It occurs to me: Aside from being the old Charlton Action Heroes, the Watchmen are archetypes familiar to all comic book fans:
–The remote Superman
–The Adam West Batman
–The Frank Miller Batman
–The narcissistic super-genius
–The arm candy (Hey, if YOU were going to fight one of these people for real, wouldn’t your best odds be against Sally Juspeczyk?)
–The two-fisted Cold War dinosaur
Alan Moore could count on these characters to resonate easily with comic book fans. Movie fans with limited familiarity with the source material aren’t such a sure bet; in addition to cutting out a lot of extraneous characterization, the movie would have to provide every one of these characters with extra backstory to make them comprehensible to people who don’t have www.aint-it-cool.com set as their home page.
Perhaps a better question would be, “Should ‘Watchmen’ be made into a motion picture?”
Reasons to do it:
A wider audience would receive an important message, but only if the message survived the adaptation process.
Reasons not to do it:
Much of the story has a lot more meaning to comic book fans than anyone else.
One of the major subplots involves a comic book which is being read by a character who is uninvolved in the main plot until near the end of the story.
1 and 2 work well in a comic book series. While movies about comic book characters have been successful when the characters are familiar to many people who don’t read many comics, characters who are simply representative of superheros in general are a tougher sell. And it’s a lot easier to stick in a subplot about a comic book story in a comic book than anywhere else. I believe the ideal medium for “Watchmen” is comics.
New question: Should the story within the story - “The Black Freighter” - be made into a movie? The message is the same - the ends do not justify the means - but the plot is simple enough to fit in a movie.
Cervaise, I saw Lost in La Mancha. It’s really heartbreaking, and I came out of it liking Gilliam even more. Damn, I wish he’d been able to finish that movie! Just the little bit we saw of Johnny Depp’s performance looked like he was going to knock one out of the park. It was amazing.
I conceed that I unfairly characterized Gilliam as a budget-blower. But another impression I left Lost in La Mancha with was that Gilliam is, at heart, an animator, thus my suggestion of giving him control of an animated mini-series. I don’t think getting funding for it is necessarily hopeless, either. Somebody, somewhere has the coins to do it, although the impending crashing and burning of LXG diminishes the prospect.
Krokodil: It’s a little anachronistic to say that Moore references Miller’s Batman archetype. After all, both Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns appeared in the same year!
Bearing in mind how heavily Moore was influenced was by the Golden Age, a list of the archetypes he’s using for the major characters might run a bit like this: (This is in addition to the Charlton heroes, obviously.)
Rorschach: 50% “guns blazing” grim pulp heroes like the Shadow and the Spider; 50% Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle.
Ozymandius: Pulp hero Doc Savage, the original incredibly rich, smart, and well-connected guy who has trained himself to the peak of human perfection.
Modern-day Nite Owl: the Silver Age Batman
The Comedian: 70% Nick Fury, 20% generic Marvel wiseass/hothead (e.g. the Human Torch), 10% Captain America
Dr. Manhattan: 70% Superman, 10% Vision (speech pattern/word balloons and some of his look), 10% Hulk (origin), 10% various other characters who have ascended to god-like powers over the years.
Interestingly, Sally Jupiter doesn’t really correspond to any particular heroes. This reflects both her role in Watchmen (she’s the “ordinary person” of the bunch) and the fact that female characters back in the Gold and Silver Ages were woefully underwritten.
The other Golden Age Watchmen draw their names and costumes from various Golden Age sources. For example, Hooded Justice’s costume is similar to Hourman’s, while his character theme is similar to the Hangman. Their personalities, however, are Moore’s own invention (e.g. Mothman is based on the incredibly obscure Golden Age hero the Moth; however, the Golden Age Moth was certainly never locked up in an asylum!)
Trudging back to the subject at hand, I’m not sure that movie audiences without a comic background would pick up on these connections. I suspect they might look at Dr. Manhattan and just see a big blue emotionless freak, and not a commentary on Superman. (Everyone would get the Nite Owl/Batman connection, though.)
