The Screengrab : dave gibbons

Screengrab Review: Watchmen (Paul's Take)

Paul Clark — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Well, it’s finally here, folks. After more than two decades in development, Watchmen is finally hitting screens nationwide this weekend. In a way, it’s sort of miraculous that it actually panned out. Of course, the road hasn’t been easy, with a seemingly endless parade of directors, screenwriters, producers and stars attached to the project at some point. But to me, it’s even more interesting to observe how comic book culture has progressed to this point. Just over a decade ago, it seems like Batman was the only comic getting the blockbuster treatment, and just about everything else was played for campy nostalgia, e.g. The Phantom. Hell, back in 2000 studios were worried whether the X-Men could sell tickets. So the fact that there’s not only a massively budgeted adaptation of Watchmen out there but also one that’s surprisingly faithful to its dense, ambitious source material just shows how far comics- and comic-book movies- have come in the last ten years. If only the movie was better, this saga would have the happy ending that all Watchmen fans crave.

Admittedly, Watchmen is a tough nut to crack. Combining a murder mystery, a deconstruction of superhero mythology, and a meditation on society brought to the brink of apocalypse, it’s a far cry from the classic potboilers of yesteryear. Even in an adaptation as close as this one, some material would inevitably be pared away (so long, “Tales of the Black Freighter”). But while director Zack Snyder has sworn fidelity to the original graphic novel from the beginning, it’s one thing to visually translate Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ creation to the big screen, and another entirely to turn it into something cinematic. And although Snyder pulls off the former, he falls short of the latter. It looks great, but it never quite works as an honest-to-goodness movie.

Part of the problem is that Snyder never manages to reconcile the inherent expectations of comic book blockbusters with the more literary aspects of Watchmen. There’s plenty of violence in the graphic novel, but to me the action has always taken a back seat to the ideas and themes. Watchmen is less about its heroes’ powers than about their differing ideologies and the way they’re brought out, not only by their circumstances, but also by the times in which they live. This idea that even mankind’s saviors are complex and troubled is a potent one.

Unfortunately, Snyder doesn’t explore this idea in much depth. It’s a shame, since there’s a lot of potential here, especially among the more “freakish” members of the group- Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), essentially a masked Travis Bickle; The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), an aging Captain America gone to seed; and “quantum hero” Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), whose sad plight has led him to grow ever more detached from human concerns. But while these characters are pregnant with possibilities, Snyder instead makes the least interesting Watchmen- the second Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman) and Night Owl II (Patrick Wilson)- the central players in the drama. It doesn’t help that Akerman’s performance is easily the worst in the movie- she can’t even convincingly gasp for air when she first arrives on Mars- or that Wilson is saddled with a look that makes him look less like Gibbons’ creation than a young Chevy Chase.

But if Snyder doesn’t quite get a grasp on the thematic and subtextual undercurrents of Watchmen, he doesn’t make it work as a straight-up comic book movie either. Oddly enough, some of the blame should be placed on Snyder and his insistence on taking his visual cues straight from the graphic novel. On a shot-by-shot basis, the film is often remarkable to behold, but in putting them together, Snyder and editor William Hoy too often fall back on the shot order used in the graphic novel rather than editing the film in a way that allows scenes to build naturally and in an exciting way. The result is a film that feels like it’s been frozen in amber, beautiful but difficult to embrace.

That said, the movie is far from a disaster. In fact, there’s still plenty to admire about Watchmen, beginning with Snyder’s attention to detail. If nothing else, the visuals of Watchmen are eye candy to fans who’ve longed for years to see this story brought to life. And some of performances are actually quite good, especially those given by Crudup, Morgan, and Haley, who not only feels just right as Rorschach but also even delivers his trademark “hurm” perfectly. Less successful is Matthew Goode as the formidably intelligent Ozymandias- Goode looks and acts the part well enough, but the role really needed some big-star charisma to make it sing, and it’s a little disappointing to think what Tom Cruise, who was allegedly interest in playing the role, might have done with it.

