'Watchmen' March ' 09 release in jeopardy?

numbersix_99 wrote:

NSpan wrote:
for anyone who has read 300, they know that Snyder will go to great lengths to recreate the content, the visuals, and the spirit of the source material

So the comic was vacuous, moronic, and all-style-no-content?

i wouldn't describe it in those words..........................but, for the sake of your argument, yes..

i'd be hard-pressed to find any critical aspect of the comic--superficial or implicit--that Snyder neglected in his adaptation

Some books are not filmable. It is simple. Anybody who has read books such as Catch 22, Ulysses, The World According to Garp, or A Confederacy of Dunces knows that. They just do not translate well. I think Watchmen is one of those films. I am still excited about seeing it on the big screen but I have no doubt that it will not even come close to being as great as the book.

The Black Freighter being shuttled to the DVD as a standalone cartoon is a clue in how the film will run. The Black Freighter story arc is tied so closely into that Act of the actual story that without it, a lot of the symbolism and metaphor is lost.

The other aspect of the story that will not translate is Rorshach's journal. Even with voice-over (which I consider a secondary option) there will be something missing from the narrative that is important to the mood of the overall story.

I can see so many parts of the book that I know will be pulled from the movie by Hollywood types that it will barely be recognizable. I think Snyder can do a good job at keeping the basic story and keep the visuals intact but a lot of the inner workings will be lost in the translation.

The same thing happened with 300. There were many scenes cut, especially the government/political scenes for lack of time/space. They turned it into an action movie and cut out a lot of the political story arc. That was okay for 300 but not ideal.

Miller is a great writer but he isn't Alan Moore. Alan created a new genre and completely redefined the way comics were written and gave the form a new way of existing. Miller's Dark Knight helped in that change but without Watchmen, and Moore's other books, the change would have never happened.

I think Watchmen can be a great film, especially for the people who have not read the book. For us that are fans (and even more so for people like me who think Moore is the comic equivalent of Hemmingway or Shakespeare), the movie will always fall short of the source material.

WooHoo for my 300th post. Dedicated to Alan Moore.

Donte,

Again, I am in total agreement with you. The movie is never going to have the same impact that the comic did. It would just be impossible to include every nuance that Moore put into Watchmen. I just hope that unlike 300 and V for Vendetta (or even League of Extraordinary Gentlemen for that matter)that they don't decide to add things to the movie that weren't in the original to make the story easier to understand for the masses. I don't mind them not being able to include everything because then we're back to the 12 part HBO series in length, but for god's sake, DO NOT ADD ANYTHING THAT WAS NOT PART OF THE ORIGINAL MATERAL.

I got to tell you though that I can not wait for the Dr. Manhattan on Mars scenes.

Donte77 wrote:.The Black Freighter being shuttled to the DVD as a standalone cartoon is a clue in how the film will run. The Black Freighter story arc is tied so closely into that Act of the actual story that without it, a lot of the symbolism and metaphor is lost.

It's funny about the Black Freighter story arc. The main reason that Moore included it was as an homage to his Watchmen editor, Joe Orlando who worked on "Piracy" for the old EC Comics. Moore and Gibbons figured that since super heroes really existed in that world that kids wouldn't be reading super hero comics but some other genre. The two of them along with Orlando decided on Pirate comics.

The other odd thing will be what they do with the Cold War with Russia being obliterated when we get Manhattan as our nuclear weapon and with Nixon in his 4-5th term as president. Will they keep it in place and hope the 20 year olds even get it or just dump that setting altogether? Hard to say.

I know they are having some of the flashbacks with the first incarnation of the Minutemen but how much will be cut out and how much left in? It doesn't look like much will be cut. If you look at the cast list on IMDB it is astounding. Mothman, Dollar Bill, etc are in but there is no Hooded Justice which leads me to believe they are cutting

Spoiler:

Unless they change how it actually happens, how it is stopped, etc. Ted Koppel was also on the cast list and all he does in the story is a few cameo's of news headlines. Also Bernie (the young black kid reading the Black Freighter) is listed on the cast which leads me to believe that the newstand will feature in the film even if The Black Freighter is moved to special features.

It will be interesting to say the least.

Donte77 wrote:Some books are not filmable. It is simple. Anybody who has read books such as Catch 22, Ulysses, The World According to Garp, or A Confederacy of Dunces knows that. They just do not translate well. I think Watchmen is one of those films. I am still excited about seeing it on the big screen but I have no doubt that it will not even come close to being as great as the book.

