"Who Watches The Watchmen Producers?"

Finally finished re-reading that Watchmen TPB collection last night. It was perhaps even a little better the second time around. After reading several inks which I Googled about the forthcoming film, however, I'm not quite so enthusiastic to see it (although I'm sure I will).

Unlike series such as Sin City where its creator (Frank Miller) had a hand in the film's production and could keep a good eye on the script and costuming to make sure it followed the original concept, Alan Moore has so alienated himself from any filmed versions of his work due to total dissatisfaction in the way they've turned out.

I can't say I blame him after seeing what has happened to many of his creations. Even though I enjoyed such movies as John Constantine and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen on their own as entertaining movies, they were each a far cry from the original material (V for Vendetta, I felt, was the closest of the Moore adaptations).

But I can't totally agree with Moore's philosophy against film adaptations of his work simply because I know if I, personally, had written material which was slated for film adaptation, I'D be right there argueing each and every point to try to make sure that it was being handled correctly rather than simply signing over any rights to it and "washing his hands" of the entire matter.

Dave Gibbons, the artist of The Watchmen series, stated that he felt the film couldn't be made correctly due to it being dated material, and true, there are a lot of aspects from the original series that have little or no reverance to current world events. In the limited series we saw such figures as John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, and The Soviet Union was invading various countries bringing the planet on the verge of a world-wide nucleur war. Today that emphasise would probably have to shift to "the middle east" in terms of nucleur treats to our civilization (or possibly, even the "far east").

The series still holds well as a classic story, though, and time pieces still work for me in films. If they didn't I wouldn't enjoy movies made of mid-evil knights, 20th. century wars, or any material which referred to past historical or fictional events. We aren't fighting the nazis anymore, but it doesn't make a film such as Cassablanca any less important or enjoyable to watch.

At first I thought the costuming looked pretty good on the various WM characters, but on second looks of these I find flaws which I feel are pretty annoying. The masks (and other points) have been altered to give certain characters in the story more of an up-dated feel, and all of this is really as unnecessary as the molded nipples on the Batman's armor. It looks like just one producer could get this right? You take the original character, you LOOK at the costuming, you tell the costume department to create an exact reproduction of the outfit. How difficult can that be?

Time will be the only way I'll be able to tell how I'll ultimately feel about The Watchman movie (slated to be released in March of next year).