When I saw Watchmen the other night, I was accompanied by someone who’d never read the graphic novel but enjoys darker comic book movies like The Dark Knight. And while I couldn’t help but judge the movie in comparison to the original material (and frankly, doesn’t Snyder more or less invite this?), my friend was able to enjoy the film on the screen, unburdened as he was by expectations. I think this contrast is illustrative. If you’re in the market for something more than the usual heroes-and-villains comic book thriller, Watchmen might just hit the spot. But if you’ve seen this story play out in its ideal medium, any other version will be inherently disappointing. My only hope is that maybe some of those who enjoy the movie will be inspired to pick up the graphic novel, so they too can experience this material the way it was meant to be experienced.

Screengrab Review: “Watchmen”

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:00:00 GMT

There are a million reasons a Watchmen movie should never have been made and no good reason it should have, aside from the obvious one: superheroes are big box office, and Watchmen was one of the most tantalizing untouched superhero properties available. It’s also an incredibly dense, multi-layered work, deriving much of its power from its subversion of five decades worth of comic book conventions. Having read the script Sam Hamm penned for Terry Gilliam’s aborted attempt at mounting Watchmen for the screen back in the early ‘90s, I know the new adaptation of the acclaimed graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons from “visionary director” Zack Snyder isn’t the worst case scenario. Nor does it exceed expectations. It’s just sort of pointless, which is what most fans of the classic comic have probably been expecting all along.

So can we separate the movie from its source material and judge it on its own merits? We can try, but Snyder doesn’t make it easy. It’s not a good sign when the movie kicks off with the image of an aging Richard Nixon portrayed by an actor wearing a ridiculous putty ski-slope nose and tons of awful aging makeup, quickly followed by a “Pat Buchanan” who looks and sounds exactly nothing like Pat Buchanan. The set-up here, should you be completely unfamiliar with the world of Watchmen: it’s 1985, and Richard Nixon has been re-elected to an unprecedented fifth term as President. Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union are at an all-time high, and nuclear war appears to be inevitable.

The events of this alternate timeline have been aided and abetted by costumed heroes, among them The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who helped lead the U.S. to quick victory in Vietnam. As Watchmen opens, the aging Comedian is murdered in his own apartment, leading masked vigilante Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) to believe that someone is picking off the Watchmen, a superhero group whose members also include dumpy Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson), sultry Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman), and superhuman Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup, boasting a pendulous blue schlong that may disturb and frighten younger viewers – or any viewers, really).

In the comics, Moore and Gibbons amplify the major plotlines concerning the hunt for the mask-killer and the quest to avert global armageddon with flashbacks to the heroes’ origins (some of which date back to a superhero team of the 1940s called the Minutemen), along with various subplots including a love triangle among Silk Spectre, Nite Owl and Dr. Manhattan and a prison detour for Rorschach. To their credit, Snyder and screenwriters David Hayter and Alex Tse include as much of this material as possible (the Watchmen comic-within-the-comic Tales from the Black Freighter is getting a separate DVD release)…so why does the 168-minute running time still seem bloated beyond all necessity?

Part of it comes down to your definition of what constitutes a “faithful” adaptation. Great swaths of dialogue are lifted intact from the graphic novel, and the major visual set-pieces are painstakingly recreated (with at least one notable exception), and that may be enough to satisfy a segment of the audience. But the pacing is often leaden, the plotting lumpy and disjointed, the storytelling single-layered at best. The connective tissue between the big moments is thin to nonexistent; for instance, viewers coming to the movie cold may be forgiven for wondering how a sketchy character like Ozymandias (Matthew Goode and his dreadful wandering accent) turns out to be so crucial to the proceedings. Snyder seems most fully engaged when the action is at its most conventional, as when Nite Owl and Silk Spectre rescue kids from a burning building or Rorschach fends off assailants in prison.

