Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Often, Things Begin With "I Don't Wanna Be That Guy, BUT . . ."

It all started innocently enough.

We were sitting in a restaurant, having lunch. Whereas most people see lunch as that meal what happens between breakfast and dinner, for me, lunch is a moment to debate or pontificate on whatever is on my mind at the time.

In short, to not shut up for one more our of the 24 that I never keep quiet during anyways. My life=endless cacophony.

Never mind that, though. This day I was discussing the merits of 2008's two big superhero movies, Iron Man and The Dark Knight. Moreover, I was trying to explain why they worked as well as they did and trying to justify (even though I objectively admit The Dark Knight was the superior movie) why I still liked Iron Man more.

My initial argument compared the two movies to, of all things, Bond movies--Iron Man was like Goldfinger--cool and confident in what it's doing and so perfectly in tune with the genre and style it's going for that it all looks effortless. It's the same song you've heard before, but there's not a bad note in it.

The Dark Knight, by contrast, was the Casino Royale of comic movies--blowing up the formula while at the same time revitalising it by looking at it in new directions. There are heroes, villians, gadgets, stunts, and on the face of things, we've all seen that before, but the scope is expanded a bit more. There's more going on, and more to think about (something which I've only got on repeated viewings) and generally it feels like an expansion of what's come before.

And then I brought up Watchmen. Ken Lowery makes and excellent point here that The Dark Knight has pretty much made Watchmen as a film redundant, and really, I think he's bang-on. Dark Knight expanded the possibilities of the superhero movie in much the same way as Watchmen the comic book expanded the possibilities of the superhero comic (for better or worse--I'll try to explain better my lament that superhero books evidently stopped evolving in 1986 at a later date) and really, it's now been done for the superhero-on-film, which should be distinct from the superhero comic.

Because, really, Watchmen-the-book's strength for me--now that all the adolescent "ooh! How'd he get away with all that stuff?! That's edgy and kewl!" has fallen away--is more as an exercise in the grammar of the superhero comic. What can you do? What are the possibilities of working in this genre? That, to me, is what someone who has a fondness of superhero comics should have taken away--here's a textbook on what you can do, and it can exist as a living example (as opposed to a textbook) of the possibilities of the genre and the medium. Kind of like how Citizen Kane is often cited by film students as the template for the possibilities of film.

Unfortunately, everyone working in comics seems to have nicked all the "kewl" surface elements, and we've been spinning our wheels for 22 years ever since. Again--saving that for my thoughts on 1986 being the best and worst of times.

I don't think that movies can work in the same kind of narrative density as comics are capable of (maybe Berlin Alexanderplatz)--too much information gets lost in the constant forward progression of film, wherein in comics you're free to pause and review what you read previously (you can do that with movies with liberal application of "fast forward" and "rewind," but it always bounces you out of your engagement with the film--for better or worse, movies are meant to be watched straight through) Comics operate by different rules--narrative density (even simultaneous multiple narratives) are possible without being overwhelming, for one thing.

Much was made, previous to it actually being mooted, that Watchmen was "unfilmable," and honestly, it is. What makes Watchmen special is how it uses the full potential of it's parent medium to its maximum potential. Read it again, sometimes. Pay special attention to the 5 complete stories (or so) that run through it, and how you can follow them like individual threads that part of a larger tapestry at the same time.

Now think about how much of that could make it into the movie. What works on the page quite often looks ridiculous when blown up on a movie screen. The Dark Knight was able to expand the possibilities of the grammar f the superhero movie well enough. Possibly because it was conceived to work in its native medium, as Watchmen worked so well it its own.

I can't really see why we need a Watchmen movie. That ground's been broke, and broke without having to compromise an existing text to do it. And the advantages of taking Watchmen-the-book to the big screen don't justify the inevitable compromises and omissions, and the inevitable false notes that will be struck.

Never mind, that from all I've heard, the people making Watchmen, like the fans-who-became-pros who read the comic back in the day, seem to have glommed on to entirely the "kewl" qualities . . .well, it's all a bit disappointing, really. Doesn't give one high hopes for the final product.

Oh well. We got two good ones in 2008.

15 comments:

Diana Kingston-Gabai said...

I've always thought there were two major hurdles to jump with any adaptation of "Watchmen":

1. The book's twenty years old. As you say, any contemporary audience will already be innately familiar with the post-Watchmen genre. At best, they're not interested in how the wheel was reinvented; at worst, they'll think it's derivative.

