I'll probably never see the movie either. It might be good, it might be great, it might be even better than the comic... But I'm so used to Watchmen as a comic that it's hard for me to ever relent towards a movie.
Fight. Struggle. Endure. Suffer. LIVE.
The movie was pretty faithful- and the point of adaptation was probably to make money. I agree about the story. Lots of movies begin with the chronological end and they build up to it. Spoilers tend not to ruin a reading experience for me. I agree that reading Watchman was a great ride from beginning to end. If people dare say that comic books aren't an intelligent medium, I have this comic to point to.
We're everything brighter than even the sun
The movie was pretty faithful- and the point of adaptation was probably to make money. I agree about the story. Lots of movies begin with the chronological end and they build up to it. Spoilers tend not to ruin a reading experience for me. I agree that reading Watchman was a great ride from beginning to end. If people dare say that comic books aren't an intelligent medium, I have this comic to point to.
We're everything brighter than even the sun
"why adapt something that's already so perfect?"
Because comic books are not popular. There, I said it, in the general populace, comic books and those that read them are lame and nerdy. Even if the movie convinced .1% of it's viewing audience to pick up the book (which the movie did, it convinced a lot of people to read the book), isn't that a good thing?
Plus movies are different then books, Rorschach's growl, Nite Owl's awkwardness, the movie isn't perfect, but it fleshes out the world and makes it all seem a little bit more...real. Plus I was never a big fan of the artwork of the comic, so I didn't mind the change in medium.
"Whoa" Keanu Reeves
Why on Earth would you read the book if you saw the movie? Most people use the movie adaptation of a book or comic as a means to avoid reading the source material. That, or they avoid the adaptation because they haven't read the source. In both cases, the book doesn't get read.
And, no, I don't think that's a good thing anyway, because it turned Watchmen into a whole expansive fandom thing. I might as well be a fan of Bleach at this point. This very wiki's articles on the comic and movie are full of justifying edits and arguments because it's become a pop culture phenomenon.
And let's not pretend that the movie has even half as much critical acclaim as the comic. No less a publication than The New Yorker trashed this flick to Hell and back. The general populace's reaction was "it was okay" or "wtf mate".
And, yes, movies are different than books. That's part of the problem - Moore specifically crafted the story to fit perfectly within the medium of comic books. He wrote it intentionally so it would not work in any other media.
Wrestler, bodybuilder. No hopes, no dreams.
Watchmen was a phenomena in the geek world long before the movie. A lot of the justifying edits are based on the original comic.
I don't want to see the movie simply because I know I won't like it. The comic is a masterpiece (And no, "it's not popular" does not reduce its quality in any way), so any movie version is going to face far too much stigma from me.
Also, reviews aren't the gospel.
Fight. Struggle. Endure. Suffer. LIVE.
It was a geek phenomenon, but the people who read it were people who were interested in it, not people who were curious about a movie that was coming out. It isn't quite the same. Point taken, though.
And, yes, popularity has literally nothing to do with the quality of a given work. That doesn't address the issue at all.
Honestly, one of my biggest problems with the simple concept of a Watchmen movie is the fact that the original story took an entire year and roughly 300 pages to tell, so a lot (and I mean a lot) of material had to be sacrificed to keep the movie from being four hours long. Admittedly, this can work well - Akira adapted a manga of extremely generous proportions into a compact timeframe and managed to redefine a medium/format itself. But there's not a superfluous or insignificant moment in Watchmen - you can't cut anywhere without hitting an artery.
Wrestler, bodybuilder. No hopes, no dreams.
You seem to miss the point of my comic. Comic books don't sell, like the movie or not, it did make money. And if the movie didn't convince anybody to read the book, why did I find Watchmen for sale everywhere after the movie came out?
And the Akira movie...was a faction as good as the manga. The Watchmen adaptation was much, much better than the Akira one.
"Whoa" Keanu Reeves
Comics have a niche audience, but Watchmen had been selling strongly and regularly ever since it originally came out.
And it's not that I don't understand that the movie made money. But you're using that as the sole justification for its existence. You're admitting that the only reason the movie exists is for monetary gain, not any artistic ambition. And even if we were talking about a completely different movie and that were the case, I'd still be against it.
It's almost impossible to decipher what of Hollywood's output is genuine, of course, so this really applies equally to many big name features of the modern era. Every time a heart-wrenching drama comes out, I get the nagging feeling in the back of my head that nobody truly wanted this story told so much as they wanted awards and acclaim and affluence.
Wrestler, bodybuilder. No hopes, no dreams.Leave a Comment:
Why I think the concept of "spoilers" is bull
When I was, like, 11, my uncle gave me a bunch of Who's Who comics. Who's Who was the encyclopedia of the DC comics universe/s produced in the mid 1980s to coincide with the continuity-spanning Crisis On Infinite Earths. One issue, the last issue of Who's Who Update 1987, discussed Watchmen. In just two pages, I learned all about the story and the characters - about the story and how it plays out.
When I was 15, I read an online annotation of the series, absorbing every last tidbit of information to be found, both textual and apocryphal.
When I was 17, I got the series itself from that same uncle who gave me Who's Who. I already knew the plot, I already knew the characters, I already knew every last thing there was to know about Watchmen.
I was still blown away. I read the entire series (in single issues, mind you) in one sitting, completely immersed in the story. After I was finished, I read it again. And again.
Keep in mind, I enjoyed comics quite a bit before. But it was here that I fell in love. Watchmen made me believe in the beauty of an entire medium - even though I knew everything that was going to happen. That's when I came to the conclusion that spoilers are ridiculous; if it's a good story, it's still effective even if you know what happens. If it's actually cheapened by knowing beforehand, it wasn't good to begin with. One thing that bothered me when the release of the movie drew close was that people were suddenly sensitive to spoilers concerning it - as though the movie's story hadn't been available as a comic book for 25 years.
I didn't see the movie, and frankly I never plan to. This isn't out of some misguided fan outrage, of course - what's the point in adapting something that the author himself claims was specifically crafter for the comic book medium? And that besides, why adapt something that's already so perfect?