Who Watches the Watchmen?

Jeff Taylor | June 8, 2005

Not us for damn sure, thanks to the bastards at Paramount.

Comments

|6.8.05 @ 8:09PM|#

Well, there's a silver lining here: They were originally going to go with Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, Pi) to direct. I think he was a phenomenal choice, but got booted in favor of the guy who did The Bourne Supremacy because of some scheduling conflict. If it's dead for now, it may actually get done right by someone like Aronofsky later.

|6.8.05 @ 8:13PM|#

Hurm. Hacks never give Dave Gibbons credit. Don't trust Hollywood not to tart story up, miss point entirely, cast pretty-boy Pitt as Dreiberg, make Veidt hero of tale. Probably tack on phony happy ending. Hurm. Probably start top-knot fad. Disgusting. Hurm.

|6.8.05 @ 8:37PM|#

Without the Cold War context, Watchmen loses everything. It's a pretty steep sale to expect movie audiences to go along with not only an alternative history, not only an alternative history that is mainly political and doesn't feature kool stuff like air cars or teleportation, but an alternative history that only brings us up to 1988! Better to nix the project than deliver the half-loaf they would have had to deliver.

Jeff|6.8.05 @ 8:38PM|#

As a wholesale lover of comics and hater of movies, I applaud this decision.

|6.8.05 @ 8:39PM|#

Hey, Watchmen has a bunch of teleportation. And at least one air-car.

Jeff|6.8.05 @ 8:40PM|#

A gift for you all: A Rorschach motivational poster:
http://www.baddaystudio.com/MotivateRorscach1.jpg

|6.8.05 @ 8:43PM|#

Well an even littler mentioned fact is that back in '88 it was originally going to be done by Terry Gilliam. I forget what the circumstances were that made him walk away, but I always secretly hoped he would go back to it.

|6.8.05 @ 8:46PM|#

I have to side with ol' Splotchface. Fanboys should look here for some info, and here for some snarky fun.

Kevin

Jeff|6.8.05 @ 9:15PM|#

A copy of the script that Gilliam wanted to use made the convention rounds back in the 90's. It openned with the incident that broke up the Minute Men: Terrorists have rigged the Statue of Liberty with explosives and are holding hostages. Comedian goes in and kills the terrorists, as well as most of the hostages. The last one to die triggers the bombs, and Comedian leaps out of Liberty's tiara as she explodes.
After that it was pretty true to the story, but would have been a four hour movie. Manhattan and Rorscach's origins were both included. The Owl/Silk Spectre romance doesn't happen (a venial sin in modern Hollywood), and there was more of a fight at Veidt's dome.

|6.8.05 @ 9:22PM|#

They'll probably just use that money to remake Animal House.

...or Herbie the Lovebug or The Bad News Bears or The Longest Yard.

|6.8.05 @ 9:31PM|#

...or Julia Roberts's next piece-of-shit "starring vehicle"...

|6.8.05 @ 9:45PM|#

Tim, I agree that context is pretty important, but I don't think the Cold War is where it's at - a lot of the issues relating to that are presented as having already happened anyway (well, from the perspective of everyone but Manhattan), and the question of how many decades back isn't too critical. I think the matter of projection of national power is still germane, but it's hardly like modern audiences couldn't relate to that particular issue.

What I think you'd really lose in updating from the '80s is the sense of cities as unsalvageable pits of crime and decay. I always read the Manhattan/Rorscach juxtaposition as a commentary on the relatively free hand given the military, CIA, etc, in carrying out foreign policy, and the Warren/Burger-era restrictions on law enforcement and protections for the accused, and the citizery's general acceptance of the former and distaste for the latter. Again, the foreign policy stuff still has resonance, but I'm afraid crime is no longer particularly salient.

I think the cultural and political shifts that took urban crime out of the public discourse would also make it difficult to do Dark Knight Returns or a lot of cyberpunk in a way that makes sense to modern audiences.

|6.8.05 @ 10:14PM|#

I really wish they'd make it as an HBO mini-series.

|6.8.05 @ 11:25PM|#

I'm with Les. Its a dense story and 2 hours wouldn't even scratch the surface. Plus, every Moore adaptation has been shit (to say the least) which didn't instill me with that much confidence.

Apropos of nothing, someone (the aforementioned Gillian) needs to make Good Omens, and make it right. There could be gold in that thar antichrist.

Franklin Harris|6.9.05 @ 12:51AM|#

"The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" was crap. "From Hell" was OK, but had little to do with Moore's book and was redeemed mostly by Depp's and Ian Holm's performances. Advance word on "V for Vendetta" is not good. So, now we come to "Watchmen," a work no one thinks can really be done as a two-hour movie even with a good script. I say it's best to let it die.

|6.9.05 @ 8:29AM|#

I've posted this before, but the narrative of The Watchmen is all over the fucking place. There's no way they would be able to tighten it up enough for a 2-hour feature.

Plus I think there is a very fine line between cerebral/boring. Frankly, I think The Watchmen crosses that line from time to time. It really hits you over the head with "messages", and there really isn't that much action. It reads like some big thinker's thesis on Golden Age comics, with a ton of social commentary.

"Dark Knight Returns", to me, is the perfect graphic novel. "A Killing Joke" is a close second.

