Danny Djeljosevic
Danny Djeljosevic (jello-suh-vitch) is a writer of comic books, screenplays, and freelance-y things. He also reviews comics, films, and music for various Internet concerns, and lives in San Diego, CA, where nothing bad happens to anyone ever. He has yet to visit Legoland or that place where you pay to smash plates for fun. Or the beach, for that matter.
Danny welcomes stalkers to find him at D for Djeljosevic.
Who Whines (about) the Watchmen?
By Xavier Lopez
After the fifth attempt at writing an article about the comings and goings within the Vertigo universe, it has become clear to me that I am going to have to write about the Watchmen film. I swear that I have tried to write about other things. The first try was about the way that death has been handled in the last few issues of Fables and how different it is to the rest of the comic world. The second try was a recap of several different books being published by Vertigo. And on and on to no avail.
But throughout this long week, I kept coming back to Watchmen. I know that, strictly speaking, Watchmen isn't even a Vertigo title, but I'm going to go with the fact that later reprints and collections were released under the Vertigo imprint—so I can fudge this a bit. 
Let me start out by saying that I am not going to worry about warning you off about spoilers. If you haven't read the comic then you are seriously missing out on something that is an important part of our shared comic cultural landscape, and if you have, then spoilers are just part of a good discussion. Let me also state very clearly and emphatically that I truly enjoyed the movie, so if you are biased against the celluloid version of the Watchmen, we may have to agree to disagree.
Since the movie, I have had a chance to talk to many of my friends and acquaintances about Zach Snyder's adaptation of the book. Some didn't like how Dr. Manhattan was made into the scapegoat instead of introducing the fabled "Squid" (I suppose calling it a mutant brain would have been just too weird, even for comics' fans). Some didn't like the fact that Owlman is there when Rorschach commits suicide, or that Dan Dreiberg was not the mealy-mouthed wuss that he is in the comics. Still others had gripes about how much was missing—including the "Black Freighter" comic—which Snyder has promised will be on the CD. 
Even Alan Moore has gone on the record as saying that the Watchmen is "unfilmable." I have to add that I have the utmost respect for Alan Moore and David Gibbons' masterpiece: the Watchmen remains perhaps one of the most important comic books of all time, up there with Action Comics #1 and the first meeting of the JSA. I also love Moore's sense of bravado in calling something, anything, "unfilmable."
But that is, to put it bluntly, just not true.
What each and every person I have talked to has had in common is the view that, for some uncanny and unspeakable reason, the Watchmen book is somehow biblical, and as a result, each and every person has a favorite deviation from the initial text that allows them to decry how the original has somehow been "done wrong" by its inclusion or subtraction. This is, of course, a common issue when it comes to doing adaptations.
However, nothing is unfilmable, nothing is inadaptable, and if the source material is treated with respect (rather than merely replicated), an adaptation can become something just as viable, just as enlightening, and perhaps, in some very important ways, better than the original. Yes, I said it, and I know that there will be some irate fanboys calling for my head on a platter—but there are ways in which the Watchmen movie is a far more successful way of telling the story of the Watchmen than the books.
There was a time, perhaps, when an artist and writer could come up with images and ideas that simply could not be put on the silver screen, but those days are long gone. Ever since the opening of Industrial Light and Magic and the advent of computers, anything that can be imagined can be reproduced and even made into the mundane.
I have also heard from others that Zach Snyder has had to defend himself by pointing out how hard he had to fight to stay as true as he did to the original. I'd hate to see how fans would have cringed had Monty Python's Terry Gilliam been the one behind the lens. Gilliam would have no doubt made an art piece, but it would have also no doubt only borne passing resemblance to the original.
But Snyder has also created an artwork. What Snyder has done is fashion another version of the Watchmen, one that is just as viable, just as complex and just as failed as the original. Something that you will never hear anyone say about the Watchmen book is that it is not a perfect work of art. However, there are several ways in which this is certainly so: the ending leaves much to be desired and, for the most part, comes completely out of right field. Some of the best aspects of the comic series would never have been included, in fact, had DC been able to sell ad space. The making of Dr. Manhattan into the villain of the piece is a master stroke that makes for a far more satisfying and coherent ending than what we originally got from Moore and Gibbons.
The movie, in fact, becomes a critique of not only the Nixon administration, but by this one change, the Watchmen story suddenly becomes zeitgeist and condemns both the Neo-conservatives and the entire Bush administration, something that it never did in the original and not just because it was written before 9-11. 
In addition, it is far more satisfying to have Dan Dreiberg never verbally give his assent to Veidt's final solution to man's misery. And to have included the Black Freighter in the movie would have simply taken away from the rest of the story—although perhaps it might have been nice as a cartoon before the movie ala Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.
So what is my point? I think that, ultimately, fans and perhaps even Alan Moore himself are guilty of giving the Watchmen text a primacy that no text can or should have. Fans seem to be denying even their own interpretations of the comic or the movie, which vary significantly and have created an imaginary space wherein they have created a new "perfect" text that never actually existed. I'm not even going to rely on that old saw that, "Hey, it's only a comic book."
Because that completely misses the point, Watchmen is a book, a complete and unalterable, endlessly iterable text, but so is the movie, just as complex and failed and perfect and whole. At least Zach Snyder's Watchmen movie isn't the piece of trash that Frank Miller's Spirit was—if you want me to sound just like everything I have just critiqued, then ask me what I thought of that mess…
Until next time, this is Xavier signing off…
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