am tired of this stance of his. He has turned out all checks that he has garnered to his properties. He’s taken his stance and that’s the most he can do.

As far as any other material every made from a “book”. This applies to the Watchmen aswell. You’re not going to please everyone. It’s as simle as that. For me? It looks awesome so far. And we still have till next year to see this bloom into its full R-rated self.

I wonder if there will be a redband trailer of some kind?

And this production of watchmen seems to be taking a visually literal approach to re-telling the book at the movies. Moore’s right, these things don’t really translate and work, at least not without major re-visualization, which he rightly points out as being wack and watering down the original source.

I don’t think any fan of Watchmen will debate your point of view. The movie version will in no way be a substitute for what is arguably the single greatest achievement in graphic storytelling. If at the very least Snyder is able to present a solid representation, one would hope that will lead general audiences to seek out the source material. Perhaps they’ll look deeper into Moore’s other work, as well. And that’s not a bad thing!
(I always felt that the ultimate adaptation would have been a 12 part series, but that’s just me!)

Pill, your kinda diggin the Wathcers, but Batmans lame ? ? ?

I know i hadn’t in a while. So, in the interest of this debate, i went and dusted it off from my shelf, to see what those “things” were in Watchmen that couldn’t be done in film. From what I gathered, Moore hadn’t been so protective of his other properties as much as he had been Watchmen, which is why it hadn’t been made until now. So what made Watchmen so special?

As i flip through the book, i was reminded that most of the in depth backstory, the nuance, the greatness, and “novelty” of the book comes from the fact that it is filled with pages and pages of documents, newspaper clippings [like interview with Veidt in Nova Express], notes, chapters of books [like excerpts from Under the Hood, Hollis Mason's biography], photographs — all presented not in a frame, not as part of the art, but as a page of a book, spliced into the story. These text heavy inserts in every chapter give backstory, not plot, a lot of which has little to no significance to the plot at hand, but has major significance for the tone, and the world that is created, the motivations for the characters, and the reason behind who is left to do what is needed, not to mention why their actions are needed, or why they are reluctant to do so. There are quotes from Genesis [the bible chapter, not the band] lining the bottom of the page. Poems, too, like the apropos Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley. This level of detail, of nuance would be damn near impossible to integrate fully onto the screen. How would you integrate full chapters of a book, unrelated to the moments at hand, full of simply emotion and confession, into a visually moving picture?

This is not even including the pacing that can possibly only be given by the comic genre. Take the end of chapter 12, where [SPOILER!] frame by frame, the newspaper man, finally hugging and embracing the comic kid, is slowly disintegrated by the psychic boom orchestrated by Veidt. It takes eight frames, eight steps to disintegrate them. Each frame, they come closer together, falling apart until all that is left of them is the shape of the blood smear of the Comedian’s smiley pin. Then nothing. How could you possibly translate something like that?

That’s what Moore is protecting. He has said in interviews that he wants you to be able to see those things, and flip the pages back, to go see all the connections. Go see how many times the blood smear and smiley appear in different ways [it's a lot, by the way.] To flip back and read some of Hollis Mason’s book, to finally realize what he’s talking about. To be able to revisit and research the plot, the era, the world, is what he designed the book to be able to let you do. You cannot, cannot do that in a theatre, where the projectionist hits GO and it unfolds before you.

This is not to say the movie will be no good. It could be a very good movie, for movie’s sake. It will just not be anything and everything that makes Watchmen so great, and ultimately, unfilmable. I can see why he wouldnt want to take part in recreating something he already perfected, knowing he could only get an arm’s length away. How frustrating must that be? THAT is why Moore takes the position he does. And I would tend to agree.