Watchmen does have its moments. The closest it comes to capturing the texture of the graphic novel is the lyrical sequence in which Dr. Manhattan, having exiled himself to Mars, relives the events that led to his transformation into a godlike being. There’s visual razzle-dazzle to spare: an arctic fortress, a demolished city, a massive clockwork gizmo floating above the surface of Mars. And Jackie Earle Haley is terrific – he knows he’s playing a Clint Eastwood character times five, and he brings the appropriate psycho gusto to lines like “I’m not locked in here with you – you’re locked in here with me!”

I’ll even give Snyder some credit for improving the ending slightly, which wasn’t difficult (blasphemy, I know, but I re-read the last two Watchmen issues last night just to refresh my memory and that is not good stuff). But I can’t think of too many “visionary” directors who would use so many obvious, overplayed music cues (the love scene set to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” is snicker-out-loud embarrassing) or cast so many nonentities in major roles (the listless Akerman is the worst offender). His approach is depressingly literal, and none of the scenes build on what has come before – they’re just meticulously reconstructed Scenes From Watchmen. It took more than 20 years to bring his most famous work to the big screen, and now Alan Moore isn’t the only one wondering why anybody bothered.

Dave Gibbons on "Watchmen-the-Movie": "Far Better Than Anyone Could Have Reasonably Imagined."

Phil Nugent — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:30:00 GMT

As you may have heard, Alan Moore, the writer of the 1986-1987 comic book series Watchmen, is so disenchanted with both Hollywood and DC Comics (the company that published the comic back when Moore was their official house genius) that he wants nothing to do with promoting Zack Snyder's movie version. It turns out that (as Michael Ordoña reports in the San Francisco Chronicle) Dave Gibbons, the other half of the comic's creative team, isn't so bashful. Gibbons says, "people say, 'Did you do any drawings for the Watchmen movie?' And I say, 'Thousands of them ... 20 years ago.' " Snyder has made a lot of noise about this being a faithful adaptation, and since movies and comics are both visual story-telling media, for Snyder that means duplicating the look of what was on the printed page, transferring it to the big screen, and setting it in motion. (That was basically his strategy with his movie version of Frank Miller and Lynn Varley's 300, too.) Gibbons, who calls the movie "far better than anyone could have reasonably imagined," says that "when you draw a comic book, you kind of have a movie in your head. You try to focus in and isolate one frame of what you're seeing. This is a bit like seeing that movie, but in the real world. You're going, 'That's that picture you drew; that's another picture you drew.' " Looking forward to watching it on DVD, he adds, "you can go back though and pause and look at the background because there's a lot of resonance in there. What Alan says about the graphic novel is, 'Everything in it means something. There's nothing put in there just to put it in.' And that's so with the movie as well. Even down to quite obscure background dressing, it all has some connection."

For his part, Snyder, who seems to have a healthy mutual-admiration thing going in with the cartoonist, says that Gibbons has "been a strong ally in bridging the gap" between the comic and the movie. Having Gibbons on hand as a consultant helped embolden Snyder in those decisions where he felt he had to deviate from the sacred text a bit. Gibbons says that "There's one scene in the film that isn't in the graphic novel that Zack wanted to see how I'd visualize. So I actually drew three new pages, which I got the original colorist, John Higgins, to color, so they looked absolutely authentic." Snyder and his production designer Alex McDowell also wanted to improve on the image of Dr. Manhattan's glass palace on the moon, so, the director says, "We hired this guy, he was like some atomic scientist, to design the original clockwork - it got modified from there, but it had this crazy scientific backing. There's a lot happening in that thing if you actually look at it. It's got this kind of corkscrew down the center - and in the director's cut you see it better, but when Manhattan and Laurie are walking up the stairs, there's no stairs in front of them. They come in under their feet, and as soon as they step off, they fold back into the machine." But for the most part, the chance to see Watchman come to life, looking much as Gibbons drew it, seems to have reduced the director to pure fanboy. One thing the production has given him has been the chance to have Gibbons at his ear, "from a creative standpoint, saying, 'Yeah. That's Watchmen. ' It's been really cool."

