Accuracy, Perhaps to a Fault

If you've somehow managed to miss anything about it, the Watchmen movie comes out Friday. For those of you who aren't familiar, Watchmen is a "graphic novel", which is a term frequently used by comic book geeks to mean "a bunch of comics that were previously printed put together in a book so you can read the whole story at once", because "graphic novel" sounds like something an adult would read. (Before you start making angry comments, I do realize that there are legitimate graphic novels such as Maus, but being honest, they are a smallish subset.) Anyway, it's not just a graphic novel, it's hailed as the greatest graphic novel of all time, and even made Time magazines 100 best novels list.

What's interesting is that this particular movie runs a greater risk of nerd rage than any film to come before it. If this movie fails to deliver, fanboys around the world will unite against the films creator and...well, they'll probably just bitch about it on the internet really. Now I've read the book twice, and skimmed it recently to remind myself of it, and it is a good book. It's a fascinating look at the idea of superheroes written by Allen Moore, a man who acknowledges that the entire concept is inherently ridiculous, and the kind of people who would dress up and fight crime in such a way would be, by necessity, bent. It is, however, treated as a sacred text by the fans, and they will rage if not satisfied.

Where the irony lies is that I think the people making the movie will not fail these people, and as a result, I don't know that they will satisfy anyone else. It is, after all, a comic book. It was written to be a comic book. I've been watching the clips online, and the fact is they clearly took the comic book and simply moved it to the big screen. I'm sure some changes were required, but given the current technology, it looks like they just took the comic, and they put it, scene for scene, into a movie. For people like me who have read it, it is, to say the least, fascinating to see it moving about like that. I'm just not sure how it's going to work for anyone else.

What's funny about this is that now I'm even more excited by it. I'm not sure what I'm looking forward to more: the movie, or the internet lighting up like a Christmas tree once all of the geeks and non-geeks have had a chance to take in whatever it is they have made of the work. I can say that Moore's comics have been hit or miss in the move to film. V for Vendetta? Very good movie. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?

Let's just say that if offered the choice between watching that movie and getting kicked hard in the junk, I would advise one to consider the fact that getting kicked in the junk causes excruciating pain that only lasts a few minutes, as opposed to excruciating pain that lasts a couple of hours.