Week 1- Watchmen From Comic to Film

For week one, we will be comparing Watchmen directed by Zach Snyder to Alan Moore’s original 1986 DC comic of the same name. Although perhaps fitting many stereotypes of comic book heroes, villains and storylines, Watchmen still manages to seem unique and unlike any other comic book franchises. This could perhaps be a reason for the film’s rather unsuccessful run at the box office and with mainstream movie-goers. Yet putting aside popularity, Snyder’s Watchmen is an amazing movie with cool effects, relatable (somewhat) characters and relationships, and of course let’s admit it…some hot actors. But how does the film compare to the original comic? Let's have a look shall we...

The first aspect of comparison we will address if the fact that Snyder, the director took a very realistic/literal approach to his adaptation. We believe there are some pros and cons to this, as we will explore.

          A negative aspect of the Snyder’s literal interpretation in the imagery and even direct quotations, is that to fully appreciate this you would have had to read the book. But most people, when we heard about the movie didn't even know there was a book. But after reading the book and then watching the movie, there was a better appreciation for the movie because then you can see how well the director used effects and the script to adapt the book. As mentioned, this was probably a major reason why the movie wasn't so successful because they marketed it as this huge blockbuster movie with major actors when the comic itself wasn't very “mainstream” to begin with. Especially with the younger generation since they waited so long so adapt it.  Its understandable that Snyder wanted to be loyal to the comic book fans but also make money, so he had to appeal to larger mainstream audience. He probably thought that putting in big actor names would get people to go see it which probably helped the movie but not enough. Snyder also probably thought that making it more “r-rated” and raunchy would make it enjoyable for audience that weren't comic fans.

There were also a lot of pros to the literal interpretation whether you read the book or not. Reading the book makes you appreciate the effects much more and it just made the scale of the movie seem more impressive how much Snyder managed to take directly from the comic and put it into a movie that the audience could follow. But even without reading the book, the direct visuals from the book panels to the screen made the movie all the more captivating and exciting to follow. More specifically, it is clear that Snyder used a lot of the colors and “cartoon” quality of the book in his scenes which, again, made the movie very visually appealing.

Also the Rorschach and Dr.Manhattan narrative was an effective element that was kept form book to movie. Because the storyline was very complicated and jumped all over the place, we thought these narratives helped inform the audience and keep our attention lasting.

In conclusion, we were asked to explore what was most and least effective about Snyder’s film adaptation and have explored some elements and given our own thoughts. But, we would like to ask you the question, what is really is an “effective” adaptation and what must be considered to make a film adaptation more or less effective? This is a difficult question to answer since every director has their own artistic vision. The answer, we have considered, is a completely individual one as what one person might consider effective, another might not.