I actually think Ulysses and Confederacy are both filmable. Haven't read Garp and think Catch 22 and Watchmen are indeed very very difficult to film.

i think the word "unfilmable" needs to be decommissioned from our language.. sure, not every artistic work can be directly translated to film.. sometimes certain aspects need to be adapted to suit the medium--but i think the best filmmakers of the last 20 years have done well to prove that just about anything is "filmable"..

sure, it oftentimes takes a visionary director to truly capture and recreate the spirit of a given work--and we can debate whether or not Snyder is such a man (and we'll see who's right if/when this movie ever comes out)--but it can be done..

comic books are essentially story-boards.. studios need to start putting a bit more faith into the source material but, at the same time, keep in mind that there are some cartoonish aspects of comics that simply won't work in a live-action format.. example:



remember when the first X-Men movie was being made and the fanboys were crying that Wolverine's outfit was being so drastically changed? lol

Gosh, if only they had kept him as originally drawn and stayed true to the original artist's design. F'n film makers having their own ideas

Well if we can't use "unfilmable" we need a new word to describe the raping certain movies would take if some director attempted to translate them to a movie format.
What I mean when I say a movie is not filmable I mean that there are aspects of the process of reading a novelthat would be lost. You lose a lot of the metaphor and depth that a writer is able to put into a 600+ page book. You lose the intimacy of being inside a character's mind and knowing their thoughts unless you resort to voice over.
Having a great director would help but first the book has to be turned into a screenplay and immediately some things get cut and thrown aside and bungled. Some books would need to be 4 hours minimum to not destroy that narrative. Other would have to be 10-12 hours. Take The Stand for instance. It was made into mini-series that was over 6 hours long. 6 hours 6 minutes running time and yet more than half of the book was missing. Characters were combined into one person and other people were removed entirely. That is part of the process of cutting a work down to a short enough piece to enable the limited attention spanned US audience to watch it in 90 minutes. Sure there are exceptions but not many.

I am a book geek before I am a movie geek so this is especially dear to me. Some books need to stay books.

Donte77 wrote:Characters were combined into one person and other people were removed entirely.

Funny you should say this. The Mrs. and I went to a screening of Michael Chabon's "Mysteries of Pittsburgh" here in a town a few weeks ago (Movie has been done for over a year and still can't find a distributor). Whoever wrote the screenplay decided to combine two of the characters into one for god knows why, but it totally changed a good portion of the story not having both of those characters there.

Donte77 wrote:I am a book geek before I am a movie geek so this is especially dear to me. Some books need to stay books.

but what's the harm? books and film are two entirely different artforms--they operate differently and convey information in vastly different ways.. even the best film adaptations are going to (by definition) be a wholly separate experience from the book.. as you implied yourself, there are certain literary techniques that simply don't translate to a visual medium..

but i can't think of any movies based on books that render the book unnecessary by perfectly adapting every aspect of the source material.. so what's the problem? even if watchmen is changed a bit in adaptation, could it not still be a great movie? do we have to burn our comics when it's released?

sure, it's sad when somebody butchers an adaptation of a beloved book--but i'd rather see people trying than simply dismissing a project as "unfilmable"

I'm very, very nervous about the [remake] of The Prisoner. ...I'm worried that the...remake will focus too much on the kitsch surrealism of the original ([a] product of the time) and recreate that, or else not update the show's moral and social concerns, and instantly make itself anachronistic. The Prisoner was dark for the 60s, and it should be dark now.

[Nodding] Wholeheartedly agree, and that's pretty much the same reason I'm very, very nervous about Warner Bros.' (long-)planned Logan's Run update, which in the PROPER hands, given modern society's obsession with the youthful, inclination toward euthenasia and resource-minded population control, could be EXTREMELY interesting...

Not only that, but it ended in one of the most controversial ways- by closing on a metaphorical note (notice how the door closes in the final shot), ignoring any easy explanation. You didn't see anything as ballsy as that until Twin Peaks came along.

Erm. The Godfather?

I think [McKellen] will be a [brilliant] Number 2, and Caza... Cass... Jesus should be a suitable Number 6, though I would have preferred Gary Oldman or David Thewlis, who share Patrick McGoohan's theatrical origins and all three can look pretty darn pissed off when they have to.

Not all that thrilled about McKellen, as I said earlier, and also that my first choice for Six would be Guy Pearce. (Though McKellen's LotR costar Viggo Mortensen, Tim Roth and Daniel Craig would all be pretty high on my list, too, and Craig's casting in particular would be pretty damned kick-ass.) Helmut Bakaitis (The Architect from the two Matrix sequels), LotR's Ian Holm and Hugo Weaving would all be outstanding, though, truth be told, I think Morgan Freeman might be my top pick.

I read a post last week in which someone accused this whole situation as being a giant publicity stunt, that...they decided to play this out for media attention.

Nice to know the nuts aren't just staying in the trees, but are coming right out in the open these days. Be nice if they turned themselves into peanut butter, too, but I suppose you can't have everything.

...[T]his is a great opportunity for Fox to take down the top earning studio of 2008, so why wouldn't they do everything possible to fight dirty...

My thoughts exactly, and I'm more than a little concerned that, if the two sides were so "close" to a deal over the weekend, we haven't seen an announcement yet. Time's running awfully short, folks.

I heard that Terry Gilliam was going to do Watchmen as a movie, but said he needed 8 films to do the story justice.

Sounds like typical overachieveing Gilliam, but that doesn't mean he's wrong. Just too, too honest.

After hearing that, it's kind of scary that it's been made into one film by the maker of 300.

I really don't understand all this hate and discontent with 300, a film that, like Titanic and The Matrix, appears very much to me these days to be a victim of its own enormous success. Don't take much for a backlash to emerge, does it?

