Superhero Filmmakers: Where's Our Watchmen?

Hey if it works for you, go for it.

"ya everyone pretty much admitted they didnt "get" it anyway xp"

Everyone = who?

Eclipse licenses that could easily be made profitable again with a bit of effort:

* Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters (give it to kyle baker or phil foglio or ty templeton or...
* Airboy by Chuck Dixon (I'd buy new issues)
* Area 88 (I want manga books for this goddamit!)
* Axel Pressbutton by Pedro Henry, Steve Dillon, and Brian Bolland (easy film conversion)
* Aztec Ace (ditto)
* Brought to Light (due for a reprint)
* California Girls (1987) by Trina Robbins (easy cartoon for WB)
* Cynicalman by Matt Feazell (xkcd owes royalties)
* Detectives, Inc.by Don McGregor and Gene Colan (easy movie)
* Killer ... Tales by Timothy Truman
* Mai the Psychic Girl (easy reprint cash)
* Miracleman by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and others.
* Ms. Tree by Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty (movie)
* Mr. Monster (all time favorite)
* The Prowler (great book, due for a revival)
* Reid Fleming, World's Toughest Milkman (nuff said)
* The Rocketeer (due for a sequel)
* Scout by Timothy Truman (has movie written all over it)
* Tales of the Beanworld by Larry Marder (is this out in reprint?)
* Winterworld (another easy film)
* Zot! by Scott McCloud (another one that I'd buy in two or three reprint books)

thanks for interrupting what would have been a great your mama joke forks.

It's what I do.

know what i do?

* Cynicalman by Matt Feazell (xkcd owes royalties)

wow Eclipse really had some great stuff, I had forgotten - would love to see another collected volume of Zot!

I thought Zot! was collected?

we all agree that it probably wont be good and the reasons why

hey I'm just trying to save you guys from wasting yr hard-earned kopecks on this movie. You'll thank me later

I have a collection of the first 6 issues, never seen any subsequent volumes. I admit I haven't looked in a long time.

(er x-post)

i'll probly get in free

Yeah it's all available now (even vol 4 has finally come out.)

hey there they are on Amazon! never mind

* Reid Fleming, World's Toughest Milkman (nuff said)

they could totally make a funny movie out of this (pitch "Bad Santa as a milkman!") and I'm pretty sure its been optioned multiple times but just never happened.

Is he any relation to Ernie the fastest milkman in the West?

I'm halfway positive Eclipse did not own the license to a lot of these characters when McFarlane bought them.

Reid Fleming looks exactly like Harvey Pekar. Just putting that out there.

Wonder exactly what McFarlane bought.

The spirit of Reid Fleming is alive and well and all over Adult Swim. (I'd rather see a short Milk & Cheese cartoon.)

Harper Collins just published the Zot! collection so I'm guessing McCloud owns the rights to that (since that's who also published Understanding/Reinventing/Poking a Stick @ Comix.)

you can strip the black freighter layer off no problem. obv that weakens the original story but it's not as if the whole thing falls apart without it.

FACT: I have never actually read the black freighter stuff in Watchmen.

your loss

btw rosebud was his sled

your loss

I do wake up at nights sobbing because of this.

btw rosebud was his sled raft

btw rosebud was his sled raft seagull

The Black Freighter thing essentially just emphasizes the elements which are already there in the main story, it doesn't really add anything new that isn't already inherent to the major plot. I think the biggest thing it does related to the main story is that it questions the supposedly open "I leave it entirely to your hands" ending, because according to the Black Freighter subplot Veidt is already damned. Though maybe it just means Veidt is damned in his soul, not necessarily that his plan will be revealed to the public. Anyway, it I think it functions as a sort of a hidden morality to the story, because it makes the ending morally less ambiguous by clearly stating that Veidt was wrong. So, theoretically, if the movie cuts off the whole Black Freighter story, this could actually make it more open-ended and ambivalent than the comic.

it makes the ending morally less ambiguous by clearly stating that Veidt was wrong.

I think this is super-crucial, especially because it isn't Rorschach (who paradoxically praises Truman as one of his heroes in the opening pages) saying it.

its part and parcel with the "battle not with monsters" Nietzsche quote - Veidt does and is damned for it. Like the guy in the Black Freighter, he has willingly become a butcher, and in the company of butchers he will stay (wonder if Snyder will keep Veidt's line about how he dreams of swimming towards the freighter).

