Who Watches the Watchmen? We do!

[Lamont Cranston]

The long and the short of it is that we will all be able to see The Watchmen on March 6. If you want all the details, the NYT has a nice write up here. WB has agreed to pay Fox’s legal bills, compensate them for money they spent developing a Watchmen movie that never happened, and fork over up to 8.5% of gross ticket sales.

[Ryan]

Groovy. Let's hope the movie doesn't suck. Hollywood has been sort of hit and miss with Moore films.

[Lamont Cranston]

“Hit or miss” is being a bit generous. In general, Moore’s work stinks when translated to the big screen.

From Hell – The only good translation of a Moore work into a movie. There’s no way they could have kept everything from the richly detailed source without making an 18 hour miniseries, but after heavy editing and streamlining by the screenwriters and a great performance by Depp they ended up with the core of the story intact.

LoEG – ugh. The screenwriters absolutely ruined this one. There are so many changes between the movie and the graphic novel you could argue they are related in name only.

V for Vendetta – hard to say which was worse: the paranoid source material or the muddled film.

So far, movies based on Moore’s materials are batting 1 for 3.

Hard to say exactly where Watchmen will fall on this list, but I am not overly optimistic. If you look at the list, you will see that the best movie was pared down to a straightforward murder mystery by the screenwriters. All of the political angles from the graphic novel were removed. Of course V for Vendetta would have nothing left if you removed the politics, and when you start with a crazy rant about fascism in Margaret Thatcher’s England you don’t have a lot to work with. But it’s not like The Watchmen was heavily dependent on the politics of when it was written. Oh, wait, it was.

[Kneel Before Zod, Bitch!!!]

Yay! Date Night.