In keeping with my tradition of blindly following other bloggers, I got the trailer for the upcoming movie version of The Watchmen. Take a look if you haven't already:
Watched it?
Good.
The trailer made me think, of reasons why I'd be excited about the Watchmen movie, and reasons why I'd be worried.
REASONS TO BE EXCITED:
1. I was a big fan of the original graphic novel. It was the first "trade paperback" comic I ever bought.
2. The director showed some talent for adapting "graphic novel" material with the smash hit 300, and seems expert in recreating the graphic novel experience.
3. The cast looks good and appropriate to their roles. Zack Snyders has good luck casting "non-stars" for his movies.
4. The director shows a certain knowledge, not only of comics, but of comic book movies. This is obvious not only in the recreations of images from the book, but even in the choice of music for the trailer. A slowed down, more ominous sounding version of a Smashing Pumpkins song first used in the campy travesty of Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin. It strikes me that he's making a statement about how this movie will be different from the others.
REASONS TO BE WORRIED:
1. We're a long way from 1985, and the Watchmen was very much a book about its time, and for its time. There is literally a generation of movie-goers who will not have a clue about the Cold War tensions that lay behind the original story. They may just sit there and wonder why the filmmakers made up a country called the Soviet Union.
2. As big a fan I was of the book, I thought the "Richard Nixon President for Life" conceit was pretty damn lame. Even if Nixon had won the Vietnam War, with the help of Dr. Manhattan Congress would not have rewritten the constitution to allow him to run for election in perpetuity. The Democrats would have filibustered it, and Nixon had too many enemies within the Republican Party to support him on it (ironically because of many of his socialistic policies). I worry that it will come off even lamer on screen.
3. That uneasy feeling that something that revolutionized one medium, will just fizzle out in another medium, despite the talents or intentions of the people involved.
What do you think?
Watched it?
Good.
The trailer made me think, of reasons why I'd be excited about the Watchmen movie, and reasons why I'd be worried.
REASONS TO BE EXCITED:
1. I was a big fan of the original graphic novel. It was the first "trade paperback" comic I ever bought.
2. The director showed some talent for adapting "graphic novel" material with the smash hit 300, and seems expert in recreating the graphic novel experience.
3. The cast looks good and appropriate to their roles. Zack Snyders has good luck casting "non-stars" for his movies.
4. The director shows a certain knowledge, not only of comics, but of comic book movies. This is obvious not only in the recreations of images from the book, but even in the choice of music for the trailer. A slowed down, more ominous sounding version of a Smashing Pumpkins song first used in the campy travesty of Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin. It strikes me that he's making a statement about how this movie will be different from the others.
REASONS TO BE WORRIED:
1. We're a long way from 1985, and the Watchmen was very much a book about its time, and for its time. There is literally a generation of movie-goers who will not have a clue about the Cold War tensions that lay behind the original story. They may just sit there and wonder why the filmmakers made up a country called the Soviet Union.
2. As big a fan I was of the book, I thought the "Richard Nixon President for Life" conceit was pretty damn lame. Even if Nixon had won the Vietnam War, with the help of Dr. Manhattan Congress would not have rewritten the constitution to allow him to run for election in perpetuity. The Democrats would have filibustered it, and Nixon had too many enemies within the Republican Party to support him on it (ironically because of many of his socialistic policies). I worry that it will come off even lamer on screen.
3. That uneasy feeling that something that revolutionized one medium, will just fizzle out in another medium, despite the talents or intentions of the people involved.
What do you think?
We're a long way from 1985, and the Watchmen was very much a book about its time, and for its time.
ReplyDeleteI just recently read it for the first time and thought the same. I grew up right as the cold war ended (I remember watching the Berlin wall fall and wondering what was the big deal) so a lot of the story fell flat for me.
As big a fan I was of the book, I thought the "Richard Nixon President for Life" conceit was pretty damn lame.
Amen to that. I was looking up some information on this book and saw that it was supposedly a "real possibility". Which just strikes me as the height of idiocy. Alan Moore seems to me someone who is just a little too paranoid and I think his works suffer for it.
I think the whether or not the audience connects with the Cold War angle is a crapshoot. I was born in '84, and I don't have any first-hand memories of the Cold War, but I've heard enough about the era that I had no problem following the story.
ReplyDeleteReally, I was more worried that the filmmakers would try to update the setting, so I'm very happy that they aren't doing that.