Related Stories: Alan Moore's Stealth Watchman Campaign

Watchmen: The Final Countdown

Precursors: The Incredibles (2004)

Nick Schager — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 18:00:00 GMT

There are plenty of superhero comics (and cinematic translations of them) which would ably prepare moviegoers for this weekend’s immensely anticipated Watchmen. Yet those itching for an inkling of what director Zack Snyder’s adaptation holds in store would be well served to first check out Brad Bird’s 2004 Pixar gem The Incredibles, which borrows quite a few elements from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ landmark 1986-1987 graphic novel. While Bird’s film is less an elaborate, self-conscious deconstruction of superhero fiction than a high-flying celebration of family, it nonetheless grounds its tale in a contemporary world where – as in Watchmen – do-gooders (here with bona fide paranormal powers) have been forced by an ungrateful public into retirement, and where they now attempt to live mundane lives while suppressing their urges to don tights and fight crime. Furthermore, Bird’s story features ordinary citizens driven to copy their costumed idols and a villain created, in part, from the decisions made by the righteous Mr. Incredible – similarities which clearly reveal this superlative kids film’s debt to Moore and Gibbons’ work. Whether Watchmen will be as fully realized as The Incredibles is a question soon to be answered, but there’s little doubt that Bird’s first CG-animated effort (following 1999’s The Iron Giant), equal parts heart, humor and exhilarating action, puts most of its superhero-movie brethren to shame.

Alan Moore’s Stealth “Watchmen” Campaign

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:00:00 GMT

You may have noticed that Alan Moore isn’t doing a lot of press in support of the Watchmen movie. If you’re familiar at all with Moore and his usual m.o., this doesn’t surprise you. Moore has distanced himself from pretty much all the previous adaptations of his work, including From Hell, V for Vendetta and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, so why should Watchmen be any different? But maybe we’re looking at this all wrong. Maybe Moore is actually employing some reverse psychology, some of the mind-bending trickeration that makes his comic book work so compelling, in order to convince us all to see the Watchmen movie. Let’s examine this new Wired interview with Moore for clues.

“I think that adaptation is largely a waste of time in almost any circumstances,” says Moore. “There probably are the odd things that would prove me wrong. But I think they'd be very much the exception. If a thing works well in one medium, in the medium that it has been designed to work in, then the only possible point for wanting to realize it on ‘multiple platforms,’ as they say these days, is to make a lot of money out of it. There is no consideration for the integrity of the work, which is rather the only thing as far as I'm concerned. I've got enough money to be comfortable. I live comfortably, I can pay the bills at the end of every month. I don't want a huge amount of money by diluting something that I happen to be rather proud of at its outset. That pretty much describes my attitude toward the idea of any of my works being realized in another form, really.”

OK, so maybe he’s building his way up to telling us that Watchmen is one of the rare exceptions? “With a comic book you can dart your eyes back to a previous panel, or you can flip back a couple of pages to check whether there is some reference in the dialog to a scene that happened earlier. You can also spend as much time as you want absorbing every image. This is especially true of something like Watchmen, where I was trying to take advantage of Dave Gibbons' brilliant capacity as a former surveyor for including incredible amounts of detail in every tiny panel, so we could choreograph every little thing. The little symbols and signs appearing in the background, every little touch could be choreographed to the last detail, and we knew that the audience—because they'd be reading at their own pace—would be able to study each panel and to take in these almost subliminal details. Even the best director in the world, even a person as talented as Terry Gilliam, could not possibly get that amount of information into a few frames of a movie.”

Surely the twist is coming now. He’s about to tell us how it could actually be done. “When we did meet—which was mainly just because I thought it would be really good fun to meet Terry Gilliam, and so it proved—Mr. Gilliam did ask me how I would go about translating Watchmen into a film, and I said to him, ‘If anybody had asked me, Terry, I would have advised them not to.’ I think Terry is an intelligent man and came to that conclusion himself. And I think he said something to that effect, that he thought it was something probably best left as a comic and shouldn't be made into a film.”

