I was among those who were made ecstatic by the announcement that Alan Moore’s classic “Watchmen” was coming to the silver screen. It is the “most celebrated novel of all time” and the only graphic novel to win the Hugo award.
I will admit that although I liked the book, I did not finish it by the time I heard the news about the movie. It was about three years ago at Christmas that my mom, who is a comic book fanatic, bought me Moore’s “Watchman” because I was such a fan of the movie “‘V’ for Vendetta,” the book also being written by Alan Moore. I didn’t think much of it, and so I let it sink to the back of my bookshelf for a year or two. I picked it up again upon the recommendation of a few friends who read it and were blown away. I was only halfway through when the movie was announced, and by the time I reached the end of the book one thing was clear: Zach Snyder is going to have one heck of a time making it a movie.
I didn’t consider it “un-filmable” as so many critics did, but I did realize that the task needed to be handled delicately. And if making the movie was not hard enough, Snyder had thousands of geeky fans waiting with both excitement and fear. Excitement that this was finally happening, and fear that it would be butchered. With all of this hype, plus the difficulty it would take to bring the book to the screen, the movie makers had a big job. In the end, the movie didn’t quite reach the level that people were wanting.
Obviously, books and movies are different media, and one great mistake the movie made is that they took the story from the book and plopped it right down into the movie. This worked at some points of the movie, like the origin scene of Dr. Manhattan, but often the things that worked well in print didn’t do so well on film. Books gives the oppertunity to ruminate on what is going on, and so a lot more information can be given in books. In the film, there is a lot going on and it would be hard to keep it all strait if you have not read the book.
Another major problem was that the parts that they chose to change really subtracted from the overall quality of the movie. The book portrays a world without hope that is wallowing in misery and on the brink of destruction, but it is all more subtle. I should mention that even though it is more subtle, every reader knows what is going on; the world is miserable and there is a nuclear war coming. The movie, however, didn’t present this reality through vague hints and small but noticeable indicators, but rather it was an ever-present reality that peppered every dialogue and discussion. In my opinion this was a bad move to make, because it was a huge distraction from the main story. They changed the ending as well, but that wasn’t a bad move.
The movie makers had a big job to be sure, and an immense amount of pressure from the fans. Despite the fact that the movie could have been made a lot better, I would not consider it a dismal failure either. Zach Snyder, the director of Watchmen, took a great book, and made an O.K. movie out of it.
This is pretty much exactly how i feel! to a T