The psychiatrist subplot involved the shrink who was seeing Rorschach while he was incarcerated. The shrink’s name was Dr. Malcom Long, who was portrayed as a fairly easy going guy, but also as someone who didn’t do very well when it came to arguements/confrontations. He had an ego as he was looking to parlay his meetings with Rorschach into a book.
The lesbian was really a minor, minor subplot. She was a “butch” cabdriver who was having relationship/sexual identity problems, and seemed confused as to whether or not she really was a lesbian.
The news vendor was a guy who owned a newstand and he would sit and make proclamations about what should and shouldn’t be done about various issues going on in the world of Watchmen. The psychiatrists and the lesbian interacted with the vendor at various points in the story, as did Rorschach.
It’s interesting to note that in the limited edition hardcover of Watchmen Moore says that as he got closer and closer to the end in terms of writing the series, he cared less and less and had less interest for the superheros and cared more and had more interest in the ordinary people, such as the news vendor/lesbian/psychiatrist.
Of course, he killed all of those characters off, so it raises the question of just how much he really cared for them.
Unfortunately, Wumpus, according to Moore himself, none of what you say is accurate.
In the limited edition hardcover of Watchmen, among the bonus material is several pages where Moore goes over the major characters and what DC/Charlton super hero they correspond with.
Dr. Manhattan was based on Captain Atom. Moore saw him as “Bowie, Elric, Alienated, Isolated and a Mystical Hermit.”
Ozymandias was based on Thunderbolt. Moore saw him as “a popular celebrity, Redford, Kennedy, Rich, Perfect, Loner, Michalangelo’s David , Julio Iglesias, Barry Foster.”
Nite Owl was based on the Blue Beetle. Moore saw him as “an ordinary, fallible, human, heroic, thou not naturally courageous, substitute for original, Newman, Furrillo. Green Hornet, Batman, Moon Knight.”
Rorschach was based on The Question. Moore sees him as "quintessential Ditko, utterly alone, implacable, ruthless, unpredictable, Bronson, ‘Lonely’.
The Comedian was based on The Peacemaker. Moore saw him as “dirty fighter, athletic/animal, (Dirty Harry?) meets (Nick Fury) meets (Hannibal of A-Team?), workmanlike.”
The Silk Spectre was based on Nightshade. Moore saw her as “deprived childhood, Dunaway, Streep.”
Hooded Justice was originally going to be called Brother Night, and was to have a visual look similar to the Spectre or the Destroyer or the Vision. (Timely Comics Vision, which is what Marvel Comics used to be)
Wumpus and I both cited the Charlton Action Heroes, which is who those characters you mentioned are. Part of the WATCHMEN backstory is that DC Comics bought those characters from Charlton in the early 80s. Dick Giordano (DC editor in the 80s, Charlton editor in the 60s) offered Alan Moore a chance to use these characters in a story. When Giordano read Moore’s proposal, “Who Killed the Peacemaker?”, he was horrified that the characters would be ruined forever. Moore proposed new Watchmen characters instead.
The Question was created by Steve Ditko, who also created and self-published a more extreme version of the same archetype, Mr. A. Moore has mentioned that Rorshach is based more on Mr. A than on the Question. (Moore’s bar band in England, the Sinister Ducks, even does a song about Mr. A.) Mr. A, like Ditko, is an Ayn Rand Objectivist party liner.
I’m hoping that Alan Moore will turn these movies into leverage for writing the screenplay himself in the next adaptation. He’ll refuse to sell the rights unless he gets creative control over the script. If he plays his cards right, he caqn be the next Stephen King.
However, he’s supposed to be a bit of a recluse, but still it’d be cool if he became a major celebrity, going out in public with that Rasputin-like wild hair, piercing eyes, and black magic jewelry.