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'Bourne' Director to take on Watchmen
Here's one of those mixed blessing stories: Paul Greengrass, the director of the Bourne Supremacy has been tapped to direct a film based on The Watchmen, one of the greatest comics ever made. No word on if Paul plans to add Tom Sawyer to the cast.
One of Watchmen's great strengths is its interconnections. How is Hollywood NOT going to screw that up? I mean, movies like Memento are a rarity.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
"Darren Aronofsky? I'm on the phone NOW!" said Law, clearly excited. "Adrian Veidt, King of Kings!" And then, as if to show off his Watchmen fanboy credentials, he whispered conspiratorially. "I'm tattooed with Rorschach, did you know that?"
The thing that worries me is the "based on" bit - just as "StarShip Troopers" was "based on" the book by Robert Heinlein - in that some of the character names were used, but that's about it.
If Watchmen the movie is "based on" Watchmen the graphic novel in the same way, I suggest installing seat belts in all the theaters to prevent the audience from being pulled from their seats by the suction of the movie.
If, on the other hand, this movie is a reasonably faithful rendition of the graphic novel... then count me in.
www.eFax.com are spammers
November 23,2004
This city fears me, because I have seen its true face. The Hollywood people want to tell my story. They think they can tell my story? No one can tell my story. No one except me.
In the past there were men who could tell my story. Men like my father or President Eisenhower. But that was before the lawyers and the pornographers and the bleeding heart teachers took over.
Now the smell of their corruption is in the air, polluting everything with their filth and their pornography and their so-called civil liberties.
But their reign will not last. There will be war soon. A Great War sewwping over everything like a storm. And it will wash away the stench and corruption of Hollywood, Las Vegas, New York and all the other cesspools of this country.
And, in their desperation, the people will look up to me an beg me for their help.
And I will look down and I will say
"No."
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
I would have to say that LOTR is an easier project than Watchmen, given the time and budget to do LOTR properly (which Jackson had). The problem is that Hollywood can't do subtlety. This is quite obvious in Jackson's changes to LOTR - he took all the subtlety out. Gandalf's battles aren't about inspiring fire in the hearts of his compatriots anymore, they're about fireballs and mind control. The confusing reinforcements of the novel are replaced with the inexplicable but cool Big Elven Army (that was the only change I really despised). Honestly, I couldn't care less about Arwen's expanded role - most of that stuff was Tolkien canon taken from the Silmarillion anyways, so its not like Jackson pulled it from his ass.
Anyhow, the point is that LOTR isn't very subtle. Its high fantasy - its about epic battles and heroic characters and a beautiful, detailed setting. All a director needed to do it right was a huge budget, willingness to do it in a superlong form (trilogy of long films), and solid, generic talent. The fact is that Hollywood is so barren of those gifts that we didn't expect to see that kind of product. LOTR has most of the elements of a popcorn war movie - Hollywood can do those. Jackson made it right by keeping much of the story, rather than fucking around with it like directors are quick to do. This is why we like Jackson - not just that he's a very talented director, but that he kept the fucking around to a minimum.
Watchmen is a whole other matter. This isn't a case of "Hollywood won't adapt it right because Hollywood likes to shit on our dreams" like LOTR. A Watchmen would be really, really _hard_ to do. This book is full of very twisted subtleties and undercurrents. If you just did a slavish reproduction of the comic like the first two Harry Potter films or the Dune miniseries - which is the best we can hope for - it would be a failure, because you'd miss many of the underlying themes and meanings of the comic. Terry Gilliam admitted this himself.
LOTR needs a good action director who cares about the source material to be done properly. Watchmen needs more than that - Watchmen demands genius.