Damon Lindelof's Watchmen

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

Can u let us know again that iyo lindelof is now one of the infallible greats despite a CV of absolute steaming shite, including spraying his cum over several probably worthwhile besides projects

Heh hostility there for lindelof not you tbh

should have him develop Speed Racer for HBO instead
adapted by blockbuster auteurs less than a decade ago
concerns a super hero without any actual super powers, just a sweet ride and a crazy family
also: chim chim

I get that he has a spotty as hell CV and inspires loathing/suspicion and I get that. I just wish more detractors had actually watched, y'know, his last major project for the company that will be producing this (if it even happens, again, I'm skeptical).

what would you like to see an hbo series do with the characters beyond the original story? moore and gibbons' piece is, to borrow a metaphor from the book itself, like an intricate mechanical watch, with every piece meticulously placed and designed to play a specific part in the overall structure

taking some of those components to, i dunno, make a toy car or whatever just seems pointless to me, but i'm genuinely interested in what you see the potential for this is beyond lindelof having recently hit his stride with the leftovers

if I knew what I wanted out of things I'd be writing TV shows. there's a whole set of movies devoted to giving comics nerds exactly what they want and they're boring as shit to me

also I like the book and all but y'all talk about it like it's some sacred text

tbh i think it's a bit airless and po-faced, and its influence on superhero comics has been largely utterly woeful

however, it is one of the few superhero-adjacent series which tells a complete, satisfying, self-contained story and it does it with a impressive unity of form and purpose

a lot of what works about The Leftovers is that it's *not* very contained, not in any way a "closed loop". it's purposely messy and elliptical, and cares more about theme and tone than anything else. that could be a good starting point for divergence. I think comics fans would probably be happier with someone like Vince Gilligan, a strong stylist with a masterful conception of plot mechanics and momentum - his shows run like, well, clockwork. lindelof seems to have a very different set of interests that runs counter to what you might expect someone taking this on would have and I think that's cool!

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

this is all that needs to be said tbh. I guess it needs to be said repeatedly and loudly though.

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.