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Many things have been written about Alan Moore and Watchmen. Over the course of the film's productions, there have been numerous articles written about Moore's position on the film, some painting him as a justifiably upset, some painting him as irrational. It doesn't help that occasionally we read quotes from him saying unpleasant things about the production, and other times we read about Alan Moore just plain not giving a damn. Due to the nature of publishing, it's hard to place when and under what context exactly is he saying all these things. It saddens me that whenever I stumble across anything about the Watchmen movie, it is quickly followed by scathing comments by people who are clearly misinformed about the situation. Though Moore had made it clear over the years, I still see people saying stuff like "If he doesn't want the movies made, why give them the rights?" or people calling him a hypocrite for taking Hollywood's money and then bitching about it. DC Comics owns the rights to Watchmen, not Alan Moore, so he didn't really have a choice, except to refuse receiving money from it.

WatchmenComicMovie.com did an interview with Watchmen artist and co-creator Dave Gibbons (who is very supportive and involved with the movie) and asked about his current relationship with his friend Alan Moore. His answer is very lenghty, but hopefully this will explain once and for all what's going on.

First of all, I’d have to say that I don’t necessarily see that there is a conflict between staying friends with Alan and being an active and vocal promoter for the film. Alan’s position, as I’ve explained before publicly and I’ll make it clear again, Alan has had some bad experiences with Hollywood. He’s also had some less-than-happy experiences with DC. He’s decided that he doesn’t want anything to do with movie adaptations of his work. And so what he wanted at the beginning of Watchmen, when he first heard that it was going to be a movie, was to sign a piece of paper which removed his name from the movie and that would give his share of the income from the movie to me. This goes along exactly with what he’d wanted on the V for Vendetta movie. Obviously, Alan made this decision before he really knew anything at all about the movie and it was long before shooting started, or anything like that. So it’s not as a reaction to this production.

He has had a bad experience with Hollywood. I’ve had no real prior experience with Hollywood. And I have to tell you that the experience that I’m having so far — so far, as Alan has warned me — so far, my experience is very, very good. I’m being very well-treated, my input is being sought, and I did feel that I’m able to have a positive effect on what’s being done with the movie and everything to do with it.

Alan doesn’t have a problem with me doing that. He doesn’t take the moral high ground. It isn’t that he thinks that anything to do with movies is evil and wicked. He would say that he’s had a bad experience and that’s the truth. But it isn’t a thing that really comes between me and him at all. Initially, when I was doing my Watching the Watchmen book, I did ask him a few questions. I wanted to know, for instance, if I could use notes that he’d written, if it was okay to reproduce a few pages of script and he said that he didn’t have a problem with that. But at a later stage, he said to me during one of our phone conversations that he was very happy to talk to me — always happy to talk to me — and he felt that I’d behaved impeccably in all my dealings with him regarding Watchmen, but that he really didn’t share my enthusiasm and that he didn’t want to have any further conversations with me about Watchmen.

And that’s fine. If that’s what he wants, I’m happy not to talk to him about Watchmen at all. The last thing in the world that I want to do is to upset Alan. If he’s happy with that state of affairs, then that’s absolutely fine with me.

Now, I am an active and vocal promoter of the film, because from the very beginning, I haven’t had any doubts at all that everybody involved with it, from Zack through all the other people working on the movie, to the people doing the various licensed properties, the motion comic and so on, are anything other than totally committed to this. I’ve never had a sense of anybody thinking “It’s near enough, it’s good enough,” or doing anything to the characters that diminished them in any way. Given that there are bound to be differences between the graphic novel and an adaptation of a graphic novel, I really, genuinely believe that everybody involved is doing their best to bring all their skill and intelligence into making it as good an adaptation of the graphic novel as can possibly be.

If at any point I felt that wasn’t the case, I would say so. I’m not being paid just to say good things about it. There’s no point in me saying that the movie’s really good if I didn’t genuinely believe that it was really good. So within myself, I can perfectly reconcile being friends with Alan and being involved in the film in the way that I am. I hope I’m being true and faithful to both. I think that any conflict is a perception from the world outside. Particularly journalists who could see a story and I can see that it is quite an interesting story. I know that “Alan doesn’t want to have anything to do with it, he’s not playing ball with the evil system in Hollywood. Meanwhile, his so-called friend Dave Gibbons is taking the money and glad-handing everything.” That’s a fiction. That’s a journalistic fabrication. I’m sure it will come up again. It has come up before and I’m sure it will come up again. But I think that’s my comprehensive response to that.

Read the whole interview here.

No offense to Mr. Gibbons—who I am a big, big fan of—but I believe he owes his major involvement with the film to Alan's denouncement. It seemed obvious to me from the very beginning that Warner Bros. sought him out and netted him as a shield of some sort against the core audience. Typically, with comic book movies these days, it's important for the production to generate hype by pleasing the fans. With Alan Moore movies, that's hard to do due to his hatred of the Hollywood system. I remember back in 2005, at the Comic Con panel for V For Vendetta, Joel Silver and Natalie Portman came onstage towing artist David Lloyd with them, and he was pretty much used by Silver to deflect fan questions about Alan Moore. Hey, look, the artist is on board, so it's not completely without the creators' blessing! It's just that with Watchmen, Snyder is more respectful in actually asking Gibbons' input on the film's production and other areas.

