![]() ![]() The solution proposed by Snyder and screenwriters David Hayter and Alex Tse is simply to ignore the problem and stick to the text. You could sense Martin Scorsese and "Taxi Driver's" Travis Bickle in Moore's squalid New York and vigilante anti-hero Rorschach, but proposed movies by Terry Gilliam and Paul Greengrass failed to materialize, foundering on the comic book's sophisticated narrative chicanery. With its parallel stories and virtuoso zooming and panning visual tropes, Moore and illustrator Dave Gibbons' "Watchmen" always felt cinematic. (It's easy to discern the book's influence on subsequent films "The Incredibles" and "Mystery Men.") Manhattan morphed between New Jersey and Mars, cutting between a doomsday conspiracy threatening to engulf the Earth and flashbacks relating the biographies of half-a-dozen "watchmen," a generation of intrepid masked avengers forced to hang up their capes and Spandex when public opinion turned on them in the late 1970s. Moore's meta-comic switched back and forth in time with the same facility as Dr. : Share "Watchmen" reviews, screening excitement.Manhattan, a kind of quantum ghost in the machine capable of reconstituting matter (and nuclear warheads) at will. ![]() The Soviets are effectively neutered by America's not-so-secret weapon, Dr. In Moore's alternative 1985, Nixon is still president, the U.S. His 1986 comic book is a landmark in the history of the form, a masterpiece of pop cultural angst, filtering Cold War nihilism and disillusionment through the inspired pulp idiom of mundane masked crimefighters and one genuine, possibly radioactive, superhero. Snyder slavishly transcribes what's set down 5 inches in front of his face.Īlan Moore, who has refused to have his name on the movie (ditto its Moore-based predecessors, "V for Vendetta" and "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen") and who has declined all reimbursement to protest the entertainment industry's fundamental lack of respect for intellectual property, counts as a bona fide visionary. Snyder - whose previous films were a remake ("Dawn of the Dead") and another scrupulously faithful comic book adaptation ("300") - is more in the line of a fancy photocopier, duplicating other artists' imagery with a forger's intensity.Ī visionary transforms the world. The visionary sees what others do not see. "Visionary" director Zack Snyder, as the marketing would have it, has filmed Alan Moore's "unfilmable" graphic novel by treating the comic book panels as his storyboard and his Bible.ĭoesn't it bother anyone that this is about as far from the definition of "visionary" as it's possible to get? ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |