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Dave Gibbons On the Forthcoming Watchmen Movie
An anonymous reader writes "Den Of Geek has been talking to comics legend Dave Gibbons about the upcoming transition of the Watchmen from the comic book to the silver screen. 'There are hardcore fans out there who'll be satisfied with nothing less than a word-for-word, line-for-line, scene-for-scene recreation of the comic book. I didn't believe that was ever going to happen.'" It's a rather short interview, but Gibbons addresses some interesting elements of both the movie and comic-book worlds.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Every normal person I know seems to believe V for Vendetta was a great movie. Maybe adapting a good book into a good movie, even at the expense of diverging from the original work, isn't all bad.
"Rorschach's rampant homophobia, for example, or the original Miss Jupiter's deep and abiding love for her would-be rapist, are uncomfortable but central topics in the book."
Seeing as I barely noticed these things, I have to disagree that they are "central topics". It would be exceedingly easy to tell the important parts of the story while leaving most of that out, especially Rorschach's homophobia.
"Jon's gradual shedding of his costume down to full-frontal nudity, as he gradually distances himself from humanity, is also an important progression."
That I agree with. In the case of your previous examples, their absence would change little. This example was not only obvious, but necessary. Without removing the "deus ex machina" that Jon was, the story would have been impossible to tell.
I still think that stupid "tachyon" garbage Veidt used was a major flaw in the story. I lost a bit of respect for Moore for using technobabble and hand waving to get around Jon's immense power.
Shameless plug -- I pulled out the Black Freighter story into its own "comic". I think it works well as a standalone story. See it here:
http://boredomfestival.wordpress.com/2007/12/11/tales-of-the-black-freighter/
I have the original, serialized script by Ellison as published in Asimov's magazine. It's available in book form from Amazon.
If you read the Asimov stories and the script, there's no way on Earth you could construe the train wreck movie to anything the Good Doctor had created.
Susan Calvin's character was the one of the more horrible missteps in the movie. The character in the movie and in the books/stories share name only. Completely different characters. Susan Calvin NEVER WORE MAKEUP as was told in "Liar" and was in fact, an object of ridicule, pity, or fear, depending on who you were at US Robotics and Mechanical Men. Certainly not a "looker" like Bridget Monyahan. Hell, she didn't have the "balls" the Susan Calvin in the books had.
And excuse me, but did we even get a HINT of Donovan and Powell? Nope. Nada. Zilch.
No...this was a mess. Were Asimov still alive, he would have been very disappointed.
I am my own gestalt.
"That's very nice. I always thought the movie was badly understood. There was an article in The Washington Post when it came out that was not written by a movie critic. One of the editors wrote it saying that this was a neo-Nazi movie and I was promoting Fascism. That same article was published in all the European newspapers. When I went to do the publicity tour in Europe, everybody was already looking through that lens. The Washington Post is not a reliable newspaper anyway but they said the film was written by a neo-Nazi or a Fascist and directed by one. I strongly disagree with that. I saw it as a critique of American society. It is done in an ironic way but not pushing it very hard, which I hate because then it becomes dogmatic and becomes something else other than filmmaking. It was more that the novel by Robert Heinlein is very militaristic and has a tendency to be pro-Fascist a bit. We took a lot of cues out of American society at that time, which was [President Bill] Clinton, not realizing that a couple years later this whole situation would be much more acute and now you can put the film as a blueprint over Iraq or Afghanistan. But of course, I didn't know of bin Laden at that time." -- Paul Verhoeven
So the satire of some future militaristic state is realy a satire about our own present.
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. --Niels Bohr
And homophobia? Would be more interesting if they showed his fear of women...