...[F]or anyone who has read 300, they know that Snyder will go to great lengths to recreate the content, the visuals, and the spirit of the source material...

Well, AMEN, Spannaus, there's a sentiment I can really get behind.

So the comic was vacuous, moronic, and all-style-no-content?

There's times I think some people would be happiest if nothing ever before published ever got adapted into a film AT ALL. And, even better, if no one ever publicized or drew attention or gave out praise to the very best printed material, so as to reduce the possibility that they'd one day be overexposed, overhyped, or overcommercialized. And, still better, if all publications were limited to initial runs only, so as not to dilute the power of the printed work by making its procurement by all assured. And, wow, if only NO ONE would ever publish ANYTHING, and that way manuscripts would just get passed around to the author's friends and family, who's really be the only people who could truly appreciate their work and their mind and their creative qualities, anyway. And, hey, maybe it should all just stay locked inside some poor bastard's HEAD, since the moment any idea or invention or thought is excreted onto paper and squeezed into the imprecise and maddeningly limited moulds of the words of an increasingly irrelevant and archaic written language, it becomes something that's been reduced and distorted from the original, unexpurgated vision. After all, once a thought falls victim to actual EXPRESSION, it becomes the property of someone else, and can be edited and bastardized and f@$%ed-up beyond repair. So let's all be idealists, and never ever let anyone get their grubby underappreciative caveman stupid jerkweed paws on the fruits of our mental innovations, lest they screw it up completely and make a mockery of our intellectual property. Will THAT make you people happy? [Grin]

Snyder has yet to display any ability to work with character, and since Watchmen is ALL character, I'm worried.

Now, THAT's a fair point, and quite worthy of consideration.

[I'd] be hard-pressed to find any critical aspect of the comic--superficial or implicit--that Snyder neglected in his adaptation...

The one complaint I have about 300 (the film) is that there wasn't more to it. I loved the development of the Queen's character, the explicit exposition of things only obliquely referenced (if I remember aright) in the original graphic novel, but could have done with more of the political maneuvering that seemed to have been excised. That, and more of the physical, intimate tactics found in hand-to-hand combat that made Troy such an enjoyable experience (for me). But, then, I may have a man-crush on Brad Pitt.
NSpan

Some books are not filmable. It is simple. Anybody who has read books such as Catch 22, Ulysses, The World According to Garp, or A Confederacy of Dunces knows that. They just do not translate well.

I see what you mean, here, especially with regards to Garp and Ulysses, but, lest we forget, Catch-22 WAS made into a film, and while it's not exactly great, it's not terrible, either. I'd be careful when using a phrase like "not filmable"; if Peter Jackson taught me anything with The Lord of the Rings, it's that the right screenwriter, the right director, and the right actors can work miracles. That doesn't mean it's easy, or assured, or even, necessarily, that it will happen... I've yet to watch a film version of Hamlet that truly captures the haunting desolation, the poignant despair, the black humor, of Shakespeare's original work, and at this point I believe I've seen 'em all, in the English tongue anyway. I quite agree with your pessimism about Dunces, and I'd add Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow and even the forthcoming film version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road to that list, of published works not easily adapted and literary jewels that ought not to be subjected to the whims of the stupid, the foolish or the grasping. However, "impossible" is a big word, and ever's a long time. Have faith, my brother. Not everyone can toss paint on a canvas and create Starry Night, but one person did, and HE was inspired by an original work that was pretty damned impressive, too.

The Black Freighter being shuttled to the DVD as a standalone cartoon is a clue in how the film will run. The Black Freighter story arc is tied so closely into that Act of the actual story that without it, a lot of the symbolism and metaphor is lost.

We're in total agreement there. I pity the ticket-buying public who will never be inclined to see the "ultimate edition" DVD. But I also pity myself, that I'll probably never see that version on a big screen.

The other aspect of the story that will not translate is Rorshach's journal. Even with voice-over (which I consider a secondary option) there will be something missing from the narrative that is important to the mood of the overall story.

Again, agreed. It must be handled quite delicately, differently for example from the ham-handed, distracting, befouling, smarmy v.o. work in Little Children, that very nearly ruined the film for me entirely.

I think Snyder can do a good job at keeping the basic story and keep the visuals intact but a lot of the inner workings will be lost in the translation.

Part of that's unavoidable, you know, because of the differences in the two media. Which sort of underscores your point about how some works should never be adapted, I get it. [Shrug] What can I say? They're two totally different art forms. One's for mass consumption and public entertainment, the other's an intimate experience that becomes personally evocative and reflective. It's like the difference between music and acrylics.

The same thing happened with 300. There were many scenes cut, especially the government/political scenes for lack of time/space. They turned it into an action movie and cut out a lot of the political story arc. That was okay for 300 but not ideal.

Sounds familiar. [Laughing] I know, you said (typed) it first. Props.

Miller is a great writer but he isn't Alan Moore. Alan created a new genre and completely redefined the way comics were written and gave the form a new way of existing. Miller's Dark Knight helped in that change but without Watchmen, and Moore's other books, the change would have never happened.

