AudioShocker

The blogosphere is buzzing about Zack Snyder’s “faithful” adaptation of the Watchmen mini series into a film. When I say mini series, I mean it. Watchmen is, in fact, a collection of single issues as opposed to an original novel-length work. But “The Most Celebrated Comic Book Mini Series of All Time” isn’t as impressive, so I understand why it’s universally referred to as a graphic novel. Watching this movie is supposed to be like the comic moving before your eyes (though they already did that with Warner Premiere’s Motion Comics and it looks like poop).

Truthfully, it all leaves me feeling cold. If the movie is just a direct adaptation of the comic, then who gives a shit? I already read Watchmen. It was great. I don’t need to read it again, let alone sit as a captive audience member for some ungodly length of time in a movie theater. By the way, three fucking hours??! Snyder, are you out of your gourd? I sat thru 2.5 hours of The Dark Poop and I almost screamed in pain after 1.5 hours. If Watchmen is going to be 180 minutes, then split it in half ala Kill Bill so I can go home for a couple months in the middle.

There’s a fine balance between changing too much and changing too little. Elektra? Too much. Sin City? Too little. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer? Perfect. The personalities were fully intact. Tim Story and company nailed the essence of the characters, so it was okay to go places they’ve never gone before in the comics. Galactus is essentially a cloud, but Surfer, the F4 crew, Alicia, and Doom all had it right so I didn’t really mind. Frankie Raye got the short end of the adaptation stick, and Surfer was impassioned by Susan instead of Alicia. But those minor points were easily overshadowed by what worked. X-Men and X2 were the same way. Batman and Batman Returns were too. And viewers know it when they get the real deal. Just this past spring we had the Iron Man movie, a near-perfect concoction that only changed what needed to be changed and left the rest in tact.

On the flip side, if you’re going to change TOO MUCH I think you should go balls to the wall. For example, Batman: The Movie from the late 1960s. It’s a ludicrous mashup of characters and themes into a whole new slew of Caped Crusader stew. The movie becomes its own creation as opposed to an adaptation. Blade was like this as well, seeing as how the film’s foundation in comics was purely conceptual. Nonetheless, it worked.

Zack Snyder has gone around giving fan jobs [Get it??? It's like a hand job but it's a fan job! I just made that up.] in interviews saying that it’ll be a success if the Watchmen movie is just one long advertisement for the comic. PUH-LEASE, Snyder! Quit trying to get fans off with your pandering. Make your own creative work and stand by it! Sure, I wanted to see Wolverine as a murderous hairy midget, but Bryan Singer sold me on the suave Hugh Jackman. Yeah, I would have liked Galactus as a purple giant flying on a humongous Bowflex, but I understand how silly that would look. The cloud was fine. There is so much about the Watchmen mini series that is confusing and bizarre, and I don’t need to see it all on screen like it came right out of the comics.

I don’t want the current upswing of moviegoer good faith in comic book adaptations to die out. Literally putting comics on the screen could kill it. I think superhero movies need to have their own legs and internal logic. There’s definite difference between what looks good hand-drawn on a printed page and what works on celluloid.