Movies and the comic books that hate them.

my only hope for the movie is that it somewhat resembles the graphic novel that way impressionable young ones say, "Hey I have seen this movie and I thought it was pretty fantastic, if i read the book maybe i will know what happens in the obvious sequel." does that sound like a stretch to anyone else?

Live action movie is not the right medium for comic books. Animation is the way to go. It's a lot cheaper and you can do a lot more with it. The Paul Dini/Bruce Timm animated series are far superior to all other live action adaptations of comic books, they're far superior to the majority of tv shows and movies out there today.

OK slow down and lets back this up a bit. I can appreciate you reading Watchmen for the first time Ramon. I loved it nearly 20 years ago when I first got into comics. But, to call it the Holy Grail of Comics? That is a bit, no that is a lot too much! I am sorry but it is not the book I think of when I think of 'sophisticated' it was a pioneer book to say the least when it came out. Yes, it holds the test of time, barely. Yes, it is a great read.
With all that said I feel the need to voice my opinion about some of the broad statements you make here.
1) Alan Moore never has nor never will, be a cash cow for Hollywood. period. End of story! Nothing at all supports this! There hasn't been ONE good movie based on his work and 'V' won't do any better.
2) As far as the movie production of the Watchmen movie, there isn't one! It fell into production HELL in June. It has no script, Director, cast, release date. Nothing. I mean nothing!!!!!!!!
3) To hope that a comic book movie is as good as the film adaption is setting yourself up for disappointment every time! I covered this a while back about the Superman Movie pretty well. The fact is they don't make movies for a few thousand people. Not a few thousand fans of Alan Moore, not anyone! Never let the main stream media justify to you that reading comics are cool! Just enjoy what you enjoy!
4) Now I am sure I will get bashed for this by some but Alan Moore is not a GOD in the Comic book World. As a matter a fact, a few good stories doesn't mean he is a great writer. Now before the bashing begins let me state that there are a handful of his stories I enjoy, but thats it. Like I said earlier just because he is a pioneer doesn't make him or any other pioneer great just because they did something different (like the Beatles for example).
5) Back to your original statement about there only being 4 or 5 comic book movies that were good having read the comic book. I would like to add that the X men movies were fantastic MOVIES. I have only really enjoyed the books when Morrison wrote them, and I have been trying to like them for 10 years! But, there are some comic book movies like both of those and of course Road to Perdition that were great. And I can name 10 more that were better then TLOEG and From Hell.
All and all, Alan Moore just doesn't do it for me. I don't like him as the person that I know of from the media(unless you know him personally thats all you have) and I don't think he has been the person to sustain the medium over the last 20 years like Morrison has.
Like I said before its shows that you enjoyed Watchmen for the first time, and I can appreciate that but don't go overboard with your man crush on Alan Moore because he will break your Heart! (kidding there of course)

I know this wasn't so much directed at me but I have to step up and make a post on this.



Watchmen has been used as required reading in a number of college courses and recently made it pretty far up the list of "best works of fiction" of the 20th century. The was an Entertainment Weekly thing or something, I wish to god I could remember where this was exactly and link it but I do think I remember reading it at The Beat. In my honest opinion, it transcends the medium. Not that the medium is bad, I would pay the same respect to any truly inspired work in any format.



I think with all the adaptations of comics (which has been a cash influx for Hollywood for number of years now) the name that keeps coming up is Alan Moore. But so far the adaptations are either too dense to be effectively translated or the subject too much obviously for the Hollywood guys to really understand. That's not an excuse for the Wachowskis since they know the medium so well, but they went and changed up "V For Vendetta" anyway.



Actually if you had clicked the link in the initial post you would have seen the story that has been floating around for weeks now which is that since Paramount defaulted on their attempt at the film, WB is picking it up to have a go at it. Speculation on how well they will fare and whether we should get our hopes up when all of Alan's works have been mishandled is the very subject of this thread.



That's the thing. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was a film made to "appeal to the mainstream" and it completely missed the point. The original work was a work of genious, why didn't they just follow that? It's only natural to hope they will try their best to capture the essence of Watchmen isn't it? There's a reason the book had been so revered and much lauded among the audiences it has touched... it's that good. How many other books have hit that many right notes so often? This is a work by a man who has an inherent understanding of the medium and it shows.



