WHO WATCHES THE WATCHMEN? NOT ME

I was reading an interview with Zack Snyder, who is the director behind the Frank Miller adaptation, 300. During the interview Snyder talks about his next project, the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons classic "Watchmen".

"Watchmen" is one of the best superhero graphic novels you are ever going to read. It is funny, it is exciting, it is scary and it is heart wrenching. And I sincerely hope the film never sees the light of day. Because Watchmen is going to blow.

The scope of the book is just too large to do justice to in a single film. I read "V for Vendetta" (another excellent Moore graphic novel that I highly, highly recommend) for a class in college. I then saw the movie in the theater and while it did a decent job of covering the book, it did not do a great job. There were entire characters and plot lines dropped out of the book, Evie's time away from V was redone entirely and the ending, for no particular reason, was rewritten as well. These changes did not make it a bad movie, but it did make the movie less than what the book was. And if they do that to "Watchmen", I don't even know what sort of story they'll end up with.

Let's look at the story. It takes place in the 1980's where Nixon is still President. Vietnam was a major victory for the U.S. of A thanks to the involvement of the superhuman Dr. Manhattan, a being who is basically a god amongst men. A washed up former super hero, called The Comedian (who, amongst other things, enjoys violence and attempted rape), has just been murdered. By whom? That's the mystery behind the story. A story that revolves around the lives of more than a half dozen former superheroes. But none of these superheroes, except for Dr. Manhattan, actually have any powers. So they're really just men and women dressed in costumes and calling each other by codenames. This is your main story. Meanwhile, in the background America and Russia are creeping closer and closer to Mutual Assured Destruction in Afghanistan. Oh, and a kid is reading a pirate comic book about a man trying to return home on a raft made of dead bodies. In the end the mystery is solved and war is averted, but, well, let's just say it doesn't end well for most of our heroes.

And then there's our heroes. Besides The Comedian and Dr. Manhattan (who is buck naked the entire book), one of "Watchmen"'s more famous characters is Rorschach, a psychopath that makes Batman look like Mary Poppins.

The movie could be made, any movie can be made, but I fear that any version that sees the light of the screen will be a severely edited, hamstrung version of what Time Magazine called one of the "100 Greatest English Language Novels from 1923 to the Present" in 2005. The original ending itself, which I will not give away, will be difficult to get approval for, and if a different, more satisfying ending is used in its stead, the movie will only suffer because of it.

I hope this version, like those that have come before it, dies on the vine. But don't take my word for it, take Alan Moore's. In the late 1980's Terry Gilliam was interested in turning "Watchmen" into a movie and asked Moore, "How would you make a film of 'Watchmen'?" Said Moore, "Don't."