Sunday, February 01, 2009

Watchmen: The Movie

I just re-read the comic series, Watchmen, and am becoming increasingly excited about the movie. The trailers look pretty darn good and there's are some fairly interesting marketing and other media surrounding the movie. First, there's the New Frontiersman website (based on a conservative magazine in the movie). A nice little piece of viral marketing there. Second, there's the "Tales of the Black Freighter" animated DVD that is supposed to accompany the movie and be the story of the pirate comics featured in the books. That DVD is also supposed to include some excerpts or reenactments of "Under the Hood" (a book featured within Watchmen). Finally there's the Watchmen motion comics, which will also be released on DVD. I've watched the first installment of this series and am pretty impressed with how close to the book it is.

My main concerns with the film - 1) It's a hard book to turn into a film, 2) Zak Snyder doesn't have my complete faith. I thought "300" was okay, and there were some parts that seemed a little strange. As it turned out, the "strange" parts were not in Frank Miller's original book, they were added in by Snyder. That goes to concern #3 - the rumors that the ending has been modified. Hopefully not too much. I realize that many books to movies have parts changed, excised and modified, but I'm hoping that Watchmen is more "Sin City" and "Harry Potter" than most other book adaptations.

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