Damon Lindelof's Watchmen

okay that could rule (only Netflix's extremely lax quality control has me concerned)

yeah not sure why people would assume this would be bad. the movie wasn't too hot. there is more in the comic than comfortably fits in 2 1/2 hours; the movie was both overstuffed and felt overly long and turgid while still not covering all the ground of the comic. a 10 hour pace would suit this just great.

Not so much 'this will be bad' as 'just...why?'.

(I mean besides that whole 'making $$$ for a bunch of people excepting the dudes who actually created it' thing.)

enh, i'll throw my hat in the ring and predict this will be bad

I guess I feel slightly more optimistic about this than when it was rumored to be a Zack Snyder project, but it's really just the difference between being anesthetized before having all of your teeth removed vs. having someone smash them out with a length of pipe. The end result is still gonna be sucky and toothless.

mainly i'm just psyched to find out what superheroes would be like if they existed in the real world

makes u think

"Not so much 'this will be bad' as 'just...why?'."

because the movie was boring and the story could make a good visual experience?

Not so much 'this will be bad' as 'just...why?'.

if it won't be bad... why not

Obv there should be a moratorium on cape stuff & I won't watch this

"Not so much 'this will be bad' as 'just...why?'."

because the movie was boring and the story could make a good visual experience?

it made a good visual experience in 1986 and still does today tbf

but what if the pictures... moved

Is there something more objectionable about this being adapted than an ordinary novel?

I am interested in the "lindelof is good now" narrative, so many people I trust are raving about the leftovers

tbf i basically took the "lindelof is bad" narrative on faith because afaik I haven't seen anything he's written except for Prometheus (which is v v bad for sure)

yes as bizarro and others have detailed repeatedly

xp

the novel-analogy would have to draw correspondences to a novel about novels, that also takes advantage of the unique physical properties of books and structured, written narratives (first paragraph would have to be identical to the last paragraph etc.)

feel like metafiction has been adapted to other media before

also adaptations have maybe been good without doing the exact same thing the original did

Cloud Atlas (the film) sucked btw

has anyone ever filmed Hopscotch

best ex I can think of is Cronenberg's "Naked Lunch", which is more like a biopic of a specific period in Burroughs life overlaid w fantasy sequences than an adaptation of the book

somewhat similarly: The Orchid Thief -> Adaptation

anyway my main point was that Watchmen is not equivalent to "an ordinary novel" and thus presents a different set of problems re: adaptation (which I, obviously, don't think can be fully overcome)

If someone was really going to run with the adaptation and stay true to the *spirit* of the source material, they would make a meta-movie about superhero movies that doesn't reference the original book at all

best ex of the first thing or the second? Xps

Cock & bull story another imo successful example of a film adaptation of a self-referential novel

As far as good adaptations that don't keep to the spirit of the original but are in dialogue with it nonetheless, too many to list tbh

re: Naked Lunch, I was referring to this

adaptations have maybe been good without doing the exact same thing the original did

the shining, dr strangelove, ok maybe just all Kubrick films lol

haha otm

One weird trick turn everything into a comedy

But I mean it shouldn't be necessary to list examples for you to conceive of the possibility

oh it's possible, but it isn't the most common course for adaptations, and certainly jackasses like Lindelof and Snyder aren't capable of it

I would watch an Adaptation-esque Watchmen show that's all about a fictionalized Lindelof wrecking the entire endeavor.

Hopefully with an episode centered around a fictionalized Moore breaking into the HBO offices to beat him senseless.

'Forget about who's watching the Watchmen, Lindelof, and start worrying about who's watching your ass!'

I guess I'm not convinced that some of the structural elements are that important to retain. I certainly wasn't flipping back and forth to experience Doc Manhattan's view of time as I was reading. And something like the closed loop can be done in film.

Chapter 6 (the Rorschach chapter) being symmetrical still amazes me after all these years (the midpoint is Adrian whacking his assassin).

Once they announced this I could immediately see what they were thinking by talking about this project:
- The book's structure is so important, episodic TV would be able to handle this so much better than a film. We were all saying this back in 1985
- The superhero-IP frenzy in movies will not die down for a long time, I think Marvel has stuff planned out until, what, 2025 or something
- HBO specializes in putting the reader in a somewhat familiar environment/genre and then ladleing on tons of sex and violence (it's Rome, but with tits; it's the Old West, but with tits; it's sword-and-sorcery, but with ...) - this would extend the same pattern into the superhero genre
- I can only imagine the panic in HBO offices as Thrones gets closer to its final air date

... 1986, not '85

... and 'they announced' = 'Variety reported'. I need an editor

If someone was really going to run with the adaptation and stay true to the *spirit* of the source material, they would make a meta-movie about superhero movies that doesn't reference the original book at all

yeah, this is otm

best metafictional comic book movie remains american splendor, of course

I can only imagine the panic in HBO offices as Thrones gets closer to its final air date

I'm sure this is true but given the recent failure of Snyder's Watchmen I wouldn't think this has much built-in cachet. They are def worried about not having a cash cow in the Sex and the City/Sopranos/Thrones mold in the hopper though. Westworld was garbage.

they have a couple decent comedies at the moment (Silicon Valley, Insecure) but they don't have their next prestige hour-long drama. RIP Vinyl...

Well, there is The Deuce coming up in Sept.

I thought Westworld was amazing and adored it, but ymmv

Also from what I can tell something being 'recent' does not prevent anybody from adapting it again right away, the Spiderfilms gave me whiplash

they would make a meta-movie about superhero movies that doesn't reference the original book at all

isn't this Birdman?

Well, there is The Deuce coming up dropping in Sept.

fixed

But yeah I guess the point I'm trying to make is the marketing for this show would write itself and have the benefit of being congruent with the present superhero market saturation.

Remember HBO was really playing on the edge with Thrones, as there wasn't exactly a sword-and-sorcery thing going on in the culture at the time.

Lindelof is really made for stuff like this, too, I would not mind him being the guy rather than Gilliam to have a crack at it as a TV show.

As to whether we *need* it, no, we do not need these endless reboots. But that's exactly what I thought before Westworld aired

as there wasn't exactly a sword-and-sorcery thing going on in the culture at the time.

all those kids that loved Harry Potter grew up and were excited about prospect of murderboobs

Ha yeah I did forget about Potter

and immediately prior to that: LOTR

(actually those probably overlapped a bit, I forget?)

That was 2001-2003, I think - S1 of Thrones was 2011