Damon Lindelof's Watchmen

sorry everyone but Lindelof is good now

Admittedly he had nowhere to go but up.

Anyway I'm glad for this dark and gritty reboot of a...well no it's a dark and gritty reboot of the original comic which...never mind.

Think shadowy and rough

also bear in mind this could just as easily go the way of the Paul Greengrass or Terry Gilliam versions

iirc for a long time the consensus on the comic was that it was unfilmable before zack snyder proved that was indeed true

a longer adaptation isn't the answer because a big part of what makes the comic special is that the content is inextricably bound up with the form. any attempt to translate it outside of a comic-book will inevitably be unable to include the way moore and gibbons constantly play with time, both as a story theme and in the design and layout of the pages themselves

part of the magic of the book is that it literally allows readers to experience doctor manhattan's unique perspective on time for themselves - all you need to do to see the past or the future exactly like he does is flip back and forth in the book

and the fact that the first panel and the last panel mirror each other perfectly make the story a perfect closed loop, so readers will only ever see as much as doctor manhattan will (admittedly dc's bloodyminded insistence on creating more watchmen material kinda makes a mockery of this but, as ever, fuck dc)

you can't do any of that in anything other than comic books. all you're left with to adapt a whodunnit set in a world of gritty, 'realistic' superheroes, which is a trope that has long since been beaten into the ground in both comics and films, so why fucking bother at all

signed, butthurt in glasgow

Pls to make a Watchmen tv show in style of adam west batman

Watchmen is the best superhero movie fyi

Lindelof is a cheap cunt

tbh if they must do a watchmen tv show i'd prefer they did something like that with it rather than a slavish adaptation of something which is custom-built to resist slavish moving-image adaptations

Watchmen is the best superhero movie fyi

you're aff yer chump

Lindelof is a cheap cunt

this is otm tho

I was tentative at first, but then I remembered that every previous Moore adaptation has been an unmitigated success, and when coupled with Lindelof's unblemished record, why, I don't see how this could possibly go wrong. I think we're in for a treat, folks.

I would again remind Lindelof-bashers that his last project *was* basically an unmitigated success.

what better way to spend that newly-earned goodwill than on a quixotic effort to re-film the recently filmed, which proved the source material unfilmable

Would be very surprised if this actually happened, sounds like typical rumour nonsense

Otherwise, seems like the definition of a pointless project

Halo Jones, on the other hand

it's only unfilmable if you decide to be slavish about it to appease comics nerds. he literally just proved he can take high concept source material and expand it for TV productively

I mean snark all you want but it's pretty clear to me from interviews and his recent work (as well as his willingness to, for example, help guide Micheal Schur in planning for disaster when he was mounting The Good Place) that unlike a lot of other pissy creatives he actually recognizes and learns from mistakes

i'd be snarky about another adaptation of watchmen no matter who was behind it!

as i said, slavish fidelity to the source material or otherwise isn't the issue - the issue is that watchmen's content and form are so vitally interlinked that presenting it as anything other than a comic-book is going to miss much of what made it special in the first place, and all you're left with is some folks in costumes trying to solve a murder

and a blue penis

I think there are ppl who could find cinematic analogues to the way that Watchmen treats time (hello, Nic Roeg!), not sure that a guy w/ a scripting credit on Prometheus would have been my pick tho.

Robert Altman's Watchmen would've ruled.

I now feel a lot less bothered about darraghmac hating GotG 2

bizarro otm. There are certain works which are so inextricably tied to their native form that adapting them to another medium is a fool's errand. Doubly so when the attempt has already been made in the past decade.

XP you went off on one when I let you know that hellboy was total crap, I think we have a pretty good idea about our respective positions on comic adaptations at this stage tbf

guys maybe it is actually based on this and not the comic book
the titles are the same I'm just saying

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAadbwAtg9Y

Watch men? Don't mind if I do, ooh err

Watchmeh

not sure that a guy w/ a scripting credit on Prometheus would have been my pick tho.

Prometheus is bad but tbf he was brought in for a polish/rethink after Jon Spaihts wrote the original screenplay. it seems like it was poisoned from the get-go.

as for this project, I would be happy with a show that uses aspects of the characters/worls/mmythos but goes completely different directions with it, somewhere between Hannibal and Fargo levels of faithfulness. only not bad like Fargo is

serious question, no judgment: have you read watchmen?

what everyone is deaf to here is that the badness is coming from inside the moore

lol yes I have read watchmen and seen the movie

okay, cool - just having some trouble wrapping my mind around the idea of enthusiasm for seeing the watchmen characters outside of the context of the comic book, especially since efforts so far to do so have been, um, largely poorly-received

you might as well just commission a series starring the charlton heroes the watchmen are based on tbh

mark don't think i don't see you trolling btw

The series is going to be based on this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDDHHrt6l4w

as for this project, I would be happy with a show that uses aspects of the characters/worls/mmythos but goes completely different directions with it, somewhere between Hannibal and Fargo levels of faithfulness. only not bad like Fargo is

― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Wednesday, June 21, 2017 8:35 AM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I would not be happy with this. I don't really see what additional material is left to mine from the original story (although that certainly hasn't stopped a number of parties from trying). There are stories which seem to just scratch the surface of a rich and varied world of the author's creation, but Watchmen doesn't strike me as that type of story.

Like, Moore already pretty much laid out the varied richness and explored it to my satisfaction.

yeah - like i said upthread, it's literally designed to be a closed-loop narrative, there's not much reason to flesh out what nite-owl's glory days were like or whatever

to put it in more concrete terms, Leftovers proved that Lindelof has figured out (with the help of good collaborators) how to juggle character, plot and world-building in a really considered way that takes advantage of the form,instead of having it be a "10-hour movie" every season or whatever (one of the plagues of big HBO shows especially). It's really not that hard for me to imagine a worthwhile adaptation that uses the book strictly as a starting point to pluck ideas from.

to put it another way, it would not make fans/pedants happy but it could be a Pretty Good TV Show

Watchmen is like this perfectly balanced and efficient storytelling machine. Expanding on the story is like saying, but what if there were rhinestones and a racing stripe?

guys skip to 4:40 in that youtube I posted, shit is straight out of the Wire

let me try this again. I do not think this will "expand" Watchmen. I think it will use a few points of plot/character inspiration then fuck off and do other things with them. at least this is my hope.

yeah, i can see where you're coming from for sure, but the key difference here for is that the leftovers aiui was an adaptation of a relatively little-known property which offered a good jumping-off point

for good or for ill, watchmen is a considerably better-known place to start from which imo doesn't offer much scope for expansion beyond what's already there. it's a little bit like optioning oliver twist and proposing to spend most of your time developing sidequests for oliver, fagin and the artful dodger

the episode where they cover the black freighter should be wonderful don't you think

it should feature young fagin IMO

Everyone remembers how well-received these were, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Watchmen

the episode where they cover the black freighter should be wonderful don't you think

zack snyder's version did this as like a half-hour animated short iirc

with gerard butler as the voice of the protagonist because zack snyder, that's why

instead of dr. manhattan obliterating Rorschach he just conks him on the head with an oar which causes him to pass out. he does this every time rorschach wakes up.

instead of the monster destroying new york it just rolls over the city like a giant penny and good people can avoid it by ducking into holes in its side

instead of one scene on mars the characters constantly shuttle between the two planets and when asked why they say do you have a better idea?

the nite owl is black
ozymandias is gay
rorschach dies in the first episode

none of the characters are superheroes, it's a workplace comedy set in a watchmaker's workshop

their boss is naked and painted blue but no-one ever comments on it

for good or for ill, watchmen is a considerably better-known place to start from which imo doesn't offer much scope for expansion beyond what's already there

I don't agree with this premise at all

What do you mean by “terrible scripting”? The only thing in the show I thought was off was the idea that Veidt would make a video for President Redford.

this is a batch of pertinent quotes all upthread. it's been months since i tried to watch it so i don't have specific lines in mind but I do remember hitting at least three "OH COME ON" moments per episode with the scripting.

Thoughts after two episodes: the casting is great, the acting is fun, the production values are movie level, the score is good, the ideas at play seem generally interesting and worthwhile and the script and plotting are hot garbage. There's also an ugly, oily taste to the childish absorption with ultra-violence; the brutality=serious drama HBO formula is in full effect here. It doesn't much move the story forward in any way but it does seem gratuitous as fuck and clearly designed to make sure viewers understand this ain't no funny book this is GRIM AND GRITTY pilgrim.

Maybe these very serious, very harsh realities are better dealt with in a series that doesn't see a car electromagnetized away by a night owl UFO?

a lot of my immediate antipathy likely comes down to just not being able to cope with lindelof or his schtick. his work at its best seems generally like the brightest ideas we came up with in high school about how a fight with wolverine and the hulk would REALLY go down.

Fumbled through the third episode. Why is this writing so fucking bad? The Ozymandius/Irons and Silk Spectre/Smart scripting is particularly egregious but there’s just so many bad decisions throughout.

so here's the thing: I'm a fan of Hong Chau after seeing her in Driveways so I'm inclined to try one more episode to see what she does in this, at which point I suppose i'm at the tipping point of "you're not coming here for the hunting" and I'm either gonna cope with the shitty dialogue and plotting and just enjoy the acting and the fx or else i guess i've tried my best.

Smart is fun in the role! Irons is fun in the role! Both of them have abysmal scripting! Basically everyone is great in the role! Basically everyone has shitty writing! Tons of stupid shit going on here with little to justify it other than a definite sense of "we gotta get to the point where all our story points are in place so we can have the two hours that fit within the parameters we've very arbitrarily and sloppily laid out."

if the "joke" on the phone with doc manhattan or the "how do you tell the difference between a vigilante and a masked cop" line at a funeral seemed reasonable to you, we're looking for different things in our television.

Some thoughts after episode 4:

- I forgot my biggest issue with Lindelof is trust. He creates a hundred nagging "yeah but" situations that he leaves hanging and then surrounds these with MORE questions built atop the earlier questions. You end up hanging on watching just to see how he cleans up the mess... but it's rare that he actually does! Generally there's a number of unlikely twists and/or a deus ex machina and considering this show has a literal deus ex machina baked in, I just realized that I don't much care about the answers behind the questions behind the questions. Or any of these characters! They're well acted but, after over three hours of screentime, they are all still total ciphers.

- Lesser crime but worth considering: there is no reason for this to be a Watchmen story! It might actually be a lot better without the IP or at least be freer to indulge in the story it wants to tell instead of propping it up with something far distant and disconnected.

- Fourth episode title was “If You Don't Like My Story, Write Your Own”. The other option, of course, is just to find a better story so I'm done with this and off to I Will Destroy You.

('I Will Destroy You' ended up being probably the best television of the year btw)

So basically you didn’t buy the premise

I thought it was an extremely entertaining meditation on the pernicious nature of racism combined with a subversion of the model minority stereotypes that also made explicit an implicit hanging thread from the original series (Hooded Justice made zero sense as a character until this series). I also think you bailed right when the show got super interesting. I also think the show will do nothing for you.

Again, it's been a few months since I tried watching the watchmen, but that said: I don't know if I'd say I "didn't buy the premise." I definitely considered the plot and presentation unnecessarily convoluted and the writing awash in far-fetched cliffhanger and punchline-based dialogue. The visuals and concepts were doing most of the heavy lifting and, for something this thematically challenging, that wasn't enough for me. I honestly wanted it to be better.

I figured out on my own that the show was likely not for me by dint of watching about half of it! It had numerous redeeming factors, I just couldn't get over the scripting and pace. There were a lot of interesting puzzles that I have little doubt end up eventually partially resolved; the clear raison d'etre of the first four episodes was simply to set up the dominoes. I would argue that taking longer than the entire runtime of The Seven Samurai to set up your story to the point where it gets "super interesting" is a fault of its creator. I ran out of patience waiting for the creators to stop introducing gotcha moments and start addressing the ideas in play and, after four hours, they lost me entirely.

Tangential topic: given some very nerdy conversations we've both had on ILX, it's probably safe to say we both have some strong opinions about the source material. I'm not inherently against expanding another constructed universe (though the original creator's strong discouragement of it should certainly count for something?), but the join between Moore and Lindelof's worlds felt jarringly incomplete to me. More of scaffolding than building on the existing structure, which isn't a sin in and of itself but it is indicative of the nature of HBO and its corporate entities to carelessly grave rob IP. There were definite positive outcomes associated in this case (broader cultural awareness of the Tulsa riots, the long overdue stardom of Regina King, a challenging presentation of white supremacy being an underground American driving force even within an alternate utopia) but I doubt that is a product of or justification of this approach.

Would you consider it justified if a series incorporating those elements could/would not have have been made without the "hook" of the underlying IP? (This is an honest question....)

Well that's a business decision right? Your phrasing suggests that corporate entities hold interesting ideas hostage in exchange for franchise building and i certainly hope it's not that much of a quid pro quo. I'm all in favor of entertainment being more challenging and innovative; not sure why that necessarily has to come at the expense of originality?

While some of your complaints have validity, this show most definitely did something wildly original with the source material. It ended up as a best possible case scenario more or less!

xp I'm not suggesting it necessarily does, but underlying IP is often key to getting a project made, for better or worse (Lovecraft Country may be a relevant comparison here).

I guess a better way to phrase the question may be - considering the Watchmen series exists, and does contain those elements, do you consider it a net gain or loss?

It’s a great show but the ending is such a mess! Really feeble endings for several characters, and King wuz robbed of a great swimming pool walking scene. Would definitely watch again, though.

do you consider it a net gain or loss?

Superseding questions of cultural validity over one's actual enjoyment of a teevee program has become a lot of folks' (not necessarily anyone in this thread) default means of television criticism. That has its place but if I don't like it, I don't like it. Storytelling is hard.

I hear you... I only asked b/c you yourself raised the question of whether the positive outcomes were “a product of or justification” of the approach to the IP.

I mostly mean as far as supporting the continuation of reboots of IP as pop culture's preferred way of exploring new ideas with old clothing, which I'm kinda over.

