Zack Snyder may have filmed what many thought was an unfilmable graphic novel in “Watchmen.” So what? Does that mean he’s the kind of filmmaker capable of following up Christopher Nolan? Snyder seems to think so.
On iF Magazine, Snyder is quoted as saying, “…I’m interested in Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight [Returns]”… However, the studio has this massive franchise and I don’t think they’ll let me make a Batman movie where he’s fifty years old and Ronald Reagan is president.” No shit!
This line of thinking among mainstream U.S. filmmakers is so dangerous that it almost begs to be indulged by the remake-obsessed studio heads of the world (were it not for ‘TDK’s success). And the way he says it! “However…I don’t think they’ll let me…” After “The Dark Knight,” the bar’s been set too high for Snyder to treat any comic book material (or any adaptation, for that matter) like a cover song. It’s a shame that the majority of fanboys seem to think that’s the way to go – even after seeing how transcendent mere comic book characters can become in the right hands.
Snyder and his sycophants can have their “Watchmen,” but hopefully they won’t rest so easy knowing that calling something material “unfilmable” isn’t a dare as much as a call to respect a story before plundering it in a ham-fisted manner for profit. Who are we kidding, though…
Sounds like you miss the squid.
I WISH my issues started and ended with the squid. I just anticipate a LOT of the subtext being lost with the pirate comic book narrative being relegated to a potential DVD sidenote, for one. Two, I think it’s going to be action first, whereas the GN is so enmeshed in Alan Moore’s carefully constructed alternate U.S. My fear is that the rewarding literary elements are going to sit sidelined to green screens and slo-mo shots.
i totally agree.
Well, early comments by people who’ve seen a good chuck of the beginning of the film say that it isn’t all wall-to-wall action sequences and is actually quite talky so we’ll see.
Being trepidatious or fearful is one thing and is understandable. The post could have been framed in that speculative context. Ranting and bashing as if your fears are realized even before you’ve seen a movie defines prejudice and makes for not as good a read.
I think this article is ridiculously biased to something that the writer knows nothing about. Never once did he say, “I think I could have made a better movie than The Dark Knight by turning Frank Millers The Dark Knight Returns into a film because I filmed the unfilmable movie.” Snyder’s talking like a fan who wants to put a comic book on the screen and he wants to be the one to do it.
Also from what I’ve seen so far, Watchmen looks like it’s going to contain a lot of the subtext of the book, all the Black Frieghter did was serve as an allegory for who the charcters were as people as they turned into something they’ve tried to protect people from. Just because someone does a stylish action scene with slomo shots here and there doesn’t mean that they aren’t able to capture the subtext of a highly intelligent expansive work.