Bloody exhausted, possibly getting sick, and have mountains of research papers to write these next two weeks.
But because I don’t have enough to do, I’m blogging over at Blog@Newsarama now, in addition to Best Shots and various and sundry other stuff. I’ll be cross-posting some stuff from here, babbling about comics, movies, pop culture, and whatever else crosses my mind. Come join the fun.
6. I am almost completely convinced that Watchmen is unfilmable. Not that it’s going to be bad, but that it will not be Watchmen. I may go on at length soon about why this is.
Agreed. Watchmen is metafiction; the series is as much about comics as it is a comic. Also, the format is integral to how the story is told (eg, the original covers serving as first panel.) As far as I’m concerned, there’s really no way this can be effectively translated to film without completely distorting the original narrative (much like pretty much everything written by Moore that has been adapted to the screen).
Plz to be going on about this at length; is something that has been bothering me greatly amidst all the online fanboy ejaculation.
How do you do this? Do you just point people at your blog and go, like, “see, I’m awesome?” Or do they come of their own accord? :-p
On the Watchmen thing, I’m as certain that it’s filmable as I am that the film that’s being made is going to be, shall we say, not good. Which is very.
I totally agree that the book is metafiction, and that the comic format is integral to its effectiveness… which is why the movie has relate to comic book movies, very much their own pop genre at this point, in the same way. So the pirate comics in the book become pirate comics in the movies, which are being produced at a startling rate now, since pirate comic sales have been in a decline over the past decade or so, and the studios are anxious to make money off their old properties. For example.
How do I do it? I’ve been writing for Newsarama for years, so they asked me to join the new Blog@Newsarama team.
Pretty much all freelance work I’ve ever done has come through friends and such.
Aside from the whole pirate comic thing in Watchmen, there’s the chapter where Dr. Manhattan is seeing all time at once that for me, even more than the pirate thing, really takes it to the limit of what can be done by organizing time on the page, in space, rather than time in time, which you must do in a film. I can think of ways to deal with the pirate comic, but I cannot think of ways to show this kind of temporal/spatial conflict in film.
cant believe i’m going to comment on watchmen but I will.
watchmen holds a special place for me because I bought it in single issue format (yes I’m that fracking old) and it was right as I was getting back into comics and I had no interest but Marie insisted I buy it.
my bottom line is what book made into a film is really the book? and yes there are many people who can cite examples where I am wrong but I’m talking about my universe and I don’t see a lot of films any more.
my comparison.baseline is this. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
It can’t be made into a movie but I went and saw it anyway and loved it.
It captured the spirit of the books and I hold hope (maybe unfounded) that Watchmen will do the same.
Your mileage may vary.
This comparison is inapt. The Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy was always intended by Douglas Adams to be a multimedia project–first a radio play, then a book, then a TV series, then a text-based adventure game, etc etc etc. Each iteration of the story had subtle yet discernable differences–all completely deliberate on the part of Adams and his collaborators.
Speaking as a rabid HGTTG fan, I would have been disappointed if the big screen adaption hadn’t made some modifications to the plot/story/characters, because, in fact, I would argue that doing so is remaining faithful to the essence of HGTTG.
A more analogous comparison baseline would be novels such as Dhalgren by Chip Delany, or Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, or pretty much anything by Kathy Acker–tricky post-structuralist works of meta-fiction in which the text itself is intrinsically linked to ’story’ (and the nature of ’story’ — in this case, superhero motifs in comic books).
(And thanks for the post @ Newsarama, Sarah — kick ass!
matt
I actually played the text based game LOL
I dont deny being inapt.
we should move this discussion to the ‘rama post. it could be a fun one.