Who Watches the Movie Studios?
Entertainment Weekly reports on the behind-the-scenes struggles over whether or not a 21st century audience will be in sync with the 1980s setting and Cold War themes of Watchmen:
In 2005, [Paul[ Greengrass was deep into preproduction on a present-day, war-on-terror-themed adaptation by David Hayter (X-Men), when a regime change at Paramount Pictures led to its demise. Enter Warner Bros., which acquired the rights in late 2005. Snyder was working on 300 for the studio at the time, and he was alarmed when he heard about the deal. After some soul-searching, his fear of seeing a bad Watchmen movie trumped his fear of trying to make a great one. ”They were going to do it anyway,” he says. ”And that made me nervous.” Over many months, and many meetings, Snyder persuaded Warner Bros. to abandon the Greengrass/Hayter script and hew as faithfully as possible to the comic. The key battles: retaining the ’80s milieu, keeping Richard Nixon (Moore did consider using an era-appropriate Ronald Reagan, but worried it would alienate American readers), and preserving the villain-doesn’t-pay-for-his-crimes climax. ”It was clear that Zack felt an intense obligation to the fans and the book,” says Warner Bros. Picture Group president Jeff Robinov. ”There was definitely a conversation about the best way to make it contemporary and relevant to today. Zack felt the best way was to go back to the roots of the novel.”
Of course now with the conflict in the Caucuses, Cold War themes seem relevant again — problem solved. Could Warner Bros. be manipulating the entire situation, using Georgia and Russia as pawns to advance its own nefarious agenda? Only on blogs can this sort of irresponsible speculation be meaningfully advanced.
38 Responses to “Who Watches the Movie Studios?”
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August 15th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
I very much admire your work, but I think you’ll be more credible if you remember how to spell the region in which Georgia is located.
Here’s a simply mnemonic device: The Caucasus counts; caucuses don’t.
August 15th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
I don’t understand how that mnemonic device works. It doesn’t help one to recall the correct spelling of either word in the slightest. It just reminds one that there is a difference.
I’m glad the Watchmen adaptation will be retaining the un-Hollywoodesque ending, in which the villain isn’t punished for his crimes. That was my biggest concern upon hearing that they were making a film adaptation.
August 15th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
I have mixed feelings about this movie. Trailer looks cool, and I certainly respect Snyder’s feelings about the source material. Watchmen is one of the few graphic novels where “novel” actually trumps “graphic.” (Apparently someone at Time noticed that too.) My concerns have less to do with Snyder or Watchmen so much as the troubling tendency of good novels to become bad movies. The qualities that make for a good novel tend not to be translatable to a purely visual medium — and Watchmen fits into that category. (Yes, I am aware of the irony.)
So I’m keeping an open mind. I’ll hope for the best, and wait to see what happens. Certainly, The Dark Night has set a precedent for complex film making based on comparable source material. Maybe Watchmen will equal it, or even surpass it. (I guess V For Vendetta also offers some reason for optimism here.)
In the meantime, I’m resisting the temptation to reread the book. I know I’ll enjoy the movie more on its own terms that way.
August 15th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
You say this like it’s a joke, but of course, Rebecca Anderson, who lobbies for Time Warner, took a prominent position in the McCain campaign, as did Randy Scheunemann, who lobbies for the government of Georgia. It’s unfortuantely all too plausible that, “Warner Bros.[is] manipulating the entire situation, using Georgia and Russia as pawns to advance its own nefarious agenda”
August 15th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Well, maybe not all that plausible, but still . . .
August 15th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Could Warner Bros. be manipulating the entire situation, using Georgia and Russia as pawns to advance its own nefarious agenda?
Adrian Vendt would approve.
August 15th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Clearly, the Warner Bros. conspiracy now has incentive to make sure Edward Blake wins the election.
August 15th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Veidt. Adrian Veidt.
August 15th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
The real conspiracy is that Adrian Veidt is manipulating Warner Bros. into making this movie in the first place.
August 15th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Adrian Veidt, George Wendt — what’s the difference?
August 15th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
My main concern with the movie is that Zack Snyder’s “300″ just wasn’t very good- it’s very pretty, and I did enjoy it, but it’s not exactly a great movie. Still, his heart seems to be in the right place, so here’s hoping he surprises me.
By the way, I recently read Watchmen again, and to some degree I wonder if it might not become a victim of its own success- it broke a lot of comic book rules, but because it has been influential on other stories told in the past two decades, Watchmen itself might not seem that fresh to new readers or viewers of the upcoming film.