First up, The Beatles were the single most amazing thing to hit music in a very long time. Whether it was done by design or accident, there's no way you are going to trivialize their contribution to music to me. The same with Alan Moore. The man knows comics like no other I have ever seen. And his work has set the trends of the entire industry for over two decades in my opinion. His SWAMP THING paved the way for Vertigo. His MIRACLEMAN opened the door on superhero to be examined, reexamined, and hit with every single angle you had never thought possible. The effect of this work is incalculable. WATCHMEN, again, decontructionism taken to the Nth degree, but was very rarely duplicated and never properly followed up on. Let's see, V FOR VENDETTA was amazingly prophetic to our 9/11 world. 1963 tore the roof off on all the retro works that followed. Heck, DC even did a whole Silver Age retro event! SUPREME was also a tremendous work that hit a lot of metafiction beats between "dark" comics and getting past those and also comics reinheriting what made them work in the first place, much of which Jeph Loeb has gone to great lengths to try to duplicate in his SUPERMAN work and very, very much of what we are seeing now in INFINITE CRISIS. I don't think we've seen the full effect of his ABC work on the industry yet, but the fact that a book like PROMETHEA was even made at all is a testament to the man's creativity and complex storytelling.

Ha, so yeah, I would argue with the underestimation on how well Moore understands and predicts the industry.



Again, not Moore's fault his work isn't easily translated to the cinematic formulas. That's why he's fault so hard to keep his name off of the movie credits and refuses the royalties. I really liked the X-MEN movies as well but they were still problematic. Every time I see that wacky high speed motorcycle ride by Wolverine in the first movie I literally cringe.



Hey, no fair! I already made the man crush joke on Ramon. Oh wait, was that for me? Ha!

If Moore isn't your thing that's cool. I know there are a few people out there who prefer Oasis to the Beatles *shudder* and that's totally a matter of preference and opinion, but I think saying that Morrison has driven the industry is being a little too kind to the wacky Scotsman. I love Grant's work but it is far from pristine. There's the little problem (which he wholey admits when he shows up at the end of Animal Man) of his not knowing how to end his overall storylines so he just blows everything up and kills off his characters. Think for a minute and you will know it to be true. ;D His energy and excitement I would definately like to see more of in the comic business, but I don't think he will ever take on the elevated status of Moore in the minds of the comic community. Moore's like a step below Eisner at this point and I think that qualifies him for sainthood or his beard to be knighted or something.

And again, this is all my opinion as well. I enjoyed your points very much, John, and it obviously gave me a lot to thing about judging from the length of this post. Ha!

www.alanmoorefansite.com/news/index.html#timemag
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's graphic novel, Watchmen, recently made Time Magazine's All-Time 100 Novels list. The list, chosen by Time critics Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo, chose from any English language novel published anywhere in the world since 1923, the year that TIME Magazine began.

Of Watchmen, Grossman says:

"Told with ruthless psychological realism, in fugal, overlapping plotlines and gorgeous, cinematic panels rich with repeating motifs, Watchmen is a heart-pounding, heartbreaking read and a watershed in the evolution of a young medium."
To see the listing, click here.

Watchmen also made Time Magazine's All-Time 10 Graphic Novels list. It is the only graphic novel to also be included in both listings.

Yes! Thanks for the link, Ramon.

Roman's, please don't pick on the Beetles. KSM is right. The Beetles were not just revolutionary but they were evolutionary in rock and roll. No one, or one group has have achieved what they had.

However I do think you are correct that it is dangerous to compare a comic or graphic novel to it's movie. I've always thought of it as trying to compare an apple with an orange. I stopped comparing right after the second Stephen King movie came out and I realized that the books will always be better.

As for Moore and Morrison. I fall on the side of gl and ksm on that too. They're hasn't been much that Morrison has done that I can say was honestly great. I don't understand people's love of his run on the X-Men. I had already read those story's twenty years ago when Clairmont did the first.

Just my two cents. Happy New Year Everyone!!! ;D

Morrison, in my opinion, has had his ups and his downs as a writer. He's had his good bits, he's had his bad bits. As for his run on new X-Men...well, the same goes there, imho. Although, I will say that I do love what he did for Emma Frost. But that's really about it.

