Just a little curio for your amusement and beguilement. We're going all the way back to 1998 and a young Basil Creese Jr is idly pondering the cinematic future of his favourite graphic novel. I think he got it pretty much spot on. Well played, dear boy...
5 Reasons Why Alan Moore's Watchmen Will NEVER Be Made Into A Movie
See that picture? That's Alan Moore. He's as eccentric as the photograph - which clearly evokes a less contemplative Rasputin - suggests. Shunning the gleam and shimmer of fame and celebrity he lives in Northampton, England. On his fortieth birthday he announced that he was a chaos magician. He worships the ancient Roman snake god, Glycon, which is actually a glove puppet masquerading as a minor deity. He's also a genius. Among Moore's impressive list of works are From Hell, V for Vendetta, Batman: The Killing Joke (a work which, Tim Burton has intimated, informed his 1989 Batman movie) the partially published pornographic tract, Lost Girls, and his recent novel, Voice of the Fire. Mr Moore is not just one of the finest writers in working in comics, he’s one of the finest writers ever, reinventing the comic book as a cutting-edge literary medium through the complex layering of symbolism, erudition and narrative. He has singlehandedly elevated what was once considered a gutter medium.
Arguably his most significant work is Watchmen, a groundbreaking graphic novel which has defined the genre. Written for adults it's a gritty, bleak work which succeeds in unmasking our superheroes' insecurities and neuroses. Released over a decade ago, it allowed mature and cerebral comics to slide into the focus of the mainstream and was named one of the 100 greatest novels by TIME Magazine.*
It was only to be expected that Hollywood would come sniffing around, but since its release in 1986 "the bible of graphic novels" has remained in Hollywood development hell. Here are the 5 reasons why I think, and hope, it will remain there.
5. It's A Comic Book
I do not mean this pejoratively, Watchmen is one of the most important works of art of the 20th century, but there is no escaping the fact that it is a comic book. It is not a novel. It is not a movie script. It is not a sequential collection of storyboards. It is a comic book. The fundamentals of its construction require us to engage with the story in a very specific manner. The nature of comics offers possibilities that aren't available in film. One can linger on each individual panel absorbing all of the information therein, and refer back to certain pages if the action references earlier events.
In a comic book the story unfolds before us as a living canvas, we bring our own interpretations to each aspect of the narrative. A film can never hope to address all of the subtleties and nuances inherent in this very different artform, instead it would simply drag you through the story at 24 frames per second not allowing you to pause and admire the scenery: its eye too literal and linear to allow the transfer of subtext and metaphor, or to describe the organic arc so beautifully crafted here by Moore.
The present capabilities of film special effects technology, so cruelly found wanting in the Spawn movie, couldn't possibly capture the physical complexities of a blue, shape-shifting, radioactive Dr Manhattan. At one point he teleports himself to Mars for a quiet sulk and constructs a glass palace designed as a clock mechanism. The technology hasn't been developed to portray this convincingly, and realistically won't ever be available. As if the Dr Manhattan dilemma weren't enough, there is also the question of how to recreate the ornate, and intricate, "comic-within-a-comic" Tales Of The Black Freighter inserts. I would contend that it's impossible. It can't be done.
Face it, making Watchmen into a Hollywood movie is as probable as a studio turning the labyrinthine, holistic, social dissertation of From Hell into a by-numbers police procedural starring Johnny Depp!
4. Even Terry Gilliam Says It's Unfilmable
I love Terry Gilliam's films. They're ambitious in scope and as mad as his animation for Monty Python back in the seventies. Gilliam has made some astonishing movies: Brazil, The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen, The Fisher King and 12 Monkeys. We fans of Watchmen were enraptured when it was announced that Mr Gilliam had been tasked with bringing Alan Moore's vision to the screen. A maverick cineaste as wild and whimsical as Alan Moore, if anyone could make sense of the Watchmen universe and filter it for mainstream acceptance it was him, and probably him alone. His films are a testament to his both his artistic and technical ability in capturing unwieldy fantasy on celluloid. Teaming Gilliam with legendary Producer Joel Silver was almost a superhero match-up in itself.
As work on the project stuttered and sputtered he voiced concerns about translating Watchmen to film, suggesting that the epic story could not be faithfully reproduced as a movie, unless that movie had a running time of about five hours. He expressed concerns about limiting the story to a two or two-and-a-half hour film as it would strip away the essence of what Watchmen is about.