"Arkam (sp?) Asylum" is totally fucked up, and if a director like David Lynch was to direct a movie version, it would be very interesting.

|6.9.05 @ 8:38AM|#

I think it would fail as a 2 hr movie but could be an outstanding HBO series/mini. The story is much more character-driven mystery than special effects laden summer pic.

The hardest part would be adapting the story into a modern setting which it needs to maintain any sort of tension. I doubt that it would be convincing for the culture warriors, drug warriors, and terror warriors, to drop their weapons and unify aginst an alien menace.

Fred|6.9.05 @ 10:49AM|#

It reads like some big thinker's thesis on Golden Age comics, with a ton of social commentary.

Mostly because it is. I'm glad Watchmen is dead. I wish Hollywood would have killed Extraordinary Gentlemen too, and V For Vendetta will be crap. Movie adaptations of anything but straight superhero stories are crap, and even most of those are crap, unless you get the script, director and casting exactly right.

|6.9.05 @ 10:52AM|#

So when does it come out on DVD?

R C Dean|6.9.05 @ 11:24AM|#

I think it would fail as a 2 hr movie but could be an outstanding HBO series/mini.

You mean it has lots of nudity and cursing?

|6.9.05 @ 11:47AM|#

Not so much cursing but some nudity, and themes that would never make it into a mainstream film. If they did, the parents who'll assume superheroes = kids flick would be up in arms. What you'd wind up with is something like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

On cable, the heroes could be as flawed and interesting as they are in the comic, and you'd have time to include the odd pirate comic story that runs through the series.

dagny|6.9.05 @ 11:55AM|#

Well an even littler mentioned fact is that back in '88 it was originally going to be done by Terry Gilliam. I forget what the circumstances were that made him walk away, but I always secretly hoped he would go back to it.

Gilliam said he had a lot of respect for the piece, but it was really unfilmable. So they decided to hand the project over to someone with less respect.

So I don't really mind that they're pulling the plug.

|6.9.05 @ 12:28PM|#

I'll revert to my previous statement. For the stupid alien-invasion hoax to work (and it barely worked in the book), you need the confrontation of two superpowers who are both obsessed with outer space, both suspicious that their way of life is dying out, capable of mutually assured destruction, and both interested in staying alive. None of that works outside the context of the eighties-that tumultuous decade when even Sting plaintively hoped that the Russians loved their children too. Unless you are willing to do it as retrofuturism (unlikely given the box office for Sky Captain), you sacrifice what made it good.

And no matter what you do, you lose the best thing in Watchmen: The parody magazine interviews, police reports, fanzine articles, etc. that came at the end of each issue, and gave Watchmen its particular Ulysses-like bulk and multi-voice texture.

Watchmen was the last work of pure high modernism, and as such was an anachronism even in its own time. The thing is unrecoverable, so why bother?

What I think you'd really lose in updating from the '80s is the sense of cities as unsalvageable pits of crime and decay.

Yet another reason to be glad this project's toast. What do we need a movie for anyway? Didn't the book already come with pictures (underrated pictures, as Rorschach notes above)? I thought we weren't passive consumers of culture anymore.

|6.9.05 @ 1:34PM|#

Would it kill them to just pay Moore to write an original screenplay? Is it too much to ask Hollywood to put their trust in a writer with a proven track record?

|6.9.05 @ 4:13PM|#

Moore doesn't really care what happens to his stories once he's done. I read an interview with him in 'The Onion' and they asked him whether he got upset when they changed things (apparently, he was a consultant on that movie). He said that his original would still be the same, and the the other would be a different story. He didn't have a problem with it at all.

So that's why you'll see any Alan Moore story butchered, more than likely, unless the person doing the story does their best to remain true to the original...

|6.9.05 @ 5:25PM|#

peter jackson, hehe :D w/ the wachowski bros! (oh wait, they're doing V :) so maybe joel & ethan or rodriguez & raimi!

|6.9.05 @ 6:56PM|#

For the stupid alien-invasion hoax to work (and it barely worked in the book), you need the confrontation of two superpowers who are both obsessed with outer space, both suspicious that their way of life is dying out, capable of mutually assured destruction, and both interested in staying alive. None of that works outside the context of the eighties

I haven't read The Watchmen, but based on your description above, you could make it work if you set the movie in the next couple of years, and make the rival superpowers the USA vs. a China with a fresh crop of belligerent, re-dedicated-to-Marx leadership (maybe taking over in a coup or something circa 2007).

|6.9.05 @ 6:58PM|#

Oh. I don't know what China's MAD capability is, but you could also take care of that by setting the movie a couple years in the future and assuming a recent nuke/missile buildup.

|6.9.05 @ 10:23PM|#

For the stupid alien-invasion hoax to work (and it barely worked in the book), you need the confrontation of two superpowers who are both obsessed with outer space, both suspicious that their way of life is dying out, capable of mutually assured destruction, and both interested in staying alive.

What if, in lieu of an alien threat hoax desroying NYC to end the cold war, Ozymandias' plan instead focused on ending the "God question" by simultaneaously annihilating holy sites and creating one faith. Almost everything else could be the same, set maybe in 2015 rather than 1985. That could still get the basics of the story and send a similar message.

|6.10.05 @ 3:07AM|#

You're lamenting a decision by Hollywood to keep its filthy mitts off of a comic-book treasure? What is wrong with you, Julian? Put down the DVD remote, turn off all digital products, and sit in the corner with a good read.