• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Alan Moore's Watchmen

Doctor Gateau said:
Here one can find a supposed first draft screenplay written by screenwriter Sam Hamm in 1989.

I read Watchmen for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and TBH I can't see what the fuss is about.
Click to expand...

The Watchmen has had a huge influence on everything that has come since, particularly Morrison/Ellis/Millar. Additionally, it was the peak of something that had been brewing for sometime. The way it was published - no ads, highly-stylised covers, text at the back of each issue - was also incredibly groundbreaking, and had huge consequences for the way comics were packaged amd amrketed.

IMO, the main thrillery plot Cold War isn't all that. At the time, though, it was pretty special for a super-hero comic to address political issues in such a mature and sophisticated way. This sort of commentary is more common now.

I think it is the most effective super-hero parody ever. It combines a lot of black comedy with very deep probing of the roots of super-heroes, inclduing the commercial forces that lead its domination of the medium (the pirate stuff) and the deeper appeal of the genre. Compare it, eg, Marshall Law (or anything by Pat Mills for that matter) for an idea of how sophisticated its commentary is.

The art, inparticular, is brilliantly deployed. It goes beyond more illustration and uses repeating imagery and shapes to suggest correlations and clever scene changes. You just don't see that level of care and precision in comics.

Greatest comic ever? Maybe not. Greatest *super-hero* comic ever? I'd have to say yes.

I think it would be near-impossible for a film to capture the truly unique elements of The Watchmen, and all we'd be left with is the weak thriller plot. Still, Aronofsky might be the guy to prove me wrong...

PH
 
Plug Pulled On Watchmen Movie

From Sci Fi Wire, dateline 07/06/05 (that's 06/07/05 for our Colonial friends...) http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire2005/index.php?category=0&id=31145

QUOTE:

Paramount has pulled the plug on its proposed film version of Watchmen, Alan Moore's celebrated superhero graphic novel, Variety reported.

Producers Larry Gordon and Lloyd Levin were taking the project, with British director Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy) attached, out to other studios, the trade paper reported.

Watchmen came under heavy scrutiny in the wake of Paramount chief Brad Grey's surprise move to replace Donald De Line with Gail Berman as studio president in late March, the trade paper reported. De Line found out about the change while in London meeting with Greengrass about Watchmen and the need to cut its budget, rumored to be $100 million, the trade paper reported.

Paramount had been aiming for a summer start, but began releasing crews working on preproduction at that point.
 
LINK
Zack Snyder Watches The "Watchmen"
Posted: Monday March 27th, 2006 3:57pm
Source: Ain't It Cool News
Author: Garth Franklin

AICN has been able to confirm now that Zach Snyder has entered negotiations with Warner Bros. to helm the long-gestating and previously cancelled "Watchmen" comic adaptation.

They also report there are some script revisions underway to fine-tune the various David Hayter drafts and make sure that what ends up onscreen is the most perfect realization of Moore's book possible.

Snyder's previous work includes the recent "Dawn of the Dead" remake and he's currently adapting another comic - Frank Miller's acclaimed "300".
Click to expand...
 
Cooooo. Snyder has certianly had a meteoric rise - if he screws this up he won't make any friends.
 
It's Watchmen. Screwing up is a given. It's how badly he screws up that'll be worth noting.

Personally, this, of all Moore's works, I don't relish seeing in any other medium.
 
If it's anything like the draft I've read, it's going to blow chunks (to use a colloquialism).

If anyone is going to make it, they should stick to the original plot. They can update the setting, perhaps, but the changes that have been proposed for the plot are just weird.
 
Without giving the books ending away or key points in the plot, I think to make it relevant to a modern audience would require some fairly crucial changes to the original story. So that, for one, would disgrutle a core base of the audience already, notably those that have read the book (as per usual... personally, I think this is a given no matter what movie anyone makes based upon a work in another medium).

If however, the movie bosses applied some sense to this and went the route of shows like Band of Brothers and Taken and made this a mini-series for TV and stuck to the period and the text, then you could well be looking at something akin to adaptations like Sin City.

But even then the show would have to come provided with a campanion to the series. Moore says so much in the end papers or the books, the world is made all the richer for it. It's part of what makes Watchmen. That will no doubt be abridged, but for the most part missing from any screen interpretation.

Wow, I can't actually think of one single positive reason for this to be a movie, with the exception of Doctor Manhatten looking pretty cool and the world being introduced to true anti-heroism in Rorschac
 
Ravenstone said:
I can't see it working as a film at all. :nooo:
Click to expand...
It would make a wonderful movie. Done straight.