Unable to get a handle on the project Gilliam even considered shooting it as a television mini-series when he met Alan Moore to ask how he would film Watchmen. Alan Moore, being Alan Moore, said he wouldn't bother. The project eventually failed to secure adequate funding and was put back into mothballs. Gilliam said he heaved a sigh of relief as he realised this is definitely a film better left unmade. If the great Terry Gilliam is stumped by source material he deems too complex then there's a good chance it probably is.
3. Comic Book Superheroes Just Don't Work As Movies
The hottest comic book property at the moment is Spawn. He's dark, he's troubled and he's supercool. He's probably my favourite superhero of all time. A government assassin who's killed, sent to hell and does a deal with the Devil so he can come back to Earth and see the love of his life one last time. Utter genius. The animated series is an incredible achievement. It perfectly captures the tone and the brooding atmosphere of the comic books. Did you see the movie that came out last year? Horrible. And yet, as abysmal as it was, it was still better than Steel featuring Shaquille O'Neal as the titular hero. The reason for these cinematic superhero failures, both critically and financially, is that any finesse or subtlety has to be jettisoned to ensure that the popcorn munching hordes flock to the movie theatre.
The law of diminishing returns which results from this short-term view of film making is perfectly described by the Batman franchise. Tim Burton's 1989 Batman is a defining entry in the superhero film genre. The Gotham envisioned here is a delicious gothic treat: Anton Furst’s Oscar winning production design was breathtaking. Fast forward to Batman And Robin, the fourth in the series, and the pressure to earn more money than the last movie results in an embarrassingly lacklustre effort with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. The story and its execution are awful: sound and fury signifying, well, not much really. Arnold Schwarzenegger does his best impression of IKEA flat pack furniture whilst delivering 27 (count 'em!) ice related puns and has ensured that we'll never see another Batman movie.
Marvel have done a deal with New Line to make the movie Blade, starring Wesley Snipes, which is out this summer. I guarantee it will be a flop and that Marvel will never bother us with any of their superheroes again.
2. Very Few People Know Any Of The Superheroes In Watchmen
The Watchmen graphic novel represented the collection of 12 perfectly crafted issues and it has to be said that, whilst highly acclaimed, it hasn't actually reached a mass audience. This means that unlike the Spiderman, Superman, Wolverine, Hulk, Spawn or Batman characters that have permeated popular culture, there are not millions of comic book fans, or even those with a casual interest, who are aware of the exploits of the Watchmen superheroes. Most will not even recognise any of the characters.
Mr Joe and Mrs Josephine Public do not read comic books and certainly wouldn't be able to tell you anything about Rorschach, Nite Owl or Dr Manhattan. However, there is a very good chance that they would be able to recognise Superman, Spiderman, Wonder Woman, Batman et al. You may argue as to whether such a thing should ever exist, but no child has ever owned or played with a Hooded Justice doll or placed a Sally Jupiter poster on their wall. This relative lack of profile and recognition for the Watchmen characters will prove to be a huge barrier to any production of a potential film in a Hollywood which is increasingly dependent upon existing properties - whether the film is a sequel in an ongoing franchise or is based on a television series - to generate funding.
All that being considered it would be pretty awesome if I could have a Rorschach doll where the inkblots on his mask were constantly morphing and I could pull a string and have him intone darkly, "Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never Compromise."
1 . The Threat Of Armageddon Is Over
The way in which Watchmen examines the human condition and deconstructs the superhero archetype makes it an essential work, but its tone is entirely informed by its being set in an alternative 1985 and its political context: a world on the brink of nuclear war. It is very much a work of its time. Back in the eighties the prevailing orthodoxy was that those crazy Russians might kick off and blow us all to kingdom come. This looming, black paranoia frames everything in the graphic novel and throws the raw re-imagining of fragile superheroes with hang-ups, delusions, and erectile dysfunction, into a sharp relief. We watch civilisation teeter on the edge of extinction and gauge the reactions of the tormented characters as they contemplate their own mortality. Rorschach, for example, is enthralling because his coping mechanism is the application of his own binary template to every situation and as a consequence he views everyone, and everything, in a coolly detached black and white.
Back here in the real world things are far more peaceful. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and Russia has eagerly embraced capitalism. Here in Britain, following last year's General Election, we've moved to a more tolerant and liberal minded government in New Labour. Our new Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has pledged himself to what he calls an "ethical foreign policy", so we can be safe in the knowledge that he won't be scanning the world and looking for wars to start. The Cold War anguish of Watchmen seems rather quaint now. These are days of peace and so it would be practically impossible for an audience to identify with a cast of characters worried about war and conflict. Such concerns are as alien to us today as the city sized squid that turns up at the end of the story.
*TIME Magazine also voted Adolf Hitler Man Of The Year in 1938, so, y'know, make up your own mind about whether they should be arbiters of anything.
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