2. The layers. Ye Gods, the layers. I mean, even the simpler comics-to-film adaptations have to leave some stuff by the wayside, but in most cases (ie: "The Dark Knight" and "Iron Man") you can cut an entire swath of the story out and... hell, you'd probably end up with a better adaptation. But that sort of thing doesn't work for "Watchmen", because if you take out the Black Pirates bit or the Minutemen flashbacks or... hell, I can't imagine what the story would look like without those end-issue addendums with the newspaper clippings and such... so you cut all that out, and you're left with a fairly linear, rather unremarkable storyline. No foreshadowing (and that's one of the things Moore did best, all those subtle hints that something's coming and you might not even register it on your first or second reading), no depth... it'll be something, but that something won't be "Watchmen".

Kazekage said...

1. And that's a real problem, because (and this is one of the few things I agree with Zack Snyder on) to update it to the current day (which was apparently tried) it becomes something else, primarily a comment on the War on Terror.

Besides, they've done that before with Moore's work. I'm sure they have. ;)

The notion that the primary audience for it grew up in the Watchmen generation is a sharp observation, actually, and one I'd wish I'd thought of. Much like a married Spider-Man,when an entire generation of readers simply takes the innovations and imitations that Watchmen begat as The Way Things Have Always Been. I mean, you can't blaze the same trail twice, can you?

2) One of the things I'd be saddest to lose would be the narrative density of Watchmen--one of my favourite subpots in the books is how encountering Rorshach so deeply disturbs his psychiatrist. It's window dressing to the plot, but it's really amazing that Moore could thread a character arc for the guy in there.

Apparently some of the backmatter is going to be done as a DVD extra, but really it's not the same and might not work as well (it's been suggested that it might be threaded back in an extended DVD, LoTR-stye, which is . . .better) because really, for Watchmen to work, it kind of all has to be happening at once. It's no accident, I think, that one of the book's metaphors involves watchmaking--small parts integral to the function of a larger whole.

Diana Kingston-Gabai said...

And I've had just about enough metaphors for the War on Terror, thankyouverymuch.

It's just more evidence of the huge gap between the people running the show and the audience. Like the whole Return of Captain Marvel bit; I would imagine most of Marvel's contemporary readers were only born after Captain Marvel died of... what was it, cancer? And afterwards, if he was at all relevant to contemporary stories, it was only that people remembered him for his death (and maybe for being Carol Danvers' mentor). Nothing at all to suggest that the current generation in any way cares about him as a character. Similarly, any reader under the age of 30 would identify Mary Jane as Spider-Man's wife, especially given that the third film stops just short of them getting engaged. It's only over-the-hill fanboys like Quesada who even remember there was an older status quo when they were the target audience, and... hell, I don't know. Do they think they'll enjoy the comics more for being closer to what they looked like in 1860 BC?

And it's that density that makes Watchmen such an irresistable read, because even the minor characters are part of the whole intricate pattern Moore weaves together. When that giant squid (or bomb, or whatever) hits New York in the film, we're not going to care about the people who get killed, whereas the graphic novel has all these minor stories about the lesbian girlfriends and the boy reading the Black Pirate comic, and their deaths are sudden and final and violent and they drive home the horror of Ozymandias' plan.

I think with Moore stories, time is the biggest impetus to any adaptation. If Watchmen had been made as 6 two-hour TV movies, it'd have a much better chance of catching more of the story's complexities; compression just doesn't work for this sort of thing.

Kazekage said...

Yeah, if I never have to endure another incisive commentary on The Post 9-11 World I may join the priesthood in my rapturous jubilation.

I have to wonder, really, if we're at such a down point that maybe the creators are so mypoic that they are doing these things just for their own pleasure. I have a future Witless Dictionary definition coming where I talk about the danger inherent in every creator coming on to a long-standing property determined to Make Their Mark, when really . . .guys, despite what you might have heard, "stewardship" is not necessarily a dirty word.

Yeah, and those deaths only work because we've spent 11 issues growing attached to that corner newsstand (the sense of place that corner has is just amazing--I can get a picture of it in my head even now) and you just don't have time to do it in a 2-3 hour movie, which would be bad no matter what work was being adapted, but when it's Watchmen which gets almost all its power from the subtext . . .I don't see how it works.