Oooh... agreed. However, I personally put Dave Sim ahead of BOTH of 'em.

I think Watchmen can be a great film, especially for the people who have not read the book. For us that are fans (and even more so for people like me who think Moore is the comic equivalent of [Hemingway] or Shakespeare), the movie will always fall short of the source material.

You're probably right. And I'd go with Hemingway, or, actually, F. Scott Fitzgerald, or , perhaps most accurately, William Faulkner. (Ever read Absalom!, Absalom!?)

WooHoo for my 300th post. Dedicated to Alan Moore.

Congratulations, and kudos. It actually lived up to the hype (for once). [Grin]

[Continued...]

[Concluded...]


Kaisermakes some excellent points also, particularly:

...[F]or god's sake, DO NOT ADD ANYTHING THAT WAS NOT PART OF THE ORIGINAL...

Seconded.

I got to tell you though that I can not wait for the Dr. Manhattan on Mars scenes.

For me it's the scenes between three pairs of people that will make or break the film emotionally, as they defined the comic, emotionally: Kovacs (Rorschach) and Dreiberg (Nite Owl II), Dr. Malcolm Long and his wife (forget her name, sorry), and the news vendor and the kid (I might also include Laurie Juspeczyk and Edward Blake, and I'll be very, very interested to see that one scene between Rorshach and the retired Moloch the Mystic. However, I digress).

It's funny about the Black Freighter story arc. The main reason that Moore included it was as an homage to his Watchmen editor, Joe Orlando who worked on "Piracy" for the old EC Comics. Moore and Gibbons figured that since super heroes really existed in that world that kids wouldn't be reading super hero comics but some other genre. The two of them along with Orlando decided on Pirate comics.

You know, I've never run across ANYONE online who actually knew that (other than myself). Mega-props!

The other odd thing will be what they do with the Cold War with Russia being obliterated when we get Manhattan as our nuclear weapon and with Nixon in his 4-5th term as president. Will they keep it in place and hope the 20 year olds even get it or just dump that setting altogether? Hard to say.

I'm pretty confident that Snyder's going to keep as faithful to the original as he can... right up to a particular point, and I'll leave it at that.

It doesn't look like much will be cut. If you look at the cast list on IMDb it is astounding.

The screenplay must have given the WB accountants and production execs conniption fits.

...Bernie (the young black kid reading [T]he Black Freighter) is listed on the cast which leads me to believe that the newstand will feature in the film even if The Black Freighter is moved to special features.

There's sure to be some interaction between he and the newsstand vendor, as they're they last people we're meant to see before... before... erm, nothing much happens. [Grin]

I actually think Ulysses and Confederacy are both filmable.

EVERYTHING's filmable. The tapes of XCOM (the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, formed to deal with the Cuban Missile Crisis) was filmable. The Princess Bride was filmable. Leviticus is filmable. Some of what's adapted for film may not be much good, but it's definitely FILMABLE.

"Well, sure, anyone CAN cook, but that doesn't mean that anyone SHOULD." --Remy (Ratatouille)

[I think] the word "unfilmable" needs to be decommissioned from our language...

Damn skippy.

...[T]he best filmmakers of the last 20 years have done well to prove that just about anything is "filmable". [S]ure, it oftentimes takes a visionary director to truly capture and recreate the spirit of a given work--and we can debate whether or not Snyder is such a man (and we'll see who's right if/when this movie ever comes out)--but it can be done...

[APPLAUSE]

...[S]tudios need to start putting a bit more faith into the source material...

More [APPLAUSE].

F'n film makers having their own ideas...

Damn kids, with their long hair, and their clothes, and their music... (And people say I'm the Archie Bunker of this crowd... Sheesh...)

Well if we can't use "unfilmable" we need a new word to describe the raping certain movies would take if some director attempted to translate them to a movie format.

Fine. Some material is simply too fuckupable.

What I mean when I say a movie is not filmable I mean that there are aspects of the process of reading a novelthat would be lost. You lose a lot of the metaphor and depth that a writer is able to put into a 600+ page book.

It's very, very hard to do metaphors on film. Ron Howard succeeded to a certain extent in A Beautiful Mind, I would argue that it could be found in Memento and Schindler's List and The Thin Red Line, often in Deadwood and Lost, and of course in nearly every episode of The Sopranos. Apart from those titles, meh.

You lose the intimacy of being inside a character's mind and knowing their thoughts unless you resort to voice over.

And then you risk being in the same position as Kent in Real Genius, with the God-voice shouting in his head to, for the love of Me, please stop touching yourself.

Having a great director would help but first the book has to be turned into a screenplay and immediately some things get cut and thrown aside and bungled. Some books would need to be 4 hours minimum to not destroy that narrative. Other would have to be 10-12 hours.

Which is where pay cable comes in.

Take The Stand for instance.

Criminy. The irrefutable argument.

It was made into mini-series that was over 6 hours long. 6 hours 6 minutes running time and yet more than half of the book was missing. Characters were combined into one person and other people were removed entirely. That is part of the process of cutting a work down to a short enough piece to enable the limited attention spanned US audience to watch it in 90 minutes. Sure there are exceptions but not many.

