confession #1: my Watchmen movie idea
If I made a Watchmen movie, I would make it in as deliberately unfaithful a fashion as possible. My present idea is to take every theme & premise of the book & in some fashion "turn it upside down."
Not because I think Watchmen is some kind of masterpiece that should really be read in its original form rather than having spoiled it with a movie. (Though I like the James Bond theory of adaptation, actually, & Watchmen is on some level about form.)
Not just because I think Alan Moore is an ass. (Though he has had his moments.)
Not simply because Watchmen is a burlesque of superheroes, which more or less requires a familiarity with the genre to really understand, & it should never be someone's introduction to the genre. (Though that's a big part of it. This also applies to the place of Dark Knight Returns as a Batman comic.)
No, the reason I would make a Watchmen movie which deliberately turned every major theme of the book upside-down is this:
Alan Moore made a career out of taking others' concepts & reprocessing them in subversive ways. He scripted Dez Skinn's Marvelman "revival"; he rethought Swamp Thing (rather cleverly, I think); he used (& reconceived with new personalities) a bunch of old proto-pulp heroes for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; even Watchmen started as a pitch for a very revisionist take on Captain Atom. Watchmen has somehow (maybe due to the all the tights, & the obsessions of comics industry/subculture in the USA) become, for some people, the legendary & archetypal "Alan Moore deconstruction."
I think it's only fair to reconstruct his work as he has done to others. I was very amused by all the whinging about the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie "getting the characters wrong," since they weren't Moore's characters to begin with, & he reinvented them himself (like turning Mr Hyde into the Hulk). Well, this would go further. Take his characters & themes, & scramble them up. What goes around comes around.
So, among other things:
Rohrschach would be a giant of a man, possibly also supernatural. Alternatively, I'd just write him as Mister A.
Silk Spectre would have superhuman powers, as would most of the Minutemen.
Ozymandias might have a larger onscreen role, & get to be the self-sacrificing good guy at the end.
And I'd write the present-day supertypes as a government-sponsored team called "the Watchmen."
This would amuse me greatly.
Not because I think Watchmen is some kind of masterpiece that should really be read in its original form rather than having spoiled it with a movie. (Though I like the James Bond theory of adaptation, actually, & Watchmen is on some level about form.)
Not just because I think Alan Moore is an ass. (Though he has had his moments.)
Not simply because Watchmen is a burlesque of superheroes, which more or less requires a familiarity with the genre to really understand, & it should never be someone's introduction to the genre. (Though that's a big part of it. This also applies to the place of Dark Knight Returns as a Batman comic.)
No, the reason I would make a Watchmen movie which deliberately turned every major theme of the book upside-down is this:
Alan Moore made a career out of taking others' concepts & reprocessing them in subversive ways. He scripted Dez Skinn's Marvelman "revival"; he rethought Swamp Thing (rather cleverly, I think); he used (& reconceived with new personalities) a bunch of old proto-pulp heroes for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; even Watchmen started as a pitch for a very revisionist take on Captain Atom. Watchmen has somehow (maybe due to the all the tights, & the obsessions of comics industry/subculture in the USA) become, for some people, the legendary & archetypal "Alan Moore deconstruction."
I think it's only fair to reconstruct his work as he has done to others. I was very amused by all the whinging about the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie "getting the characters wrong," since they weren't Moore's characters to begin with, & he reinvented them himself (like turning Mr Hyde into the Hulk). Well, this would go further. Take his characters & themes, & scramble them up. What goes around comes around.
So, among other things:
Rohrschach would be a giant of a man, possibly also supernatural. Alternatively, I'd just write him as Mister A.
Silk Spectre would have superhuman powers, as would most of the Minutemen.
Ozymandias might have a larger onscreen role, & get to be the self-sacrificing good guy at the end.
And I'd write the present-day supertypes as a government-sponsored team called "the Watchmen."
This would amuse me greatly.