Even the downbeat ending would work.

Let's face it. Dave Gibbons' artwork works as an ideal storyboard.

Of course, the first TV spinoff would be:
Rorsarch!
(Which is not necessarily a good thing)
 
Allegedly a Test image for the upcoming film...

watchmen.jpg
 
Which is meaningless

That's pretty damned impressive. And presumably painful. Rorschach is perhaps Watchmen's most memorable character, a stone-cold psycho vigilante (in an ever-changing black and white mask which resembles a Rorschach inkblot test) who operates in a hellish alternate 1985, where America stands on the brink of World War III with Russia, and costumed vigilantes are outlawed. Which doesn't stop someone from trying to bump them off, one by one. So a small coalition of middle-aged, overweight crimefighters, including Rorschach, forms — only to find that the conspiracy – which may or may not involve Veidt — is far greater and deadlier than anything they could have imagined.
Click to expand...

and an oversimplification.

Its a great deconstruction of the superhero genre, (something I have with a few exceptions hated)
 
I'm re-reading it at the moment after a good decade plus and it still holds up very well.

I do think the whole "deconstruction" business has been overplayed at its heart it is a brilliantly structured piece of fiction which happens to have superheroes in who happen to act like real life folks.

I think he certianly deserves his place as #1 comic writer and the volumes place in Time magazines 100 greatest novels.
 
Frobush said:
Allegedly a Test image for the upcoming film...

watchmen.jpg
Click to expand...

As I was saying last year, "something akin to adaptations like Sin City".

I like what I see.
 
ghostdog19 said:
As I was saying last year, "something akin to adaptations like Sin City".

I like what I see.
Click to expand...

Link to origins of the image here.

Zack Snyder's adaptation of seminal comic tome Watchmen is yet to start shooting, but the good folks over at Aintitcool have managed to get their hands on a test image from the movie. And what better way to begin what will no doubt be be a very long twelve months of Watchmen chatter, than with a street-lit look at that journal-writing crimefighter Rorschach.

In Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons tale of a group of outlawed superheroes (or "costumed adventurers") who re-assemble to make sense of the puzzling events surrounding the murder of one of their own, masked investigator Rorschach is the first character we meet. The image is only a test shot and briefly appears in the middle of a new and very bloody trailer for Snyder's 300.

There's currently no official word on casting, but Snyder has hinted that there may be a part for his very own six-packing King Of Sparta, Gerard Butler. As previously reported, the director did approach Tom Cruise about the role of Ozymandias, but has since denied The Cruiser's involvement.
Click to expand...
 
So basically Gerard Butler is playing The Comedian.

I still think Daniel Craig would make a crackin' Rorschach.
 
A few years ago Harvey Keitel would have been the perfect Comedian. He's getting on a bit now, though.
 
gncxx said:
A few years ago Harvey Keitel would have been the perfect Comedian. He's getting on a bit now, though.
Click to expand...

Wasn't the Comedian (along with all the primary characters) getting on a bit?

How about Stacey Keech? But last time I saw him was on the show Titus circa 2000.
 
That picture of Rorshach reminds me of a hand puppet in a children´s show.

I saw the publication date for LoEG 3 has been put forward from february to october. :x
 
Xanatico said:
I saw the publication date for LoEG 3 has been put forward from february to october. :x
Click to expand...
don't you mean put back?

What about Tom Berenger for the Comedian?
 
I really loved the graphic novel - mainly for the depth of its background development. This is why I'm skeptical about a movie adaptation.

IMHO the main deficiency in comic screen adaptations so far has been 'plot compression' - i.e., blithely cramming in or skipping over tons of background elements to make stories fit the 2-hour standard film timeframe. For example, save for the _Spiderman_ movie series I think all the Marvel adaptations have suffered such compression effects.

I cringe at the notion of trying to cram all of _Watchmen_ into 2 hours. To my mind, much of the graphic novel's quality lay in the interwoven nuances and the alternative history context. I don't see how they can do all this justice in a single film ... 8)
 
ghostdog19 said:
has it been confirmed that this is definitely 1 movie?
Click to expand...

Good question! ...

Given the subject matter's 'cult' status and the usual Hollywood obsession with box office economics, I can't imagine them taking a chance on a multi-part series.
 
What's these rumblings I hear about purported plot lines in Heroes that strongly parallel the endgame of Watchmen?!!!

Could this queer the chances for a movie?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top