But I still say The Stand could be done really, really well, and will be, some day.

I am a book geek before I am a movie geek so this is especially dear to me. Some books need to stay books.

[Sigh] See, what makes this argument so hard for me is how much I sympathize and am in agreement with you. But, for crying out loud, it can go the OTHER way, too. This may be sacrilege, but I'm not particularly a fan of Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sorry, I'm just not, and I've tried to be, really, really hard; I've read the damned thing half a dozen times, but to me it was Kubrick's adaptation that not only transcended the original novel, but in many ways JUSTIFIED it. The same goes for Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, or Robert Redford's Quiz Show: In each of these cases, the films absolutely improved upon the original books. Whereas, by comparison, Gettysburg, for all its casting and scale and pyrotechnics, was just a pale, adolescent mockery of Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels, even though it was by no means a bad film.

Some books don't need to stay books, it's just that you need to stay the Hell out of theaters and Blockbusters when their film adaptations are making the rounds, methinks.

The Mrs. and I went to a screening of Michael Chabon's "Mysteries of Pittsburgh" here in a town a few weeks ago (Movie has been done for over a year and still can't find a distributor). Whoever wrote the screenplay decided to combine two of the characters into one for god knows why, but it totally changed a good portion of the story not having both of those characters there.

I'm running into the same difficulty with the book I'm adapting. There are a good dozen primary characters, several major intertwining plots, and it's just not doable within the bounds of a two- (or,three-)hour film. I'm having to combine several indispensable and memorable personalities in order to make the thing work, not merely in terms of time but in an effort to keep the audience focused, and it's brutal, and it's fraught with the potential to screw up, and it's absolutely, incontrovertibly, inescapably ESSENTIAL. I am trying like Hell not to wrap both arms around maximum fuckupedness here, and it's keeping me up nights, and that's no exaggeration.

...[Books] and film are two entirely different artforms--they operate differently and convey information in vastly different ways... even the best film adaptations are going to (by definition) be a wholly separate experience from the book.. as you implied yourself, there are certain literary techniques that simply don't translate to a visual medium...

[But I] can't think of any movies based on books that render the book unnecessary by perfectly adapting every aspect of the source material...

I can. Primary Colors, which is by far the most faithful and disciplined adaptation of printed source material I've EVER seen. It's well done, perfectly casted, terrifically executed. It's also boring as shit. There are no surprises, no alterations, no inventions. I can look at every single scene, hear every single line, examine every single friggin' FRAME of that film, and tell you PRECISELY on which page it appears in the book. It's a shame, 'cos someone put in so much effort to create a cinematic experience absolutely interchangeable with the original work. But it just bores me to tears, and epitomizes the folly in wishing that movies were just books directly translated into moving pictures and sound.

...[E]ven if [W]atchmen is changed a bit in adaptation, could it not still be a great movie? [D]o we have to burn our comics when it's released?

Ah, there it is: The increasingly rare, well-phrased, inarguable, salient point.

[S]ure, it's sad when somebody butchers an adaptation of a beloved book--but i'd rather see people trying than simply dismissing a project as "unfilmable"...

Ditto.

Did you know that George A. Romero was going to adapt The Stand for theatres back in the 1980's with Stephen King co-writing but no studio would take it due to the length (the planned length was going to be one four hour film or two two hour films) and the projected budget (it was said to be budgeted as over $20 million)?

If made, you could have had the most criticially-acclaimed horror film of all-time. Bigger than The Exorcist or Jaws.

Hm, I can't remember if I had ever known that, or not. (But, then, at my age, in order to learn something new, you have to forget something you already know. Or knew, you know. Whatever.)

I'm not sure Romero's the guy I'd want adapting The Stand, actually. I love ol' George, he's something of an underappreciated genius in my opinion, but I think I'd want someone more along the lines of Robert Wise, or Nicholas Meyer, or, Steven Soderbergh, or, even, James Cameron. (Sometimes it seems to me I only ever want the same ten or twelve people making EVERY film. This is a problem.)

I can certainly think of ONE person I don't want getting anywhere NEAR The Stand, however: David Lynch. Not to mention, Quentin Tarantino. Sam Raimi would be acceptable, however.



(l.-r.) Mike Mills (Harold Lauder), Michael Stipe (Stuart Redman), and Peter Buck (Larry Underwood) star in McG's The "Stand", a VH1 miniseries event. Coming May 2012

I know this is going to be blasphemous, but I think removing the Black Freighter story is the first thing you need to do in adapting Watchmen. I do see the importance of that story paralleling the journey of one specific character in the main narrative. But I think you can get away with substituting that with an element you have in film that you don't have in book/comic: performance. Perhaps you can convey some of those ideas (and madness!) through an idiosyncratic performance.

Keyser, that chapter with Dr. Manahtten on Mars is my favourite. It's a perfect example of what sets this above many other graphic novels. It shows someone with a super power actually reacting to his condition emotionally- sure, he can see all of time, past and future, and has immense powers over matter, but what does it FEEL like to have these powers? Moore brilliantly portrayed Manhatten as trapped in his condition, his humanity craving for human contact, human relations, but he's now condemned to never having that. It's a brilliant chapter and I hope there's more of Manhatten's melancholy as opposed to a 5-minute slow-mo sequence of the glass tower rising from the sand.