August 15th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Could it have something to do with the quality of the source material? I’ve never read any of Miller’s work, including 300, but I’ve heard mixed things about it. I have read Watchmen, and it’s very good for a work of popular fiction.
August 15th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Could Warner Bros. be manipulating the entire situation, using Georgia and Russia as pawns to advance its own nefarious agenda?
I dunno Matthew, have they contracted to buy the rights from anybody?
max
['Has the word come down that we're supposed to pretend Georgia doesn't exist? It gets the focus off the economy, I suppose.']
August 15th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I’m re-reading the novel while on the crapper currently, and upon watching the trailer I’m struck that Snyder’s using the text as a storyboard. He did a similar thing with 300, as did Rodriguez with Sin City.
My concern, then, is that–as was my take on 300 and Sin City–that watching the movie will be EXACTLY like reading the book, except that I can’t take a dump while I do it.
August 15th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Matt, please put some spoiler tags around the discussion of the climax! It’s a good thing I’ve already read the graphic novel, but if I hadn’t, I’d be really upset right now.
August 15th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
My concern, then, is that–as was my take on 300 and Sin City–that watching the movie will be EXACTLY like reading the book, except that I can’t take a dump while I do it.
Bingo. Watching the trailer, my first thought was, “they did a really good job of copying the comic in cinematic form.”
Not wanting to be too much of a wet blanket, but knowing that, it’s hard to get too excited about the movie–I mean, I already know how it plays out.
August 15th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
The problem Luke is that Frank Miller’s stuff is basically a storyboard in comic form, Alan Moore’s stuff isn’t. V for Vendetta basically was and that’s why it worked as a film. LXG isn’t, it was a comment upon the comic as continuation of the Victorian pop novel and the movie lost all of that. From Hell was an examination of Victorian London with Jack the Ripper as a MacGuffin and a possible Jack that Moore didn’t even buy not some murder mystery that someone *cough* turned the film into.
Watchmen uses the comic format in ways that are almost unique, from the comic within a comic, to the huge amount of text pages for background, to the frame setup.
August 15th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Of course now with the conflict in the Caucuses…
Geez, I thought we’d finally put them behind us! (And Lord knows, they seemed to take forever at the time.) Didn’t Obama win? We haven’t heard nearly as much from Hillary lately.
August 15th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
“Could Warner Bros. be manipulating the entire situation, using Georgia and Russia as pawns to advance its own nefarious agenda? Only on blogs can this sort of irresponsible speculation be meaningfully advanced.”
Way ahead of you. Though I think Zack Snyder is clearly the nefarious mastermind here. Warners is too incompetent to pull off something like this.
August 15th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
I agree with Dean; I have not read the book. In fact I had never heard of the Watchman until the trailer came out and got hyped.
August 15th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
A comic (or any other medium) just doesn’t mean much until it’s validated by being adapted into a film, and when you get fanboy directors as the filmmaker, sometimes they’re too reverential/scared to put their own spin on the filmic product. Only Guillermo del Toro has really navigated the “gets the spirit of the comic right”/”puts own spin on it” balance with success, but even he really undermined an important part of what makes Hellboy cool, i.e. he’s not a hidden monster, he’s just a big red d00d who just happens to have an indestructible hand that can be used to call down Armageddon.
August 15th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Excellent trailer – got to see the movie. Rorschach was my favorite character, and I was pleased to see the line from him in the trailer.
I’d really like to see that whole bit in the prison where Rorschach takes out a whole bunch of criminals trying to kill him in his cell – but my guess is that won’t be in the film.
August 15th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Right, but what we really want to know is, how do you feel about an Adore-era Smashing Pumpkins song being used for the trailer? You’ve missed an opportunity to discuss 90’s alt-rock, Matt.
August 15th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
I just hope the line in the movie is “The politicians and whores will look down and shout…” and that the line in the trailer is just cleaned up for the masses.
August 16th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Chris:Speaking for myself, it was a really good choice. Much better than the typical move trailer themes (You know what I’m talking about)..personally I think that tSP’s sound fits the movies, but that’s just me.
Also, there’s a bit of inside ball there. The song is an alt-take of a song from the Batman and Robin soundtrack.
December 4th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Story Tools Largo quarterback Ryan Eppes , above, is out for this week’s regular-season finale at Northeast and could miss the following week’s home playoff game against Countryside with what Packers coach Rick Rodriguez said
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