I just can't see it working-Moore just puts too much stuff in that is too integral to the piece to then be stripped out for a movie. I don't think it's ever worked for the best, really.

But on the plus side, it makes the likelihood of a Promethea movie remote.

Diana Kingston-Gabai said...

I'm curious to see what effect the Obama administration will have on comics - to some extent, the last eight years have been influenced by Bush, and as Paul O'Brien noted, "Dark Reign" would probably be a lot closer to the zeitgeist if McCain had won the election. As it stands, it's not much in tune with the general atmosphere in America.

Most likely. What other reason could Geoff Johns have for bringing back Barry Allen - another character remembered these days more for his death and how his death influenced others than for anything he actually did?

It probably won't. Still, I suppose I'll go see the movie when it comes out; unlike "V For Vendetta", there's a chance that while it won't be Moore-level quality, it'll at least be worth the time spent watching it.

Top 10 would be perfect for TV, though... the network execs can even pitch it as "CSI... WITH SUPERHEROES!!!"

Kazekage said...

Well, given what they brought out during the campaign, as seen in a now-infamous scene from Secret Invasion I think Marvel's as blind to the zeitgeist as they are to everything else. I think I feel another Witless Dictionary definition coming on. ;)

And Dark Reign is a stupid idea to begin with. Norman Osborn? Not a mastermind, never was. Move ON.

Yeah, the return of Barry Allen is . . .dubious, for me. He works well in small doses in flashbacks and the like, but I can't really see the benefit of bringing him back, especially after we've spent 22 years trying to sell Wally as the one, true Flash. I expect Dick Grayson to go back to being Robin any day now . . .

I think I'm gonna wait for it on DVD or break into a theater or something when it comes out. I can't imagine paying for something I'm that ambivalent about, thus continuing my trend of never directly paying for any Alan Moore film adaptation. I'm sure that Moore and the sock puppet he worships suffer directly because of that abstinence. ;)

It would be, but I wonder how some of the more obscure genre elements he's parodying would make the transition.

Still, better that than Cobweb, which I always thought was less a story than a dry run for Lost Girls

Diana Kingston-Gabai said...

Always a good thing. :)

Their inability to grasp basic terminology astounds me: masterminds plan ahead. Osborn didn't set the invasion up so he could look good, he just took advantage of a pre-existing situation. Basically, he got lucky. Not exactly the qualities one looks for in a supposed arch-criminal.

See, that's the great tragedy of the DCU: unlike Marvel, they already had mechanisms in place to support legacy characters like Kyle Rayner and Wally West, always comparing themselves to the dead icons of the past (Barry, Hal). Then you get this bass-ackwards movement where the old-timers come back and the successors are taken out. Utterly mystifying, especially since the unfortunate implication is that no legacy character will ever match up to the One True Hero.

I have to admit, Moore's a bit of a paradox to me: he doesn't seem egotistical, the type to surround himself with a forum of fawning yes-men, but he still went batshit insane. Maybe not Michael Jackson-level demented, but you have to wonder what could've caused him to snap.

That's another part of the problem: on some barely-tangible level, "Watchmen" carries within it the traditions and conventions of the comic book genre without expressing them explicitly - just through its format and medium, you somehow intuitively know what Moore's talking about.

Ugh, "Lost Girls". Should've bloody well stayed lost...

Kazekage said...

I'm scaring myself with how much mileage I've got out of Dark Reign this week. Just when I thought Mockingbird's stunning return being a Big Thing wouldn't be topped for blockheaded stupidity, I saw the first few pages of Dark Avengers and was flabbergasted.

Yeah. One of the more compelling bits of subtext (and this isn't a book you'd think of for subtext) JLA/Avengers was that the Marvel U has all the fallible heroes and DC's filled to the brim with legends. If you're willing to run with the legends" thing it should, theoretically allow you to bring in a Wally or a Kyle organically without hurting the concept overmuch. However, the one thing you can't do is go back, because that's saying "Hey, hard-line fans resistant to change, we're just as resistant to change and better to hold on to the audience we have rather than attempt something new."

I think, going on all I read, that Alan always had a crooked wheel upstairs and his comics career has been merely a study on what happens when said crooked wheel finally spins off its axle. I think his odd perception of the comic world was informed by his general eccentricity, so his current benign looniness was probably the only likely outcome.

