"Just How Dark Will 'Watchmen' Be?"

[sigma7]

Great article from "Rope of Silicon" (of which I've never heard) on just how faithful -- at the risk of Hollywood accessibility [read: lowest common denominator] -- the Watchmen adaptation will be. Some low-yield spoilers (actually, if you haven't read the book, this is a good place to get an idea of the texture of the piece -- it's all backstory that gets revealed), but a very encouraging quote from Jeffrey Dean Morgan:

"The arcs The Comedian goes through are substantial to where his very being is questioned and he questions himself," he said. "At first glance you think you are playing this bastard, just a mean son-of-a-bitch but the more I looked at the layers to this guy… How do you read a book about a guy that does the things he does and yet you sympathize with him? How the hell does that happen? I found that fascinating."

Just in terms of simple acting, I'm intrigued, already finding myself drawn back into a narrative which left me devastated when I read in oh-so-many years ago....

Comments

[rainfletcher.livejournal.com]

I have a confession to make.

I read Watchmen for the first time... two weeks ago.

The fact is, the more people tell me that I must read/see/experience something, the more likely I am to shy away from it. Call me bull-headed, call me a nonconformist, or just call me naturally wary of people with That Look Of Intensity in their eyes when they tell me about something.

Seriously, after about the twelfth person to tell me "You haven't read it?! You call yourself a comic book fan?! What kind of philistine are you?! HOW CAN YOU HAVE LIVED THIS LONG WITHOUT READING WATCHMEN?!" -- I decided I'd never read it, just to piss them off.

But your commentary about the forthcoming movie, and the obvious excitement about it, made me reconsider.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

I have to ask -- what'd you think?

When I read it, it blew my mind, because it was unlike anything I'd ever read before. It was my still-formative brain being exposed to Alan Moore for the first time and the madman left a mark. (And my exposure to Watchmen only came courtesy of their entry in Who's Who, oddly enough.) I worry that, by contemporary standards, it seems old hat, rote, familiar enough -- I see it like Citizen Kane in many respects, in that it used the page, used the medium in ways that had never been done before, but which have since become cliche. And it fit so perfectly in the time that I wonder about its ability to translate into such a different world....

[rainfletcher.livejournal.com]

There was a point early on when I honestly thought he was just trying too hard, a feeling I also had about the tail end of Gaiman's Sandman (an opinion considered blasphemous by many, but hey, it's how it felt to me). There was so much (seemingly needless) grotesque imagery in his words, and it seemed like he was just going out of his way to be Shocking.

Then I realized that this was pretty much just Rorschach, and that the hideous was largely just inside his head. I felt better after that.

It kind of took a while to come together. There just seemed to be so many vastly disparate storylines, and I felt pulled in too many directions. But then, somewhere along the line, they started coming together. The blanks started filling in. Everything really was connected, and this was best shown when so many of the "bit part" characters came together at the epicenter of the final disaster. That was just a microcosm of the whole story -- everything pulling to the center only to be met with unthinkable disaster.

(I feel I must point out one roll-eyes moment, and I'm afraid it's one I found difficult to overlook simply because of what I do for a living. Why, why, why did the smartest man in the world protect his computer with (a) a pretty obvious password, and (b) a login system that basically says "Okay, you're almost there -- try again." I mean, it wasn't Jeff Goldblum's Macintosh bad, but it was bad.)

I'm sure it would have had a much different impact on me if I'd read it when it was still new and trend-setting, but that wouldn't necessarily have been a good thing. I think teenage me would have been horrified. Older me was able to look at it and see that this was what so many writers have tried (and failed) to recreate since. Older me was able to be impressed with how fresh it still seemed twenty-odd years after the fact, and how easy it was to remember the pre-Glasnost days of constant low-grade fear. Older me was intrigued by the details like the parallel storyline with the pirate comic, as well as the supplemental materials at the end of each chapter that made the world so real.

Mind-blowing? Sure. Life-altering? Not so much, not compared to some of the truly influential stories of my reading history. I feel like I respect it more than cherish it, and I definitely want to go back and read again sometime soon, to try to catch some of the many details I no doubt missed.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Funny you should reference Sandman's nadir -- I found The Kindly Ones to be overlong and overwrought and...well, I'm sure Marc Hempel does some wonderful work, but his style and that storyline didn't mesh at all.

And while I won't leap to the defense of Gaiman, I will actually say that I did see -- somewhere -- a cut plotline from Independence Day that said the technology from Area 51 was used in many civilian purposes, including creating the first Macs. I can understand that that bit probably sounded like product placement run amok, but me, I found it hysterically funny, and it justifies one of the chief complaints against that film (which, for some reptilian-brain reason, I still enjoy).

The Ramses password was...silly. Then again I think back and I remember the computer I was using then.... (Maybe we can chalk that up to Adrian's sense of invulnerability -- it certainly didn't make any difference, in the long run.)

I originally bought issues #10 and #12 from the back issue box (they didn't have any TPBs) and was...well, entranced, really, found #3 a few weeks later, finally found a TPB six months after that. I think I ended up buying four, total, giving the others as gifts. And when I read online annotations or sometimes just walking down the sidewalk a new connection forms, out of nowhere, and I look at the whole thing from another angle....

One thing I did find which I treasure is the DC RPG Watchmen supplement. That and the Suicide Squad sourcebook. I read those cover to cover and back again all the time workin' at the radio station....