When Does a Faithful Adaptation Turn Into a Bad Adaptation?

Warner should have made Watchmen an HBO miniseries instead. You get all the same sex and violence, not as big a budget but a respectable one non the less.

And more importantly you get 7+ hours to tell your story.

An episodic unrated version would have been more effective.

Hopefully HBO will still try to make a miniseries, because the movie had very little, in terms of actual story.

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One of the worst adaptations I saw in recent years was "Timeline," from the Michael Crichton book of the same name. There were SO many things left out that the movie was simply a shell. I know that can be said of all adaptations, but there was something about that film that has stuck with me. One of the better adaptations I saw was "The DaVinci Code." They stayed very close to the book, but there was a trade off. By staying so close, they had to rush through certain plot points, which made things a bit too easy for the main character. You certainly raise a good question here.

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Totally agree regarding Titus.

I also think that The Golden Compass was a much better film than book. Weitz made it far more interesting than the overwrought book. Plus the changes he made benefited the story. Too bad the church scared people away from a good movie.

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I don't consider this a faithful adaptation. As I've said in other posts, it tells the plot but misses the point entirely.

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I think with enough bad reviews are likely going to kill the success of the book too. This has been WB's best seller (as far as graphic novels go) for the last 20 years. I have a feeling the money well just dried up.

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Totally agree with shadowracer. Would have been so much better as a miniseries. With all the extras and deleted scenes I bet the director's cut will be almost long enough by itself to be like 4 episodes.

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Love how only the haters seem to come out. I read the book and I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. I felt like I was watching the graphic novel on-screen.
I especially liked how it felt like it was split up into separate "issues" such as the issue which focuses almost exclusively on Dr. Manhattan, which was one of the best parts of the movie.
I also wasn't bothered by changing the ending. The only real difference is it focuses the world on Dr. Manhattan instead of an alien force. In all honestly it hardly changed anything.
And Snyder has said over and over this is a big advertisement for the graphic novel. and I think had I not read the book first I would have run out and bought it after watching this.

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What we need to get to is a distinction between filming and adapting a work. The first Harry Potter movie tried to film the books leaving out as little as possible, but latterly when the writers and directors have taken greater liberties, for the purpose of making them work as films they have been muh, much better. Similarly LA Confidential was confident enough to leave a lot of material out, to introduce new material with the purpose of making the movie work. Paul Greengrass or Darren Aronofsky or Terry Gilliam would all have moved further away from the book of Watchmen and all would have made better films, films that were truer to the themes or the characters than that hack Snyder. In response to Cray he should realise that if the book goes out of print it reverts from multinational AOLTime Warner to the people who actually created it. This is obviously a completely unacceptable situation and thus the book will never go out of print.

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Not to start ranting but The Golden Compass (or Northern Lights as the book is called outside America) is a far better book than a film. For a start it has an ending, it has genuine adventure, it is radical and subversive and it doesn't feature British TV actors walking around talking portentously in Trailer Speak about THE GOLDEN COMPASS.

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Im so tired of haters hating just for the sake of it. We live in a society full of people who can never be pleased. Your life must suck badly. The movie was as spot on as anyone could have done it, or how it could have been done. The nit picking from people on little meaningless shit like "oohh well the song for that scene was so not right." and " that love scene was a little cheesy,har har." and "whats with the blue penis? hehe." Since when is the basis of a great film in general ever judged soely upon the score or song choices, and the love scene, and the fact that there is nudity. GROW UP AND THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX!! He cut the fat from the book that never meant a whole lot in the grand perspective, and the ending made more sense and was more believable than a lame SQUID thing from outter space ( which i think ruined the ending of the novel to me ) i mean you really liked the squid? lame.. Plus you guys need to look into things before you go blindly into a movie. The missing scenes were shot, and will be in the directors cut, and special DVDs. with the black freighter intertwined throughout and will include Hollis masons under the hood. in 6 months the whole thing will be played out gloriously and 100% represented. The movie WAS amazing in all aspects, and you will see that only after 2-3 showings. The movie, like the novel has so many subtle things that you will only catch and understand after multiple times. You really only read the novel once? then you can't claim you know it then. Also i think you fail to notice the fact that Zack Snyder is a fanboy, making movies for fanboys. He has stated many times and admitted to the fact that he is a diehard WATCHMEN fan, and it has always been his fav. novel. He knew alot about it going in, spent alot of time panning this out, and went to the lengths that no one would have thought of to pull this off.Fuck all you purists and traditionalists, stay under your rock with your cynical selves and let the people with a view be merry.

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Watchmen will be good when DC comes out... 4 and 1/2 hours long... mm :)

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I totally agree with ICON! It's obvious all the haters on this film are seasoned scholars with a multitude of excellent films to their names that they directed because they obviously know how easy it is to make a perfect rendition of a movie from printed material. I personally don't believe this argument because even if the movie was "better" than the source material-- it is still inherently different and created with a different target. It is better to like or dislike each property for what they accomplish in their respective medias. Snyder Rules! Long Live Snyder!

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Yeah "deep" is not a word I'd use to describe this film. Watching this movie was like listening to a freshman philosophy major regurgitate what he just read because he doesn't actually understand any of it and is just trying to sound smart. This movie was a travesty. The ending was especially horrific. I think I laughed actually.. it was that bad, I laughed when my favorite character (and the only decent actor in the whole movie) died.

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The movie goer in me was quite pleased by Watchmen. The comic fan in me was not as pleased, but still satisfied. I think that if more fans of comics would just take the time to look at just what goes into making a movie then they'd be able to be more appreciative of how and why some of their favorite (but probably not very filmable) parts of the story got left out.

I still want my giant brain squid though.

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wow, watchmen is like the dark knight. no one will shut up about it. its good. its great. heck, some love it some hate it. now can we please move on? i get sick of everyone focusing on one movie like its the friggin ark of the covenant

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