Is Alan Moore Right When He Declares Watchmen Movie "Wrong?"




Alan Moore has been rather outspoken about his distaste for the films made based on his graphic novels. While this tended towards irritation with DC Comics using his work without his permission, it's gotten a little more harsh with Watchmen:

If I write a crappy comic book, it doesn't cost the budget of an emergent Third World nation. When you've got these kinds of sums involved in creating another two hours of entertainment for Western teenagers, I feel it crosses the line from being merely distasteful to being wrong.


Moore is of course talking about the estimated $130,000,000 budget for Watchmen. While I tend to roll my eyes at criticisms of the evils of capitalism and much of what Alan Moore says veers into angry old man territory, it's really difficult to argue with Moore's critique of the Watchmen film budget. Watchmen is his characters and his stories and just happened to be published before creator-owned properties were becoming commonplace. These movies should not be made against the creators' wishes.

Never mind the fact that Watchmen was marketed as an action movie, leaving intellectually adverse moviegoers wondering what they had just seen. Most of the people I've met who enjoyed Watchmen had already read the book. Those I've met that saw the movie and hadn't read the book tended to not like it.

Given Hollywood's outspoken politically liberal inclinations, it would be nice if they put these massive resources in a more philanthropic direction.

1 comments:

Ian | March 28, 2009 at 2:31 PM

I believe that Moore should be angry with the movie because it was not his completed vision of the work of Watchmen, and they completely changed the last 20 minutes of the film. Most of the reason why I wanted to see it in the first place was the epic ending in the comic. If people would just make movies based on comics by how the comic was their would a lot better movies. Case in point read Wanted and then see Wanted, which one is more awesome and brutal but less movie goer friendly? Exactly