When Watchmen opens this weekend, fanboys (and girls) will descend upon American cinemas nationwide to view what may have been the most difficult adaptation to film in years.
Will they be satisfied? That remains to be seen.
Watchmen, DC’s latest comic-book movie, is directed by Zack Snyder (who also directed 300). Followers of the source material wince at the term “comic book,” reluctant to attach such a negative stigma to Alan Moore’s brainchild. No, they lovingly insist, this is a graphic novel. And Watchmen truly is a novel — one good enough to make Time Magazine’s list of the 100 greatest English-language novels since 1923.
A number of devices employed by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, the comic’s authors, make Watchmen unique. Subtle references to other comic universes and current events abound. (“Robert Redford says he’ll be running for president in ’88. We could run a piece on–” “Seymour, we do not dignify absurdities with coverage. This is still America, God damnit! Who wants a cowboy actor in the White House?”) Yes, it is the little things that make Watchmen great: recurring minor characters, fitting dialogue that bleeds over into subsequent scenes, even brand continuity within the book.
Perhaps most notable is the inclusion of fictional articles and excerpts from books relevant to the storyline at the end of each chapter. Several installations, for example, are closed with segments of the autobiography of a retired hero.
“I love the blending of the story with primary documents that explain it further,” Communication freshman Jeremiah Fassler says. This type of device makes it evident that Moore and Gibbons fully explored the possibilities of the comic-book form.
But the techniques and plot events that make the novel such a triumph might not affect audiences in the same way when presented on the screen.
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? (Who will watch the Watchmen?)
The fact that Watchmen is the paragon of excellence within its medium would make it that much more difficult to capture all its nuances in a film. Capturing the subtlety of the documents, for example, would be very hard — it’s not like the audience is going to read a four-page treatise on superheroes of times past in the middle of an action-packed movie. At least a little of the novel’s nuance will have to be lost by necessity.
Even if the film is extremely faithful to the book, it would still present events and devices to the audience in the context of a different medium, affecting the audience in a different way.
According to Fassler, whose father, Ron Fassler, plays Ted Koppel in the movie, “I think the film is mainly for the fans of the graphic novel, but it will not please everybody. I see there being a huge divide with this film between fans who love it for putting the novel on screen, and fans who hate it for whatever mistakes they see in it that don’t ring true to Moore and Gibbons’ work.”
In other words, the main enjoyment fans will derive from the film adaptation will be that they will be able to recognize scenes and references from the comic they love so much. Still, even if the adaptation is entirely faithful, a device presented in the comic might be less effective or impress a different sentiment on the audience in a movie setting.
The pacing of Watchmen’s storyline, which is filled with flashbacks and changes of perspective, could also be an obstacle.
“The hardest part [will be] that there’s so much going on in this novel,” Music freshman Zach Robinson predicts. “In the first six chapters of the novel, you’re not really progressing; you’re gathering all this information. You gather everything and then in the next two chapters, you use all of it. So I think it’s going to be hard for them, spacing out the movie.”
While a lengthy exposition poses no problem in the graphic novel, it might translate to a slow-paced plot on film.
Cutting this information poses a problem, however, as the novel’s plot points are interwoven in such a fashion that each is essential to the rest. Since so much goes on in the novel, Fassler argues, the movie must have an appropriate length to capture it all.
“I’m against long films these days, but this is one of the few that has to be long if they want to get the full scope of the novel on screen,” he says.
The two-hour, 43-minute runtime might intimidate the casual viewer, but even that did not satisfy Snyder, who is providing a director’s cut in July that clocks in at a whopping three hours and 10 minutes. The DVD release (what Snyder calls “Crazy Ultimate Freaky Edition”) will contain even more footage.
The Setting
Watchmen, published in 1986, takes place in the mid-80s in a universe slightly altered from our own. Indeed, history plays a large role in the storyline, which was particularly appealing to Weinberg freshman Cami Jones.
“I think part of the reason that the story is so interesting is because of the rich historical context surrounding it,” Jones says.
In Watchmen, Nixon is still in office, the Cold War is in full swing, and mutually assured destruction between America and the USSR appears to be imminent. Also, costumed heroes have been around since the 1940s, apparently as a result of the popularity of superhero comics. However, the era of vigilantes in masks and spandex is waning as a result of the Keene Act, a ban on masked defenders. There is only one true superhero in the work: Dr. Manhattan, a man with godlike powers (including the ability to teleport and rearrange matter on the molecular level) who has been responsible for myriad technological advances.
