It’s a Christmas Miracle! Watchmen (Might be) Dead, Long Live Watchmen!
Well, it’s a little after Christmas, and I’m now sort of Hindu (long story), so let’s call it a very late Diwali miracle! YAY!
Anyway, a variety of sources are now reporting that the Judge on the FOX vs. WB Watchmen distribution case, has ruled in favour of Fox. The Judge ruled that “Fox owns a copyright interest consisting of, at the very least, the right to distribute the ‘Watchmen’ motion picture.” So it seems that while WB have filmed the movie, and were preparing to release it on March 3rd they currently do not have the right to distribute the movie.
It will probably all end p with WB handing a humongous amount of money to fox for their copyright interest. But, this one fan is hoping that Fox just say no, and decide to make their own, leaving Zakk Shynder’s crap fest six foot under the dock and gasping for the precious little air remaining in the trash bag that encases it!
Why so harsh?? Have you seen 300? Have you seen his Dawn of the Dead remake? Did you know he is planning a sequel to 300? Seriously, this guy hasn’t got an original bone in his body. He cares nothing for source material, what he like to do is take someone else’s idea pour some stupid special effects all over it, remove all the storytelling elements, turn it up to 11, and just leave the smoking corpse behind for later generations to pick up and say, “Wow, Watchmen, this movie had some awesome bullet time action!”
I’ll say this now, and mark my words: in five years time we are going to look back and ask ourselves how we didn’t realise that Zack Snyder is to comic books what Uwe Boll is to Video games.
I know I sound like a bitter twisted cynic, but good comic-to-film adaptions are like gold dust. The franchises like X-men and Spider-man seem to work pretty well, but they are pretty much idiot proof, as they are so easily adaptable to new stories. But when you take a standalone, contained story like Watchmen and put it up there on the big screen, lots of internal monologue, and dialogue gets cut for the effects and explosions. It is inevitable, as that is what works on Hollywood blockbusters. Back story, plot threads, actually storytelling, these things do not work in a two hour adrenaline fest.
Why would we want to do this to Watchmen, people have hailed it for years as the greatest example of the comic book medium. Why can’t we just keep it like that, it is a great comic, but it could make a crappy movie. There are probably a tonne of fanboys out there that want to see it made into a movie, just so that they can tell their “friends” that they read the book back in 1986, and marvel at how none of them have read it before it was a movie. Who cares! You live in your Mum’s basement, and all your friends are Elves and Orcs on WoW!
Urgh! Sorry or the rant folks, it’s been a while since I blogged, and I had a lot to get off my chest. Let me play you out with a nice (fake) Christmas message from Alan Moore as found on the blog of, Finnish illustrator, Jouni Koponen:
P.S. I should credit Neil Gaiman with finding the link, but I doubt he’ll ever end up at my website
Related posts:
- Moron - Sorry, I meant, More on the Watchmen Video Game
- Well, the Watchmen Trailer Is Out, Not That I Really Care
- What’s Pissing Me Off Today? Crappy Watchmen Merchandising!
- Hypergeek is back from the dead!
- Dead Men Tell No Tales + LITG + My Body is Full of Pain!
