Who (will watch) the Watchmen?

io9 has a piece up, bluntly titled, "Watchmen Shouldn't Be A Movie." More cohesive and researched than anything I'd put together on the subject, I agree whole heartedly with its thesis: that a Watchmen film will be, at the very least, misguided, and at the very most, boring. Specifically, I agree with their statements that "Watchmen is of its time," that "It's about the history of comics," and "It's about experimenting with comic format."

The last of these is the easiest to dismiss -- many books adapted into films have experimented with a straightforward narrative and worked wonderfully. But ignoring that, the fact that it's a comic about the history of comics, and true to a very specific period in time could help contribute to a misguided attempt at a literal translation.

I got my grubby robomitts on a copy of the earlier David Hayter draft, that appropriately updated the background conflict that drives the main narrative of the story. It still missed the boat on commenting on comics as a medium, but it was a very well done adaptation, keeping key moments, while jettisoning all the non-essential chunks. Hayter's draft was an adaptation of a graphic novel to film, trying to retain the more universal of its themes. 

Current director Snyder has said many times it will be a literal translation of the graphic novel, going so far as to produce an animated The Black Freighter piece to be put on the DVD. The Black Freighter comic-within-the-comic is meta-comicdom, and its whole point of existence is extremely questionable in film format, as it attempts to conduct a comic experiment in a completely different medium, literally. That he's willing to do this shows me that he might not have the necessary perspective -- any non-literal perspective -- that might be necessary to adapt such a dense piece of contemporary fiction.

But, anyway, that's just me... go read the piece over at io9.

-RoboNixon