If I were a true geek, I would have been aware of this long ago. Nevertheless, I am awfully excited to see that a movie is being made for Alan Moore’s “graphic novel” (they’re still comic books to me) “Watchmen.”
The trailer is available here.
Information about the movie adaptation here.
I’ve been back and forth on this one. Alan Moore is the best author of comics, hands down, but the movie adaptations of his work are very hit or miss (and he has disowned all adaptations, including the hits). IMO, V for Vendetta was good (but the comic was considerably better), From Hell was OK, and League of Extraordinary Gentleman was retching-on-the-floor awful. Watchmen is head and shoulders above the rest of Alan’s work (at least for me), so I’m pretty apprehensive about the movie. But who am I kidding, I’m gonna see it. ;)
Well, I just read up on the wiki entry on the film, and I’m reluctantly impressed. The director sounds like a fanboy, which is always a good thing, especially for something this heavy. They’re even releasing “Tales of the Black Freighter” (the comic within the comic) as a separate direct to video animated feature, whatever that means. We’ll see, but I think it’s safe to be cautiously optimistic. Of course, that’s how I felt about V for Vendetta, and though it was good; it still disappointed (me).
For anybody who hasn’t read this, but likes the darker “comic books” (‘cmon Doug, you can call them graphic novels. Which part to you object to? They have graphics. The are equal if not superior to many novels in their plot and characterizations), Watchmen is absolutely outstanding. Be prepared to re-read it though, or at least frequently back up a few pages. It’s dense, but in a good, detail-rich way.
Graphic novel seems pretentious to me. I simply don’t regard comic books as being necessarily inferior to books solely consisting of text. It’s just a different format; sometimes telling a superior story, sometimes not.
I was happy to hear about the Tales of the Black Freighter. In some ways, that was my favorite part of Watchmen.
Yeah, I agree it seems pretentious, but comic book has a (well-deserved) pejorative connotation (how’s that phrase for some pretension ;) ). We need some term to keep the Watchmen, Sandman, Maus types separate from the pulpier fluff. What’s a comic-book loving guy to do to try and earn some respect for his medium?