I think you're right, and that was probably one of Watchmen's great strengths--you twigged on to most of it on a gut level and he played on things that work in comics that, to long-term readers, are completely sublimated.

Yeah . . .I mean, it's Alan Moore and all but . . .it's still slashfiction, pretty much.

Diana Kingston-Gabai said...

At least you got inspired by it - I just shrugged and yawned. Not very conducive to discourse.

I remember that by virtue of being the only thing in the entire miniseries that I understood without consulting Wikipedia. :) It was an excellent distinction in terms of how the average citizen of each universe treats the superhuman population. Marvel people can't seem to tell the difference between heroes and villains (which... have I ever told you my idea about how "Civil War" would've been so much better if the superheroes had been fighting over the government's persecution of supervillains?)

The bigger problem with going back is that you end up alienating your existing reader base because they've already accepted Wally and Kyle - I honestly don't believe there's a bigger potential readership out there for Barry Allen in 2009.

The tragedy is, I can see him as a demented genius whose loose screws finally eclipsed his talent. I mean, he's far from the Sim Meridian, but he's also not the guy who could pull off Top 10 or V For Vendetta anymore.

Pedophilic fan-fiction, no less. Boo-urns.

Kazekage said...

It's all about what fires the blood, what can I say? If it weren't so absolutely ridiculous I would have done the same but it's so utterly silly I still can't wrap me head 'round it.

Man, even as someone who walks in this continuty sludge myself, Diana, sometimes I had to do that as well. :) The line between hero and villain and the difficulty of perceiving which has been used to great effect before (especially at the beginning of Thunderbolts)

I'd be interested to hear this story idea of yours--it sounds like a fairly intriguing way to address the issues of Civil War in a way that wasn't utterly boneheaded or depended on the cliche of heroes fighting heroes.

Yeah, really. I'm not sure at all this is worth the damage that will be done. I mean, the whole reason they killed off Bart in the first place was that the fans wanted Wally back, right? Surely that would have told the something but as usual, they've heard exactly the wrong thing.

Well, as I said, if you're already on an eccentric course, you're bound to finally slip out of contact with anything rational once a certain point has been passed, and lord, if Lost Girls wasn't some kind of Point of No Return, I don't know what is.

Diana Kingston-Gabai said...

One of these days they're going to sink so low that no one - not me, not you, not Chris Sims - will be able to say anything: we'll all just stare slack-jawed at the horror of it. Silencing critics by being so bad it defies conscious analysis: diabolical plan, no?

That's a big pet peeve of mine - if you have to do research to understand the story, it's a failure on the part of the writer. Yes, one can't be expected to work decades of continuity into every event, and I'm certainly not advocating a return to those obnoxious "See NEW AVENGERS #31, True Believers!" captions, but... if at some point your comic becomes a history lesson, it's time to scale back and maybe pay a little attention to what's supposed to be happening now.

Glad you liked it. :) You know, I'd suggest we do a regular "Kazekage and Diana Fix The Marvel Universe" feature, but that sounds horribly conceited, doesn't it? I'd hate to start sounding like Jesse Baker. :D

And that's another problem with DC's approach right there: if you want to bring the Old Guard back, fine, go ahead. But why demolish the legacy characters in the process? Is there some rule that says Bart, Wally and Barry couldn't co-exist in the same book? Wouldn't it be more interesting to see the legacy characters interacting with their predecessors on a regular basis?

The scary thing? Moore was probably the single greatest talent in mainstream comics. And he ended up going off the rails just as easily as Sim and Byrne - I'll grant they're different breeds of crazy, but it all amounts to the same thing, doesn't it? An inability to create anything that isn't colored by "Dude, seriously, WTF?"

Diana Kingston-Gabai said...

One of these days they're going to sink so low that no one - not me, not you, not Chris Sims - will be able to say anything: we'll all just stare slack-jawed at the horror of it. Silencing critics by being so bad it defies conscious analysis: diabolical plan, no?

That's a big pet peeve of mine - if you have to do research to understand the story, it's a failure on the part of the writer. Yes, one can't be expected to work decades of continuity into every event, and I'm certainly not advocating a return to those obnoxious "See NEW AVENGERS #31, True Believers!" captions, but... if at some point your comic becomes a history lesson, it's time to scale back and maybe pay a little attention to what's supposed to be happening now.

