Okay, so i thought I'd start with one of my favorite adaptations, "Watchmen". Now I think this is a pretty good adaptation, a lot of it is as if it's straight from the graphic novel (Here's a nice little video Illustrating my point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ONqFE1x23w ) But It still remains new and interesting to those familiar with the graphic novel. I mean the only bad points I can see is that A) It seemed to be advertised as an action movie (One of the trailers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4blSrZvPhU ) when the majority of the plot is about morality est, and B), one or two parts were left out and the ending was changed, however you're always gonna need to shorten the story when adapting it to a movie, when interviewed by About.com ( http://movies.about.com/od/watchmen/a/watchmen072807.htm ) Director Zack Snyder said:
People have labeled Watchmen as unfilmable. How hard is it to make Alan Moore's story into a feature film?
“The truth is the graphic novel as a verbatim shot-for-shot version, is that filmable? Of course it’s filmable. It’s a six and a half hour movie. You can do that. Is there anyone who will pay the $200,000,000 to do that? Probably not. My job is to try and distill the movie down. Like I say, we’re not inventing anything. We’re just trying to get the movie [to a decent length]. The script’s still 140 pages long. It’s not like a flimsy little document. It’s not a brochure - it’s fricking phonebook.”
And to be honest although the ending is different in one aspect, It doesn't really make any difference, the main point and key events of the films final scenes are still the same, the point of the film is still intact.
I feel this is a film that could certainly make into our Top 10 movie adaptations.
Watchmen decided the route of all superhero movies to come after. It was meant to follow the example set by Christopher Nolan with The Dark Knight in that it would make comic character feel real, flawed and troubled with a much more human feel to it all while still embracing the fun pace of graphic novels. Sadly it did none of this.
ReplyDeleteZack Snyder merely created a flashy, adult themed Power Rangers episode that followed the original book more as a guideline than creating a honorable adaptation. The characters each had a dimension subtracted from them, the fight scenes were choreographed to hell and the acting felt campy and forced. While the casting was excellent and matched the comic characters perfectly, that's as accurate as this adaptation did. The brooding troubled hero of Rorscharch has been transformed from a troubled schizophrenic with a strong justice anti-liberal sentiments to a grumbly ninja inn overcoat who's just there to say cool things.
I could go on, but I think I can sum up this up perfectly with the words of Alan Moore himself:
“I find film in its modern form to be quite bullying. It spoon-feeds us, which has the effect of watering down our collective cultural imagination. It is as if we are freshly hatched birds looking up with our mouths open waiting for Hollywood to feed us more regurgitated worms. The ‘Watchmen’ film sounds like more regurgitated worms. I for one am sick of worms. Can’t we get something else? Perhaps some takeout? Even Chinese worms would be a nice change.”