Watchmen News

Some of the big news this week is surrounding Zack Snyder’s adaptation of the graphic novel, Watchmen. Matthew Goode, who I have not seen in anything, has won the role of Ozymandias. So far this fits with Snyder’s off beat casting for the film. Already cast are Patrick Wilson as The Night Owl, Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan, and Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach, all of these actors being far from household names. An unknown cast is going to allow the story to shine without being overshadowed by big names.

I like it.

Watchmen tells the story of a group of superheroes and the events surrounding the murder of a superhero named The Comedian. The pretext to the story was based off the saying “Who watches the watchmen?” It presents the heroes as real people with all of the trappings of real life, most of them are not super-powered, all have personality issues, and they die. It was an attempt by the author, Alan Moore, to present the comics medium as a serious genre and not just for kids. The graphic novel did all of that and more, having been the only graphic novel to win the Hugo Award and making Time Magazine’s 2005 list of “the 100 best English speaking novels from 1923 to the present.”

Having said that…

Is it wise to take something that is revered like this and make it into a movie? Are there comics, books, or other media that should be put on a list of things not to be made into movies? I am of the opinion that there are, and if anything should be on that list, it should be comics that Alan Moore has written. Widely considered to be a genius in the comics field, much of his work contains underlying themes which would be difficult at best to transfer to the big screen. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was an excellent series of comics before the travesty starring Sean Connery. V for Vendetta was turned into a Matrix-style action movie. Will Watchmen succeed where the others have failed? Snyder did very well with 300 though (another comic), so it will be very interesting to see if he can pull this off.

Source: Dark Horizons