Also, in the Watchmen trailers, the scene with the crowd and an explosion ocurring in an electronic store, you can see images of Nixon doing a press conference, so I assume Snyder is sticking with the same alternate universe period as the original did.

I really think 300 deserves its bashing. It's less of a movie, more of a video-game sequence. Even Sin City, with its reliance on style, managed to sculpt a world of violence and horror that managed to get under your skin- it achieved something. The most I can say about 300 is that it just about managed to pass 90 minutes. I've forgotten most of it, and I'm pretty sure I laughed at some of the unintentionally hilarious performances. I prefer Titanic and the Matrix (which I don't even like that much in the first place), because at least they have interesting characters. Hell, at least they have a character! As well as some sort of storyline.

Swedge, I think Ian Holm would be brilliant as a Number 2 in The Prisoner. I have a particular liking for British theatrical actors (Holm, McKellan, Richard Burton, a lot of Mike Leigh's acting buddies. Hmm, maybe not Brian Blessed). I think Morgan Freeman is far too much associated with being good these days to play a villain.

I presume you know that Chris Nolan is still interested in making a film of The Prisoner. I don't know how to feel about that. I like Nolan, I do, but since Memento none of his films have ever come together in the way I want them to. Most of his films have their characters explain themselves too much (even in TDK, which I like, I kinda wished Joker would stop harping on about how he's an agent of chaos and just BE that agent of chaos), they tell instead of show. Still, I can't deny that he's a good director. At least McG isn't going to direct (which was a rumour a few years back).

Which I suppose brings me back to the talk of adaptation. I have nothing against it in theory- I guess for me it's an issue of whether it should be adapted in the first place (eg a remake, or Hollywood's upcoming live-action remake of Akira, with first-time feature director Ruari Robinson helming it) or most importantly, if it's going to be remade, who is going to be involved. I was intrigued when I heard the Coens were adapting No Country for Old Men, and I think they did a fantastic job. I'm excited about Tommy Lee Jones's forthcoming adaption of my favourite Hemmingway novel, Islands in the Stream. Same goes for The Road, as I have total faith in John Hillcoat making a harsh, gritty adaptation. I completely agree with your criticism of Little Children, Swedge, and the same goes for Perfume. In fact I wonder should it become a law that film adaptation of novels should never have a narrator, unless there's a very specific or important reason.

Kubrick's 2001 wasn't really an adaptation in the usual sense. Kubrick was writing the script at the same time Clarke was writing the novel. They'd sit together and talk over ideas and theories, and then go off and work on writing for their own media, and kind of compare notes. It's a very strange idea, but Swedge, you're not the only one who thinks the movie works better than the book.

Swedgin! wrote:Fine. Some material is simply too fuckupable.

Eloquently put.


on the topic of 2001, I think the project was an early attempt at a cross-media concept. To truly appreciate either, you had to both watch the film and read the book. For that reason, I don't really "love" either. I think popular art should, for the most part, be self-contained.

Donnie Darko attempted something similar (although most people missed it). The digital content released just before the film hit theaters was required to understand the movie. Sure, you can make up your own theories and maybe even "figure it out" on your own--but the director's intention was for the audience to be equipped with knowledge found outside the film itself. People argue this point with me--saying that they "enjoyed" the movie without having ever viewed the online content (which included pages from the "Philosophy of Time-Travel," faux newspaper clippings from before, during, and after the events of the film, and more)--but, the fact of the matter is, those people simply missed out on critical portions of the story. My primary reason for disliking Donnie Darko is simply because, like 2001, it was a cross-media project. You can't appreciate the whole without absorbing all of the parts. And, personally, I don't think audiences should have to read supplemental material in order to understand a film. If you can't find room for it in your movie, don't fuckin' expect people to do research for your half-baked project. Just for the record, even with all the information handed to you (as seen in the director's cut), Donnie Darko still sucks.

Man NSpan, I have never seen anyone have the same opinion on Donnie Darko that I have, but you pretty much summed up my feelings exactly.

"Excellent Movies based on Excellent Books"

^-- coincidentally, this is one of IMDB's hotlinks today.. The Shining is a great example of a movie that strays (greatly) from the book but succeeds anyway

I know this is going to be blasphemous, but I think removing the Black Freighter story is the first thing you need to do in adapting Watchmen. I do see the importance of that story paralleling the journey of one specific character in the main narrative. But I think you can get away with substituting that with an element you have in film that you don't have in book/comic: performance. Perhaps you can convey some of those ideas (and madness!) through an idiosyncratic performance.

Well, if ever there was film ripe for idiosyncratic portrayals, it's this one: Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Blake / The Comedian), Billy Crudup (Osterman / Dr. Manhattan), Matthew Goode (Veidt / Ozymandias) and, especially, Jackie Earle Haley (Kovacs / Rorschach) ought to have their hands full, in the very best possible way I mean.