Yeah, that's why I called it a hidden morality. Basically, the "I leave it entirely to you hands" ending of the main comic is Moore saying to reader, "You can judge for yourself whether Veidt was wrong or not", but the ending of the Black Freighter is him saying, "I think he was".

(x-post)

cut out the Black Freighter and the impression left is that Rorschach is the lone voice of morality, which is ridiculous

x-post

a nation weeps

It's not just that Veidt becomes a butcher, the main thing is that he does the wrong thing (killing innocent people/the Black Freighter guy killing his family) while thinking he is doing the right thing (saving people/saving his family). The moral judgement in Black Freighter is quite clear.

(x-post)

cut out the Black Freighter and the impression left is that Rorschach is the lone voice of morality, which is ridiculous

Well yeah, but this would mean the voice of morality actually has to be the audience.

Whoops, sorry, he doesn't actually kill his family, does he? But he still kills a couple of innocent folks.

Notice that the Black Freighter guy's name is never given. I wonder if ti bgeins with an A?

He kills his wife.

SPOILER

No, I don't think he does. He beats her up, but is stopped by their kids stepping in. His wife is shown alive a few panels later.

(x-post)

It's been so long and I don't have the comic with me so I'll defer here.

I believe Tuomas is correct, he tries to strangle her...? He does kill that couple on the beach though.

When I first read the comic I thought he killed her too. But she is shown alive, looking at him while he runs away from their house towards the Black Freighter.

I guess most readers just assume the worst while reading that bit for the first time, so they don't notice all the details. I certainly didn't.

4. INT. STATUE - THAT MOMENT
The screen of a portable TV shows THREE HELICOPTERS lifting off from
Laguardia. We're in the OBSERVATION ROOM inside the statue's head.
A TERRORIST holds a crowd of SQUEALING TOURISTS -- men, women,
schoolchildren -- at bay with an automatic rifle. Two others stand
by the windows, scanning the harbor for signs of a double-cross; and
a fourth, the RINGLEADER, speaks into a walkie-talkie.

RINGLEADER
Good. We got forty innocent people here. One false move . . . and
we blow her brains out.

SWAT CAPTAIN (O.S.)
(filter; from walkie-talkie)
Blow whose brains out?

5. EXT. STATUE - THAT MOMENT
TIGHT on the ring of OBSERVATION WINDOWS situated just below the
jutting spikes of the CROWN. CAMERA PULLS BACK rapidly to take in
the whole of the statue's head.

RINGLEADER (O.S.)
(a nasty laugh)
Lady Liberty, my friend. Lady Liberty's brains!

6. EXT. FERRY - THAT MOMENT - DAY
MOUNTING TENSION among the SWAT TEAM on deck.

SWAT COP
Sons of bitches.

SWAT CAPTAIN
Relax. We'll nail 'em on the transfer. Let's get those hostages out
first.

SWAT COP II
Captain . . . what the hell is that?

All eyes turn upward. In the distance, a TINY SPECK descends from
the clouds and drops, in a perfectly vertical line, toward the head
of the statue. The SWAT CAPTAIN hoists a pair of binoculars:

SWAT CAPTAIN
Shit. Shit fire!!

SWAT COP
Sir! What is it?

7. POV SHOT - THROUGH BINOCULARS
A magnified view of the SPECK, which turns out to be a futuristic,
blimplike HOVERCRAFT -- the OWLSHIP.

SWAT CAPTAIN (O.S.)
Christ almighty, it's the goddamned Watchmen!

Oooh boy.

The Evil Watcher What Watches at Midnight.

WatchTick

anyway, i didnt read dis thread but it looks like dumb, lame crap. otoh, i would pay full ticket prices - not matinee!!!! - to see an adaptation of the SAM HAMM watchmen script (excerpted above), instead of some fool-ass nigga, like, HONESTLY trying to adapt it. the og comic is dated ass irrelevent bullshit, and it overinflates its fukkin importance to treat it like some shakespearian ass bullsquid that everyone needs to experience.

OH NO THEY RAPED MY CHILDHOOD MY CHILDHOOD WHY DOESN'T ANYONE LET THESE THINGS REST *EYES GLISTEN*

that's a joke script, right?