Monday, March 10, 2008

Everybody Hates Watchmen



Far be it from me to pronounce suckiness on a film that hasn't premiered yet*, but I am willing to bet my 82% ownership of SUPERBLOG!! that the Watchmen movie will, in fact, be Teh Suck.

(*See these three-year-old not-at-all whiny posts: Matrix Trilogy Assistant Director to Butcher Another Alan Moore Classic and Constantine Movie's Suckiness Confirmed, Experts Say.)

The image above is one of five recently unveiled character shots. The rest can be seen in this bloggy post by director Zack Snyder.

As faithful SUPERBLOG!! readers know**, I liked 300 (reviewed here) (although I disliked the remake of Dawn of the Dead - reviewed here) but here's what I said about the possibility of a Watchmen movie in January, 2005:

Watchmen is unfilmable, as the most interesting thing about it is Moore's use of formal techniques unique to the comics medium, stuff that is literally impossible to transfer to the big screen. That one of the main characters is naked throughout might also be problematic...

(**If you don't remember every single word I've even written, you're not my friend.)

I just realized this stupid blog post has no real structure, it's just a bunch of links and asides. So I might as well keep linking. Here's Fox Sues Warners over 'Watchmen':

For author Alan Moore, who never wanted a movie to be made from Watchmen anyway, the legal duel between competing monolithic media conglomerates must be a delicious irony.

Via Progressive Ruin, Kevin Church said exactly what I thought when I saw those darn movie costumes:

By making Dan Dreiberg's costume so modern looking, you're changing the character in ways that go beyond sheer visualization. I understand the difficulties in translating a superhero costume for the screen, but a major part of what makes Nite Owl work in the comic is the fact that he's a slightly schlubby man in his early 40s wearing an ill-fitting, cartoonish costume.

A more recent post tells us that our Watchmen collections are incomplete without The Question #17:



Who knew? By the way, The Onion's A.V. Club posted a nice Primer on Alan Moore on the same day as I posted Everybody Loves Al. You should read it, maybe.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wonder if Rorschach's ink will move and make different patterns, like in the comic.

spidercrazy said...

That's why I return to Superblog!! every day, to learn something new. Now if I could only find out what 'far be if' means.

Koala Mentala said...

It's silly to snark on an obvious typo cos it'll probably be fixed and then it just looks like your reading skillz are impaired. Psyche!

I wonder if Rorschach's ink will move and make different patterns, like in the comic.

It doesn't really move in the comic, because a comical booklet consists of a series of static images, you see. But in the film it probably will move, and that's just sad. Sad sad sad.

spidercrazy said...

See, I learned something new again... when to shut up.

Anonymous said...

You don't think different patterns from panel to panel indicate some kind of movement? That's how I've always read it.

Matthew said...

The Watchmen movie will be awesome. I think you're forgetting one important thing:

Carla Cugino.

Thank you.

And those costumes are awesome. Even Ozymandias. Yeah, I said it.

Koala Mentala said...

Of course I haven't forgotten Carla Gugino. She was originally mentioned in this post but I cut out that part so I could save it for another post.