People are worried that the Watchmen movie won't be as good as they hope because the guy who made 300 is making it. My fear is that the movie will expose the fact that Moore's Watchmen wasn't all that great to begin with. Like most comics, it's all about the concept and the atmospherics, the characters and their wacky back-stories and attitudes, but let's face it the actual plot is pretty thin gruel. The Comedian gets thrown out a window and it takes us 12 issues to discover, what exactly? Ozymandius is going to save the world by dropping a squid on Manhattan. Awesome.
The coolness is not in the story, but in the details and the encyclopedic attempt to cram everything in. Just as in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, all the things that make it good are all the things that are almost impossible to get on a movie screen.
300 suffered from the same problem because it's overdoneness was built in. Frank Miller's whole concept was ass-backwards from the get-go and the whole thing only really existed because Miller was going through his whole kinetic all action no story phase.
"Ok, dudes, check this out. Normally what you do is take a myth or a legend like King Arthur, or Robin Hood, or Ulysses, and try to find its historical context and dramatize it as if it really happened. But what I'm going to do is take an actual historical event and present it as though it was a myth or legend. Crazy right?"
He sandelpunked Herodotus and turned it up to 11.
To be fair, this isn't what Moore did with Watchmen, and I think the movie version will be just fine. The question is will the audience for The Dark Knight be up for another round of Batman as filtered through Taxi Driver.
The coolness is not in the story, but in the details and the encyclopedic attempt to cram everything in. Just as in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, all the things that make it good are all the things that are almost impossible to get on a movie screen.
300 suffered from the same problem because it's overdoneness was built in. Frank Miller's whole concept was ass-backwards from the get-go and the whole thing only really existed because Miller was going through his whole kinetic all action no story phase.
"Ok, dudes, check this out. Normally what you do is take a myth or a legend like King Arthur, or Robin Hood, or Ulysses, and try to find its historical context and dramatize it as if it really happened. But what I'm going to do is take an actual historical event and present it as though it was a myth or legend. Crazy right?"
He sandelpunked Herodotus and turned it up to 11.
To be fair, this isn't what Moore did with Watchmen, and I think the movie version will be just fine. The question is will the audience for The Dark Knight be up for another round of Batman as filtered through Taxi Driver.