Oh, well. So much for that theory. If you want to read more from Moore, including some tidbits on his upcoming novel Jerusalem, check out the Wired interview.

Counting Down to “Watchmen”

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Can you feel the excitement building? Yeah, me neither, but there’s nothing we can do about it: Watchmen will be arriving in theaters two weeks from Friday and we’ll just have to ride out the hype together. It’s already proven too much for our regular Watchmen correspondent Leonard Pierce, who is currently receiving treatment in an undisclosed location, so I’m filling in for him today with the latest in Watchmania.

British tabloid The Sun has an exclusive clip from the film, which runs approximately 90 seconds and appears to have been chosen completely at random. “Superheroes battle to save men, women and children from a burning building in our explosive exclusive from Watchmen. Nite Owl II (PATRICK WILSON) and Silk Spectre II (MALIN AKERMAN) fly to the rescue in the hottest Superhero movie of the year.” It’s hard to believe they could have picked a more generic scene, but I’m sure they have their reasons.

“There is a press blackout on reviewing the Watchmen movie until March 6,” writes Matt Selman of Time.com magazine before going on to review the movie. Or as he puts it: “Don't worry, I'm not going to write a review of Watchmen. What I am going to write about is the emotional experience of seeing a piece of literature with which I have an intense personal connection LITERALLY COME TO LIFE. It's a serious freak-out… I'm not allowed to talk details, but let's just say it is astounding how much of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' graphic novel is in this movie… Sitting in that screening room and watching the visual world of the Watchmen movie unfold was one of the most powerful experiences I've ever had.” So we’ve got the pull-quote: “Astounding! Powerful! A serious freak-out!” But don’t worry, it’s not a review.

Here’s the trailer for Tales from the Black Freighter, the adaptation of the comic-within-the-comic that will be released on March 24:

Finally, if you’re just trying to kill time before the movie opens on March 6, why not play the online videogame? It’s supposedly replicating a 1977 arcade game, but it looks suspiciously 1983 to me.

Related:
We Ain't Watching THIS "Watchmen"
Watchmen 2?

FOX Lawyers: The Smartest Men on the Cinder

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:45:00 GMT

Movie nerds like myself, who have invested what little remains of their self-identity in the remote possibility of Watchmen not being terrible, were thrown into a major tizzy a few months ago when FOX Studios, which claims to own the rights to any and all future movie adaptations of the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons superhero classic, moved to legally block Warner Brothers from releasing the Zack Snyder film.

Many felt this would be an epic moral battle where FOX exerted their rights in the labyrinth of complex entertainment laws to protect their rightful property regardless of future plans, while fending off the ire of pissed-off fans; others thought that it would be a titanic legal showdown where Warner allayed incomprehensible facts and figures in a desperate attempt to prove themselves on the correct side of the law and get their movie out on time. Others, like your humble correspondent, figured that it was basically just FOX making a bunch of noise, based on a slender bit of legalese, in order to wring a fat payday out of what's widely predicted to be one of 2009's top-grossing films. As Mania.com is reporting, well...one of us was right.

FOX and Warner Brothers are both reporting "productive talks" in the attempt to settle this thorny legal issue, which means that both company's lawyers kept writing dollar amounts on a piece of paper until they arrived at a figure that was mutually more than you will ever make in your life. In case you're really curious, ugly details of the whole money-grubbing mess -- in which producer Larry Gordon accuses FOX of pushing the entire thing to make a buck -- can be read at the Hollywood Reporter's legal blog. What was it someone once said about everyone having their hands in the next guy's pockets?

We Watch the Watchmen...and Watch, and Watch, and Watch...