And sadly, yeah, it is true that the book is almost always going to be better than the movie. I've yet to see one movie that has surpassed the book in...well...everything.

((And as a sidenote)) Happy New Year!

i dont get why everyone says the book will be better than the movie? i never said it would be and neither has anyone else, oh well. actually i think some movies can be better than movies, like once i had to read some movie turned novel of the karate kid. and well... the book sucked. i think it really depends on which came first. for example the comic versions of comic versions. like the comic book based on catwoman or the comic based on x 2, or the comic based on batman begins, or the comic based on spiderman the movie. the list goes on and i am pretty sure the movies would be better... well maybe not catwoman but still.

OK let me clarify a couple of things about my take on Morrison and the Beatles.

1) I wont deny that the Beatles had a huge impact on music which effects can be seen today. But they were influenced by the music that came before them. They didn't invent rock and roll. But built on the foundation that was already out there.

2) Grant Morrison and his body of work has had a greater impact on me and what I have read in comics ever since Arkham Asylum came out. Moore hasn't done that for me.
My hot button has always been saying things like only one group, artist, or indidual single handily shaped a certain medium. It isn't true. Never has been nor will it ever be. Everyone draws on influences and they pick and choose what that will be when they put something out there. But thats my opinion so I could be wrong!

This is fun to watch. I'll comment fully later

People can't wrap their heads around Alan Moores work! What the hell is up with V for Vendetta? Transvestites was it? He/shes? From Hell is damn near trippy and most of his other works are convoluted pieces of fantasticness (real word ). The Industry has dumbed down his works into popcorn films and action adventures because they don't understand the core stories at the centre of the books.

From Hell, a very inventive and morbid piece which I've read and seen, was boiled down to two aspects. Jack the Ripper and Johnny Depp's psychic abilities! Psychic films are a dime a dozen, and this film, based on a very special and innocative comic, should have been special, but because of the Hollywood touch it was basically like many films that have been released already, but then they told the audience it was a comic book adaption, and it's basically lying to the viewers. It's a name and a situation, but none of the original cleverness.

Moore's Watchmen was both a trend setter and an innovative piece of work, something that set the trend for the entire 90s splurge of real world comics, and it made us forget the real reason we read comics... Escapism. It was a fantastic piece, one which I enjoy and read every two months or so, but it was something that isn't unique anymore. It made everything 'real world' and everything had to be gritty, and that's not what comics are supposed to be. They're supposed to be fantastic places of flying men and women who prevent crime and revel in the joy of the act, but this new book made later stories be filled with characters doubting their powers, doubting what they do and it just made everything boring. Only recently has this style been cut down drastically, and I think that we should really concentrate on the super part of being superhuman, because if we wanted real life, we'd watch the news...

Watchmen has the true potential to be a fantastic film. But it can't just be one film, it just won't work like that. You need to use everything from the film, not just cherry picking what Hollywood think is good for the screen. You need a writer who knows the story, who knows that we as viewers want something big. Something special. This story is the story of our generation, and not an age generation, but every generation of comic book reader and fan. This brought us out to the mainstream when formely we just were in the shadows of society... But fans of any form of media read this and it opened the doors to new readers, and when I try to get my friends into comics, this is the one I give them. And The Authority. They love the violence.

Oh, and as an end note... I won't bring in The Beatles. They were good, but they were no The Who.

To split all manner of hairs here, I would start by saying that the Beatles started as a little rock/pop band but went on cover so manner different genres and approaches to putting songs together that I would rather say they covered every aspect of modern pop music. The beginning and end of pop if you will. That's why they've appealled to so many people for so long.

Led Zeppelin on the other hand would be the penultimate rock band. The Who were good and all but c'mon, they were no Zep.

I wanna see it....nuff said. I aint gonna screw around saying how they are gonna screw it up Ill see it then comment. Thing is maybe im not a real comic fan as I like pretty much most comic films (I say most....not the old Batmen or Catwoman, blah,blah) but thats coz I like the comics and thus the films. I really try not to nit pick as I realise it wont be exactly what I want as I didnt make it. No offence to you guys coz some of you sound like the real hardcore fans (RESPECT!!!!) But I cant bring my self to mock a film if I love the characters.....im weird.