Getting There
It’s been a long road from page to film. In 1986, the year the comic was released, producer Lawrence Gordon secured the rights to do a Watchmen movie for 20th Century Fox. Two years later, when Alan Moore refused to do so himself, the studio hired a screenwriter to adapt the graphic novel for theaters.
The project remained in limbo until 1991 when Terry Gilliam signed on to direct. The Monty Python alum is famous for going over budget or facing a fatal production flaw on nearly everything he has ever been attached to as a director. Thanks to his reputation, Gilliam didn’t receive proper funding and decided the project wasn’t suited for film anyway.
In 2001, Universal studios and producer Gordon asked David Hayter (X-Men, The Scorpion King, and the growling voice of Snake in the Metal Gear Solid games) to write a new script. Gordon and new producer Lloyd Levin loved Hayter’s adaptation and took it to Revolution Studios in 2003 due to differences with Universal. The project soon fell apart at Revolution as well, so the two took the script to Paramount and asked Darren Aronofksy (who recently directed The Wrestler) to direct the film. Unfortunately, Aronofsky bailed soon thereafter to focus on The Fountain. Disaster struck again when Paramount CEO David DeLine left the studio, taking support for a number of films (including Watchmen) with him.
In 2005, Gordon and Levin revived the script with Warner Brothers, turning to a new director (Snyder) and writer (Alex Tse). A few years and $130 million later, Watchmen is emerging from the depths of Hollywood once and for all, heralded by an awesome trailer featuring an especially badass Smashing Pumpkins remix.
With less than a year until release, the studio hit one final snag. After the movie had finally overcome its 23 years of development hell, 20th Century Fox attacked the project with a lawsuit claiming that they still owned the rights to the film. The suit, which was eventually settled, can only be described as a major dick move. Way to go, Fox.
The Finished Product
The long journey to make the film doesn’t necessarily make it great. How will this incarnation stand up to the expectations formed during years and years of finagling?
“My fear with the movie is the cast,” says Fassler. “Some of it is very well-cast. There is nobody better than Jackie Earle Haley to play Rorschach, and I think Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Billy Crudup look terrific. Malin Ackerman worries me …Matthew Goode, to me, is not right for Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias. Ozymandias is the most famous person in the world of that story. He should be someone equally famous. Jude Law probably should have gotten the role.”
While their task is a tough one, Snyder and his team seem to be tackling it with a creative and proactive attitude. The director’s cut is a good way to satisfy Watchmen fanatics without leaving the general public complaining about the length. They also took an innovative approach with regard to Tales of the Black Freighter, a comic-within-the-comic that we see one of the characters reading over the course of the story, running parallel to the plot of the novel.
“Instead of putting it into the movie which wouldn’t make any sense, they’re releasing it separately on a DVD kind of like the Animatrix or something like that,” Robinson says, “and I think that’s pretty cool. I like that they’re not just completely ignoring it, even if it’s separate.”
If Snyder really is paying this type of attention to detail, it would definitely be worth it to pick up a copy of the novel if you haven’t already. To Robinson, “It’s the little things that are going to make this movie really cool, the things that you’re gofing to have that you’d only know if you’d read it.” Simple recognition in this type of context is often very exciting and satisfying.
Some worry, however, that Snyder might be taking too many liberties. Rumor has it that although he follows the text religiously with regard to the details, he changed the twist at the end in the film adaptation. If this is true, it’s sure to upset some die-hard fans. But, as Robinson points out, “When you think about it, the ending from the book is so out-there, would that translate well to the movie? I think the ending is going to be an incredibly tough challenge and I think it’s going to be interesting to see what they do for that.”
Seeing Snyder’s version will be intriguing, and the reactions to it are bound to be diverse.
Even if you’re turned off by the idea of reading a comic book, you might want to at least give Watchmen a try if you’re planning to see the movie. Jones, for one, is glad she picked it up.
“I think it’s really accessible,” she says. “This was my first graphic novel and I got through it and I wasn’t confused… as a person who’s interested in literature, I kind of owed it to myself to read it.”
Soon, we’ll know once and for all whether comic fans are satisfied with the new incarnation of the most celebrated piece of their domain. Was Watchmen ever meant to be watched? Or will the film make a mockery of a masterwork?