...[T]hat chapter with Dr. [Manhattan] on Mars is my favourite. It's a perfect example of what sets this above many other graphic novels. It shows someone with a super power actually reacting to his condition emotionally- sure, he can see all of time, past and future, and has immense powers over matter, but what does it FEEL like to have these powers? Moore brilliantly portrayed [Manhattan] as trapped in his condition, his humanity craving for human contact, human relations, but he's now condemned to never having that. It's a brilliant chapter and I hope there's more of [Manhattan]'s melancholy as opposed to a 5-minute slow-mo sequence of the glass tower rising from the sand.

I SO get what you're saying, here. In so many, many, many ways, EACH of the Watchmen, as well as their foes, suffer the same burden: Each of them is alone, even (especially?) those currently involved with others; damaged, incomplete, fractured souls, archtypes in many ways, who at the same time relate to a distant and emotionally unfulfilling world, and remain apart from that world, by the grace of their own particular gifts / madnesses: Blake insulates himself with his cynicism, Kovacs with his mask; Ozymandias seeks remedy by controlling as much of the world as possible, while Manhattan finds solace in the subtle patterns of subatomic being. [WARNING - SPOILER AHEAD!] It's no wonder that the two "healthiest" among them, Laurie and Dan,

Spoiler:

, even though Laurie's essentially a widow and Dan's lone company is a broken-down father surrogate. In attempting -- vainly, one might argue -- to protect a broken world, it's you that gets broken, while the heedless world goes on. This is what makes Watchmen the most complex and realistic psychological drama ever written, at least since Arthur Miller, Herman Melville and William Shakespeare expired, and it's perceptions like this that make me such an unabashed fan of what the Nolans are doing with the new Batman franchise. Manhattan shows us what it must be like to be a lonely God: Powerful, yes, but unfulfilled; all-knowing, yes, but heartbroken beyond repair or comfort; important, sure, but outcast. Saviour. Leper. Messiah. Pariah. Creator. Destroyer.

Of course, it's not like I'm saying anything new, or particularly perceptive for that matter, to YOU, Six. You've got about as complete a grasp of the literary masterpiece as anyone, and it's fun to pick your brain. All I'm trying to say is: I feel ya.

...I assume Snyder is sticking with the same alternate universe period as the original did.

As completely as he could manage it, yes, I think that's right. But I, for one, need to be careful not to be too impressed with the trees, to look for the forest.

I really think 300 deserves its bashing. It's less of a movie, more of a video-game sequence. Even Sin City, with its reliance on style, managed to sculpt a world of violence and horror that managed to get under your skin- it achieved something. The most I can say about 300 is that it just about managed to pass 90 minutes.

I get what you're saying about Sin City, and I too could have wished more for 300, but I'm trying to remember that Snyder's still finding his voice, still very much an up-and-comer, and we can't expect perfection in every outing. Even Kubrick, Spielberg and Hitchcock had their missteps. But Snyder's a talent, no question, and when he reaches the zenith of his ability, I think it will really be something to see. (However, even I doubt that Watchmen will be his crowning achievement.)

I have a particular liking for British theatrical actors... I think Morgan Freeman is far too much associated with being good these days to play a villain.

Me, too, but I think it's Freeman's reputation that would make him so subversively nasty as Two.

I presume you know that Chris Nolan is still interested in making a film of The Prisoner. I don't know how to feel about that.

It'll never happen now that another television production is going forward, the legal issues will be too complex and unresolvable. But, Hell, If I had my druthers, I'd have the Wachowskis script, and the Coens direct.

Most of [Nolan's] films have their characters explain themselves too much (even in TDK, which I like, I kinda wished Joker would stop harping on about how he's an agent of chaos and just BE that agent of chaos), they tell instead of show.

Yah, there's that one clip when Joker's hanging upside-down and just won't shut up, and I swear to God, Bale sags against a beam, and even with the mask on it's like, Please, for the love of Christ, shut the fuck up, or I WILL drop your yammering ass off this building, code or no code. ...And I can't tell if it's Bale, or Batman, thinking it, which I LOVE. The first time I saw Knight, I actually half-mumbled, "Enough with the monologuing," and one of the guys I was with laughed his ass off and got shushed. (Then, of course, I laughed MY ass off.)

I was intrigued when I heard the Coens were adapting No Country for Old Men, and I think they did a fantastic job.

Agreed, and they, too (harkening back to an earlier conversation), were pretty damned faithful to the original work.

I'm excited about Tommy Lee Jones's forthcoming adaption of my favourite [Hemingway] novel, Islands in the Stream.

I'm not sure about that one. Jones has the personality, the experience, the world-worn grit, to appreciate Hemingway... I'm just not sure he has the chops as a director.

Same goes for The Road, as I have total faith in John Hillcoat making a harsh, gritty adaptation.

Now, THERE's a film I wish Kubrick had survived to make. Terrence Malick would be my second choice, Alfonso Cuarón (though perhaps it's too close to Children of Men, thematically) third, followed by Darren Aronofsky and Danny Boyle.

I completely agree with your criticism of Little Children...the same goes for Perfume. In fact I wonder should it become a law that film adaptation of novels should never have a narrator, unless there's a very specific or important reason.