The fact is, on a moral level I'm not exactly condemning the movie just because Alan Moore doesn't want it. I just don't understand the guts one has to possess to try and adapt something its creator had already spoken against. That takes a level of indifference beyond my comfort threshold. If I'm behaving negatively towards it, it's purely because I'm critically unimpressed by everything I've seen of the film. Call it fanboy stubbornness, but 300 was a flaming piece of shit, and this looks just about the same. That includes the following new trailer.

I do want to see the film and see if it manages to quell my worries, but it's irritating to me that Snyder is focusing heavily on the visual aspects and not the meat of what makes Watchmen work. Watchmen is all about the subtext and the relationships between the characters, and nothing Snyder has ever done indicates that he's comfortable with pulling believable emotions out of his actors. Certainly not 300.

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Comments (6)

October 25, 2008, Koza said:

How could you say the movie looks bad and doesn't have anything to do that "makes" Watchmen when all we've seen is action parts? Trailers are all about hooking audiences members in to get them to PAY to see the movie, and how do you expect them to explain what the movie is ABOUT in a 2 minute trailer??? No one can critique this movie until it comes out, so until then journalists like you are going to try and use your power of talking to the world to your advantage. 6th of March dude, talk about the quality of the movie then.

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October 25, 2008, Matt said:

I don't know if I would call "fanboy stubbornness", so much as I would call it "fanboy ignorance". From what you've written, it sounds like you're basing your opinion of Zach Snyder's "Watchmen" off of two sources, the first being "300", and the second being the two teaser trailers. Maybe it's just me, but to judge how "Watchmen" is going to turn out based on what you thought of "300" seems very ignorant to me. That is, unless you find strong similarities between the two books? And I'm not going to lie to you, I don't. You're labeling Zach Snyder's film making style based off of one film, and that bothers me. I'd understand your worries if it was Michael Bay, or Spielberg, or Tarantino, all of whom are directors who have many films and have distinct styles. But to judge a director's capability off of one film? (two films if you count "Dawn of the Dead", but there was no word of that one...). As far as basing your opinion off the trailers, so far we've only seen the two teaser trailers. I'm not sure if you've seen a teaser trailer before, but to the best of my knowledge, they usually save the "meat" for the full length trailers. I mean, come on... You've heard two lines of dialogue in total, and you've somehow convinced yourself that Snyder is only "focusing heavily on the visual aspects"? I'm sorry if my attitude also comes off as negative, it's just that I hear so much criticism of "Watchmen" and it bothers me, because I don't follow the logic. Did you want a s**tty looking "Watchmen"? Something low budget becuase the director wasn't able to get the funding because he refused to compromise in any way with studios? Maybe you would have preferred the previous scripts, a more modern and audience friendly "Watchmen"? Or maybe you didn't want it made at all, because you "just don't understand the guts one has to possess to try and adapt something its creator had already spoken against". So as a "fanboy" with such a moral objection, would it not be your responsibility to just not see the film at all? Because personally, I don't understand the guts an admitted fanboy would have to possess in order to critize a film maker for adapting something that the creator had spoken against, and then for that fanboy to go and see the film when it was released. I'm just saying. It just seems a little hypocritical to me. http://www.watchmencomicmovie.com/090408-watchmen-zack-snyder-wizard-interview.php Please read this interview with Zach Snyder in regards to why he decided to make the "Watchmen". If you've read it already, maybe read it again, and consider for a second, if you would have rathered that he pa*sed up the opportunity to make the movie, and the studio went and found someone else instead. Michael Bay possibly? George Lucas? How about Uwe Boll?

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October 25, 2008, HateYou said:

	Wow, the more i read of this article the more i realize the writer is a f--king retard. Since when was opinion part of journalism?
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October 25, 2008, Jason said:

All journalism is opinion, we make the world, we decide the boundaries, there is nothing else. Watchmen goes on about it quite a bit :0 Having read the interviews with Snyder it does fill me with a bit more hope. If they are selling the movie on the visuals that is fine - I can't imagine the studio execs wanting two minutes of Dr Manhattan musing on existence. But then, apparently he has changed some things that would have been better left as is imho. We'll see in a few months, but as far as the visuals go, it does look pretty

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October 27, 2008, Anders Nelson said:

	I don't believe that the same expectations of objectivity exist in this forum as they do in other major media outlets. Sentences such as "300 was a flaming piece of s**t" make their case clearly, but it's not as if any facts have been mis-stated or tampered with. There has been editorial here, but there has not been deceit.
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November 04, 2008, ahimaz said:

	When his celebrated graphic novel Watchmen comes to screen, having fallen out of DC over the dispute of ownership, etc., Moore does not own his brainchild any more. How sad! Zack Snyder is no Nolan we all know. Can an inferior filmmaker do justice to a superior literary work, I don’t know. Must wait and see.
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