As a "Storytelling is hard" example: I'm currently fighting through the third episode of "Adult Material" (on HBO in December) and that's another example where the quality of the separate parts doesn't seem to be adding up to an enjoyable show for me. The acting is good, the scripting is okay, the themes are challenging but they're edging a little too far into brutal for my taste (much of the plot hinges on an anal prolapse) and the story is increasingly knotty. I watch a lot of teevee but I suppose I require total narrative cohesion to fully buy into a show.

(Lovecraft Country may be a relevant comparison here).

It’s based on a recent novel, AFAIK

but she has no cthulu mythos exposure and considers anything even horror-adjacent to be unwatchable

Other than the name and the first episode (maybe), it has pretty much no connection to cthulu mythos.

We recently got HBO, via a free promo... watched I May Destroy You (which was excellent); caught up on Insecure; and now watching this crazy docuseries about the McDonald’s Monopoly racketeering scheme.

I definitely considered the plot and presentation unnecessarily convoluted and the writing awash in far-fetched cliffhanger and punchline-based dialogue.

I agree with this but it's a personal preference for me and I don't know that it makes Watchmen bad, I find the HBO house style these days often convoluted and mistaking clever for interesting (couldn't stand Westworld either). Lovecraft Country is the first HBO show in years to hook me, partially because it's more human-level and because I enjoyed the book so much. (Have not tried Succession yet.)

Succession rules, and I say this as someone who actively wanted to hate it.

Lovecraft Country is indeed an adaptation of a book and it’s more Lovecraftian Country, in both senses: full of monsters, and full of racist monsters

I think the idea that serious issues like the Tulsa massacre can only be contextualized via serious art and not genre fiction ignores how we weave the fabric of history into our stories and how that provides context in our time. We can have infinitely many films and tv shows that acknowledge Nazis and have absurdities like zombie civil war southerners that are so halfassed in execution but cement “oh, that’s the bad guy” because of historical shorthand. But when it comes to things we hold deep reverence for, it’s suddenly a grievous bastardization of history if a retelling doesn’t fit into an Oscar-winning dramatic formula

not to mention that, silly genre trappings or not, the depiction was apparently impactful/effective enough to inspire a pretty significant resurgence of interest in the event

Do all of these episodes have post credits scenes? I just left a videofile running while I went out of the room and found an extra scene on the penultimate one.

Only one does

if you don't count the one where Dr. Manhattan conks Rorschach with an oar

They were told white men ‘wouldn’t relate to’ the Tulsa Race Massacre. Then came ‘Watchmen’ https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2021-05-26/tulsa-race-massacre-watchmen-lovecraft-country-documentaries

Season 2 dropped:

https://i.imgur.com/cCBVscr.jpg

grim

ironically, Alan Moore personally approved that one
#sicbait

Bookstore (inc online) figures for graphic novels in 2020 are out: Watchmen (in paperback) was the best-selling superhero book of the year, and DC’s #1 seller overall. (Also its 19th, in hardcover.)

32 years after DC told Alan Moore to go and get his fuckin’ shinebox, their 8th and 10th best-sellers were also written by him in the 1980s (#8 owned by AT&T, #10 also stolen). DC only had two books last year that sold close to half as many copies of Watchmen, and as their #1 seller, Watchmen was the 57th-best-selling comic on the chart overall.

(DC were the #7 publisher; Marvel are at #16, with $1.3 million total in retail sales, and their top title moving 9700 copies. They only placed six books in the top 750, four of which are Star Wars comics, and two of those are “Darth Vader volume 1”, but probably different Darth Vader volume 1s.)

What was #8?

The Killing Joke probably

Yep; ten of DC’s top twenty are batbooks.

Not to cast doubt, but would you mind linking to the data? I'm curious about everything that's selling.

I haven't seen it but I'm going to guess that Dog Man and similar YA + manga make up most of the top spots.

Marvel's constant reboots and new crossovers (and letting titles fall out of print for months at a time) keeps them from having an always-selling core like the Batfamily titles that keep DC's numbers afloat.

of course DC's masterful handling of the IP has had a major effect on the continuing sales of the original book

Certainly explains why they have so many Gardner Fox, Wm Moulton Marston and Ostrander/Yale collections flying off the shelves.

haven't seen it but I'm going to guess that Dog Man and similar YA + manga make up most of the top spots.

One manga is at #18 (My Hero Academia book one), the rest of the top twenty is Dog Man, Raina and other kids or YA.

Dog Man’s ten volumes alone are 13% of all comics sold through bookshop-type retail (& that’s probably a lesser fraction of what copawganda moves to libraries and direct through Scholastic), and only displaced from the top ten at #5 and #8. Pilkey did 4.2 million units, Raina 1.3.