Ditto. It's just too convenient a tool for the director, and far too big a crutch to hand the audience. All throughout Little Children, I kept thinking to myself, (Self:) Can't he just let me figure that out? Does he really think I need their loneliness, their self-loathing, their desperation, friggin' EXPLAINED TO ME? Isn't it obvious from the performances, from the melancholy framing, the pregnant pauses in conversation? ...And, really, I figured that, even more than laziness, what that revealed in this particular film was director Todd Field's total lack of comprehension for and confidence in what he'd actually wrought, like an artist who paints a magnificent portrait, then dashes more oil on the canvas, too dense to understand when he ought to just STOP. It's a fine film, one of my favorites, lovely and longing and understated and frantic, apart from the scenes with the husband and the porn, which were played FAR too much for laughs in my opinion. But the narration damned near killed it for me, and made a potentially great film into merely a very, very GOOD one.

Kubrick's 2001 wasn't really an adaptation in the usual sense. Kubrick was writing the script at the same time Clarke was writing the novel. They'd sit together and talk over ideas and theories, and then go off and work on writing for their own media, and kind of compare notes. It's a very strange idea...

Strange but in a lot of ways, revolutionary. I've often thought, recently, as videogame system / PC titles are more and more being developed (in theory, at least, though in practice I've yet to be impressed) IN TANDEM with major film titles, that some films ought to be a pure collaboration between the original work's author, and the screenwriters, and vice versa. A title you mentioned, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (which I thought was actually not too bad, very very ambitious, but the only role I've actually appreciated Dustin Hoffman in the last decade-and-a-half or so was as Shifu in Kung Fu Panda) would certainly have benefited from such a process... So, not to put too fine a point on it, would the last installment in the Indiana Jones series, not to mention the Star Wars prequels, since just about any hack Lucas might have contracted to pen the novelizations would have been a vast improvement on his own laughable screenwriting efforts...

The very BEST novelization I have ever read, btw -- meaning, the book is derived from the film / screenplay -- was for The Abyss, by Ender's Game author Orson Scott Card. It's out of print, now, but if you can get your hands on it, I HIGHLY recommend it... It greatly expands the universe conceived by James Cameron, and especially its characters, in ways the film doesn't, and makes for an incredibly entertaining read even if you're not a fan of the film, or have never actually sat down and watched it (which should be considered an outright crime of omission imho, excepting of course its final thirty seconds or so).

...Swedge, you're not the only one who thinks the movie works better than the book.

Glad to hear it. [Grin]


Sponsored by the Society for the Protection of Great Literature Lest It Be Ruined By the Film

I agree with you, NSpan, in that I think a film should be self-contained. Relying on other material may be interesting, but it just makes for a dissatisfied experience for both media. I think you can definitely say that about Southland Tales, a huge misfire that incorporates prequel comics.

But I disagree that either 2001 or Donnie Darko require external material. I don't think you need the whole time-travel book thing to get what Donnie Darko is about, or most importantly, its core story (a tale that goes through the journey of breaking free of solipsism and being content with your humanity). I haven't read 2001 so I can't comment, but since I consider it to be one of my favourite films of all time, I don't feel that there's anything "missing", I feel that I get all of it and I'm blown away by its powerful tales and statements every time I see it.

numbersix_99 wrote:But I disagree that either 2001 or Donnie Darko require external material. I don't think you need the whole time-travel book thing to get what Donnie Darko is about, or most importantly, its core story (a tale that goes through the journey of breaking free of solipsism and being content with your humanity). I haven't read 2001 so I can't comment, but since I consider it to be one of my favourite films of all time, I don't feel that there's anything "missing", I feel that I get all of it and I'm blown away by its powerful tales and statements every time I see it.

Well, you're either delusional or an utter genius. not sure which.

Well that has been my feelings about Number 6 for some time now

In answer to the miles of pages and posts quoting and answering me and Kaiser and Swedge and 6 and Busci and others, here are my replies in no particular order.

Yes, no, you are full of shit, yes, no way, you've got a point, damn that is retarded, nicely done, no that's wrong, I would never think that, that is not what I meant, and Yes sir.

LOL

In answer to the miles of pages and posts quoting and answering me and Kaiser and Swedge and 6 and Busci and others, here are my replies in no particular order. ...Yes, no, you are full of shit, yes, no way, you've got a point, damn that is retarded, nicely done, no that's wrong, I would never think that, that is not what I meant, and Yes sir.

ROTFLMAO! Oh, man, that's rich. (...Personally, I think it's the, "in no particular order" that makes it art.)

Hey, you know, all we need to do is program those phrases into a computer, assign each a numeric value, set up a random number generator, and many of us won't have ANY reason to come in here any more. Matter of fact, just add "What?", "I don't understand" and "Where's the tea?", and we can tell Shrykey to take a few months off, too. [Grin]


What? I don't understand

Well I did have a bunch of comments but after 2 pages I lost track and I am way too lazy to cut and paste for 15 minutes on everything I wanted to say and quote and, blah, I decided to not reply coherently.

I figured that post about covered it.