In what sense do you feel it was unfaithful to the book? I've been hearing a lot of commentary arguing that it was slavishly faithful to the letter of the book but not its spirit, which is what I sometimes felt. All the changes Zack Snyder made (especially the ending), IMHO, were to make the story more compact and logical, but to a certain extent Alan Moore stories are resistant to logic.
It isn't faithful. They changed it. If they changed it, even to make it better, it is not faithful. Trust me, I was able to talk along with most of the dialogue but it felt sort of wrong to change so much about the story and call it faithful. It makes more sense but again, doesn't make it faithful. You could say it is faithful to the characters and the themes, but even then, there are some points I feel they missed. It would take me a while to go through and pick all of them out.
It also feels a lot cleaner than I felt the book was. Too polished maybe. Too shiny. And I am still uneasy about liking films that Alan Moore wrote because he isn't happy with them and that makes me sort of sad. I feel like he sort of got his work taken away from him.
It isn't a BAD film. As I said, I am still not sure if I like it. I am not being a snob about it. It isn't my favorite comic book of all time and I WANT to but I just can't to say for sure.
Fair enough. I agree that it is a lot more polished; in some cases that bothered me, but on balance I enjoyed it.
We also have to ask ourselves to what extent comic books, or media arising out of them, can and should be faithful to the visions of their original authors. It's a genre that benefits from constant reinterpretation and reinvention of someone else's work. If writers hadn't been allowed to stray from, say, William Moulton Marston's original vision for Wonder Woman, the character would be irrelevant and laden with weird bondage subtext. Swamp Thing would have stagnated if Alan Moore hadn't essentially rewritten the character's origins and taken it in a new direction. So I have difficulty feeling bad for Alan Moore because I don't think he should be exempt from that process just because he's a genius. Also, a) he doesn't really like Hollywood on principle, so it's his decision not to participate in the adaptations, and b) he's making a killing off fresh sales of the book because of the movie, so clearly he'll say the book is
Speaking as one who has never read the book (but now really, really, really wants to) the sense I got watching the film was they were trying hard to reach some pinnacle of moral tidiness, especially at the end.
But the problem is real life isn't that tidy, nor even the storyline. In a quest for greater morality (on the scale of humankind) a lot of the characters were reduced to forgetting about the quibbles we should have about smaller but still important matters -- faithfulness, avoiding violence.
You can argue it was for "the greater good" but you can't forget the "first do no harm" principle, which a lot of the characters were forgetting about.
So I felt the movie kept coming close to some sort of ultimate mythos about the state of humanity, but as we do as a species it ultimately fell short. But I enjoyed it for trying anyway
( ... )
As to Watchmen, frankly, it's probably better that they did change the ending as it could hardly be worse. The original comic was terrible by the end, and managed to make even less cohesive sense than the average Eastman and Laird Ninja Turtles comic. That the comic is so popular boggles my mind.
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It also feels a lot cleaner than I felt the book was. Too polished maybe. Too shiny. And I am still uneasy about liking films that Alan Moore wrote because he isn't happy with them and that makes me sort of sad. I feel like he sort of got his work taken away from him.
It isn't a BAD film. As I said, I am still not sure if I like it. I am not being a snob about it. It isn't my favorite comic book of all time and I WANT to but I just can't to say for sure.
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We also have to ask ourselves to what extent comic books, or media arising out of them, can and should be faithful to the visions of their original authors. It's a genre that benefits from constant reinterpretation and reinvention of someone else's work. If writers hadn't been allowed to stray from, say, William Moulton Marston's original vision for Wonder Woman, the character would be irrelevant and laden with weird bondage subtext. Swamp Thing would have stagnated if Alan Moore hadn't essentially rewritten the character's origins and taken it in a new direction. So I have difficulty feeling bad for Alan Moore because I don't think he should be exempt from that process just because he's a genius. Also, a) he doesn't really like Hollywood on principle, so it's his decision not to participate in the adaptations, and b) he's making a killing off fresh sales of the book because of the movie, so clearly he'll say the book is
Reply
But the problem is real life isn't that tidy, nor even the storyline. In a quest for greater morality (on the scale of humankind) a lot of the characters were reduced to forgetting about the quibbles we should have about smaller but still important matters -- faithfulness, avoiding violence.
You can argue it was for "the greater good" but you can't forget the "first do no harm" principle, which a lot of the characters were forgetting about.
So I felt the movie kept coming close to some sort of ultimate mythos about the state of humanity, but as we do as a species it ultimately fell short. But I enjoyed it for trying anyway ( ... )
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As to Watchmen, frankly, it's probably better that they did change the ending as it could hardly be worse. The original comic was terrible by the end, and managed to make even less cohesive sense than the average Eastman and Laird Ninja Turtles comic. That the comic is so popular boggles my mind.
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