Crunchy English said:
It'll be a wretched, disgusting failure. Think about Dark Knight. What made Dark Knight awesome? It was original. I know that sounds nuts, I can hear you saying "Uh, Crunchy, I don't know if you know this, but Batman is like, the most prolific modern character in existence." And that's true, which is why it is so much more impressive that the Dark Knight did its own thing. The Dark Knight's Batman is not Burton's Batman, or Schumacher's Batman or even Kane's Batman. The Dark Knight's Joker is a different character than what we've seen in the past. And The Dark Knight's Two-Face was perhaps the finest iteration I've ever seen, but it owes little if anything to the Animated series, or the comics, or, God Help Us, Batman Forever.
Technically, Batman Begins and its sequels are rooted in "The Long Hallowe'en" but I think it's fair to say that the creators of these films broke any and all barriers in the comic they felt they needed too.
Watchman on the other hand, seems to be trying to placate the ravenous Watchmen fans. The Watchmen story has only been told once, and most people agree it was told as well as it ever could be. Snyder will do his shot-for-shot remake to try stop from upsetting the die hards, and ruin his chances at making a decent movie out of it in the process.
Umm, maybe that was too long a post, I think my point is pretty simple though:
"In order for a movie adaptation to be successful, its creators have to be able to tell the difference between vital themes of a story, and useless minutia. Dark Knight had a team that could do that. I'm not confident Watchmen does. And that's probably just because Watchmen deals with more complicated themes."
Ok, first off, I would like to preface this statement by mentioning that I am not trolling. I AM NOT TROLLING. Okay?
Can I please be the person to say this? TAKE THE DARK KNIGHT OFF THE PEDESTAL. This, and unfortunately, so does Watchmen, although it's a fine novel, represent everything that's wrong with Hollywood. I will point out a fine series of films, started out in the late eighties and continued into the mid-nineties, then stopped.
They were the original series of Batman films. They acknowledged what comic books, the source material were -- campy, unbelievable characters, inside an even campier, unbelievable universe. But then, New Millennium Lite came around, and "Campy" wasn't acceptable anymore.
Hollywood and video games are both trying to go the same way, and it drives me crazy. They try to make everything so realistic and believable. Slap a dark filter on, give your hero a stupid ninja origin story and a Batmobile that is obviously NOT a Lincoln Futura, 1960s era. Because the movie is now "believable", with real dangers of terrorism and a character (the Joker) who's been played to death twice, and some of the reason people even took notice was because of the actor, Heath Ledger, and his strange appearance. This interested me when I first saw the promotional materials.
Now the other half of people, upon hearing about Ledger's death, made a point to go and see this movie and coin it "his final, great performance". No one seems to point out that he's not in the movie enough to be considered a starring role, there's a HUGE plot hole involving his character, and the campy, unbelievability (OMG) that surrounds him.
Now, on to the point of this all - comic book movies are great when they're for fans. Comic books themselves are awesome. The Dark Knight was NOT a comic book story, it was a James Bond film with different colors. Or better yet, a discarded draft of Spiderman 3 with more morals.
It was a wonderfully made film, believe me when I say this, but I'm sick of everyone comparing every single comic book film ever made and yet to be made to it.
Watchmen may not be a huge hit just because of Moore's interpretation of how "super" these people are, and how more "human" they actually are. But it's a unique story, and it's almost impossible to make a sequel of, so I think we should all give it a chance. Shit, I saw Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. IN THEATRES.
Ok, sorry about that.
They'll pretty much HAVE to change everything else, or at least a lot of it.