Screengrab Review: "Watchmen"

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 19:00:00 GMT

No, unfortunately, your humble correspondent, despite his long history of being obsessed with the upcoming Zack Snyder adaptation of Alan Moore's brilliant Watchmen comic, was not one of those recently invited to view 26 minutes of the footage at a special preview screening. Nor was I numbered among those who got to see the entire film at a preview in Portland, to decidedly mixed reviews. Why I wasn't included despite my spooky fixation on the movie is unclear; it might have something to do with the fact that I've predicted the movie will suck raw pork knuckles since it was first announced. Whatever the case, I haven't seen the damn movie yet, and so that's not what I'm going to be reviewing today.

What I'm going to be reviewing today isn't even, technically, a movie. I'm not sure what it is. Its producers call it a "motion comic". It's not an animated film, exactly, nor is it a motion picture, nor is it a webcomic or anything else that we have the critical language to talk about. It's also not playing at a theater near you: it's available (the first three chapters, at least) exclusively as a download from the iTunes music store. Even though it isn't music, either. So what is it? It's basically the entire comic, written by Moore and drawn by Dave Gibbons, panel by panel, with a very basic, stripped-down sort of cutout animation. It's also narrated, but not dramatized -- that is, the dialogue is read aloud, in a sort of dramatic fashion, by character actor Tom Stechschulte. But he's the only member of the cast, which means it's not really a dramatic adaptation of the story -- or any kind of adaptation at all, really. It's almost like a book on tape of a comic book, only it movies. Kinda.

While it may be difficult to describe what Watchmen: The Motion Comic (no, really, that's what it's called) is, it's a lot easier to say whether it's any good: no. Since I have nothing to compare it against, lacking any other "motion comics" and not even sure what is supposed to be accomplished by them other than to serve as a promotional tool for the comic and the movie, I can't honestly say if it succeeds or fails on its own terms, because I don't know what those terms are. But I do know it's really boring. The only original element is a soundtrack that virtually defines the word "perfunctory", and while many people have pointed out how ridiculous it is to hear Stechschulte performing the female voices, equally ridiculous is hearing him perform any of the voices when there's no particular reason to do so. The animation, such as it is, can be clever, but it doesn't really add anything to the illustration -- it's too limited to do so. If you've always wanted to pay someone fifty dollars to get the same effect as reading a book to yourself out loud in the living room, this is the...uh...book? Movie? Comic? whatever...for you. Otherwise, the whole thing is pointless on a rather grand scale; take half the fifty and go buy a copy of the original Watchmen comic. You'll still have enough money to see the book, and enough to spare on a bottle of gin to forget this ludicrous endeavor was ever launched.

Still Watching the Watchmen...and the DVD Market, Too

"Watchmen": More Than Just Buying Dave Gibbons a New Boat

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:15:00 GMT

Now that Dark Knight is finally going to be opening nationwide, we can finally return to the natural occupation of the comic book fan: deranged obsession over Zack Snyder's upcoming movie adaptation of Watchmen.

As we've discussed before, one of the problems with the recent wave of successful motion picture adaptations of comic book properties is that while they've made tons of money for the producers of the movies, it hasn't worked the other way around. Comic book companies have slavered to get their properties on screen in recent years, in the hopes that audiences turned on by the big-screen adventures of Batman or the X-Men will follow those characters into their local comic book shop. This is especially important in these days of direct sales, when comic book sales are at a historical low, and people speak in non-hysterical terms about the demise of the industry. So it's worth noting that the millions in profit made my comic book movies hasn't generally been matched by a notable increase in comic book sales, one comic is bucking that trend: Watchmen.

One of the earliest comic book mini-series to take advantage of the 'graphic novel collection' format in the 1980s, Watchmen was already one of the most successful titles in DC's history, despite its indie sensibilities, adult storytelling, and complex, morally difficult story. But with the movie adaptation getting ever closer, its sales have shot way up -- and DC plans to capitalize on the interest in spades. They'll be promoting an aggressive three-pronged marketing attack to ensure that anyone sucked in by the movie to the degree that they absolutely must have the comic will be able to get one with not trouble. The triple attack includes a retailer discount for any shops that wish to carry the original softcover graphic novel; a new hardbound edition for collectors; and a deluxe edition featuring making-of material, rare artwork, and other bonus materials, the comic book equivalent of a fancy Criterion Collection disc.