Glad you liked it. :) You know, I'd suggest we do a regular "Kazekage and Diana Fix The Marvel Universe" feature, but that sounds horribly conceited, doesn't it? I'd hate to start sounding like Jesse Baker. :D

And that's another problem with DC's approach right there: if you want to bring the Old Guard back, fine, go ahead. But why demolish the legacy characters in the process? Is there some rule that says Bart, Wally and Barry couldn't co-exist in the same book? Wouldn't it be more interesting to see the legacy characters interacting with their predecessors on a regular basis?

The scary thing? Moore was probably the single greatest talent in mainstream comics. And he ended up going off the rails just as easily as Sim and Byrne - I'll grant they're different breeds of crazy, but it all amounts to the same thing, doesn't it? An inability to create anything that isn't colored by "Dude, seriously, WTF?"

Kazekage said...

I actually find myself doing something like that now, actually. Though usually I can manage to choke out a "what, REALLY?" in the process.

I dunno, I found the footnotes/captions to be fairly useful when used as reference points instead of attempts to ape Stan Lee. The event horizon for me is when I'm required to read 3 interviews and a Wikpedia synopsis in a vain effort to figure out just what in the hell I just read.

I find that idea has a lot of potential, actually--and not just because the title makes it sound like a fun activity book. :) I have been toying with writing up an "If I wrote [fill in the blank]" feature here, actually. I figure I can just about avoid the Baker/K-box trap, too, if only because I'm far more self-deprecating than they are. :)

It would be a way to not disenfranchise the people they seem determined to honk off, wouldn't it? I don't get DC sometimes--for all their "legacy" this and "family" that, unless you're Batman or Superman, your distaff characters have about as much chance of surviving as a red-headed girl in an X-Men comic.

Well, I have to play devil's advocate in the sense that Moore's nuttiness if the most entertaining (Sim's is the most outrageous and Byrne, like Prince Philip, has the ability to be superhumanly obnoxious at any moment) even if the work he's actually produced is as dumb as a backward jackass.

I do lament that his talent is in decline, but for God's sake, he thought Big Numbers was a great idea--there were signs his was always going to be an eccentric orbit around whatever "normal" is, and eventually it would carry him far away from it.

Diana Kingston-Gabai said...

Yes, I too draw the line at "extra research". The sheer nerve of being expected to pay four dollars for twenty-something pages and then research the story points? Hell no.

I suppose the key to staying grounded there would be to focus on the corrective itself and not on yourself as the person Saving The Day (which constantly undermines K-Box's recent tracking of post-One More Day Spidey sales - they would be an interesting source for analyses except he's constantly reminding everyone that He Knew It All Along and He Tried To Warn Us But We Wouldn't Listen).

I really don't know why there's such a strong "either/or" mentality there... maybe it's because the Old Guard are so fetishized that someone like Johns doesn't see any need for a modern counterpart: if Barry is The Best and Most Interesting and Most Heroic Flash Ever, Wally is superfluous.

I suppose... it's just that with Moore, unlike Byrne and Sim, there's a real sense of loss - he'd written some of the best comics in the history of the medium, and now look at him. With Sim and Byrne, there's no reason to feel like the world of comics is poorer for them having gone bonkers.

But at the time you could handwave Big Numbers as a glitch. It wasn't until much later that that sort of thing became par for the course.

Kazekage said...

And it's not limited to comics either. One of the big problems I had with BSG was to make any sense of things you had to consult 3 webisodes, 2 deleted scenes, and Ron Moore's podcast, and somehow even then they leave stuff out. It's an attitude that seems to say "we can dash off any old shit right now, we'll fix it later."

Well, that's K-Box for you--we're lucky enough that's the one post subject he hasn't yet folded his MILF-Porn obsession into. ;) I think all you can do is know when to let it go, and not let it aggravate you to the point where you lose all sense of proportion. How often this lesson is lost on most comics fans.

Which is a fine attitude to have. . .if Geoff Johns is willing to buy 100,000 copies of Flash all by his lonesome to justify that decision to anyone save himself. :)

Well, Sim does have a number of qualities I lamented losing (his lettering, for instance, is brilliant and far too underrated), and Byrne was capable of spinning an entertaining comic or two before his ego got the better of him. I suppose it all depends on when exactly on their curve of disintegration you encountered them at.