Of course, to a hardcore Watchmen fan, this marketing push has an added benefit: unlike the film, with which he has disassociated himself, leaving all the profits to go to artist Dave Gibbons, writer Alan Moore still gets a share of the money from sales of the comic. So when the movie is released, those of you who still have a raggedy old copy of the softback might want to consider purchasing a movie tie-in edition...

More Goddamn Watchmen

We Watch the Watchmen...and Watch...and Watch....

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Boy, it seems like forever since we've had any Watchmen news, doesn't it? Well, don't worry, fellow slavering comic book fans: we fully intend to completely suck every tiny bit of magic out of the movie by relentlessly cramming every bit of Watchmen-related insider gossip down your gullets until, by the time the movie finally comes out sometime around the crack of doom, you will feel like you have already seen it eighteen times and be utterly sick of it. You're welcome.

Let's take the bad news first: it was announced this week that the movie will be scored by Tyler Bates, whose bombastic work has failed to impress us in everything from (surprise, surprise) 300 to exploitation fare aplenty like Half Past Dead and Alien Avengers II. Zack Snyder's latest blog post from the set brings us a look at some of the film's storyboards, allowing us to imagine what the comic might look like if it was drawn by our rather untalented fourteen-year-old cousin instead of by Dave Gibbons. And in news that should surprise no one but disappoint everyone, Alan Moore has made it official that he will continue his policy of having absolutely nothing to do with any motion picture made using his material as a source. "They must’ve learned something from the V for Vendetta debacle," he tells Wizard magazine. "I got a piece of paper a couple of months ago saying, 'I, the undersigned, hereby give you permission to take my name off of the film and to send my money to Dave Gibbons.' So I sent that back to them all signed and sealed, which means that now I don’t have to rant and spew about the film."

Still, there's a few reasons to be pleased: set designer Dawn Brown reports that while substantial liberties will be taken, at least a few of the costumes in the Watchmen film will be completely faithful to Gibbons' orginal design. And, in the best — and most shocking — Watchmen news of all, sales of the original graphic novel, widely considered the greatest superhero story ever written, have risen dramatically since the film adaptation was announced, so much so that it actually became the best-selling graphic novel of 2007. This is unexpectedly good news; the more people who read the original work, the better, and comic book movies often are predicted to cause a swell in sales of their source material, but up until now, it's generally never happened. And, by the way, it ensures that Alan Moore is going to make some money off of the Watchmen movie, whether he wants to or not. . .

More Goddamn Watchmen

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 18:30:00 GMT

Honestly, folks, we don't know why we're so obsessed with Watchmen news lately. We'll stop as soon as the movie comes out and is terrible, we promise. In the meantime, we're obviously not the only people who can't get enough of the hype, because when Jeffrey Dean Morgan was at a press junket promoting P.S. I Love You, all anyone wanted to talk to him about was his role as the Comedian in the upcoming comic adaptation. Morgan reports that the sets, which have only been seen in a few photos released by director Zack Snyder, are "so true to the book it's insane", discussed the challenge of playing a morally reprehensible character like the Comedian, and vows that the film is "going to change the way people look at movies". Meanwhile, artist Dave Gibbons, who drew the original Watchmen graphic novel (and who, because author Alan Moore maintains a policy of having nothing to do with film adaptations of his work, is the only creator involved in the movie), visited the set for the first time, describing the sensation of seeing the characters he helped bring into existence walking around and talking as "the most surreal experience of my life". Gibbons, who Morgan reports was tearing up at seeing the sets, keeps mum about the specifics of the film, as have most people working on the set, but claims that among the cast and crew there is a "palpable commitment to do this right". Only 15 months to go...