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Bear Lake, Colorado
About Me
- Louann Reid
- I am a professor of English education at Colorado State University and the past editor of English Journal.
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3 comments:
I think this is a great idea. I have used film in the past as a supplement in teaching people to read.
some of the greatest works of literature have been made into film, but people often think the printed version is inaccessible because they don't have a large enough vocabulary. A film version assists by bridging that gap.
I am hesitant to be excited about the Watchmen movie. Alan Moore has long been on of my favorite authors, and unfortunately he has not authorized this movie at all (though that does not matter, since he does not own the rights, which is a whole other topic). In fact, he has refused to have anything to do with any of the films which have been based on his works, which include "From Hell" and "V for Vendetta." He does not approve of them and will not even allow his name to be put in the credits as the original writer; he also accepts no royalties, which he does in fact have a right to. I have read both "From Hell" and "V" and have also seen both movies. The graphic novels are some of my personal favorite works of fiction of any genre; the movies were both terrible, mainly because they were not faithful enough to the source material. They were also lacking in subtlety and very "dumbed down." It is not impossible for good movies to be made out of comic books - "Sin City" and "Batman Begins" are, in my opinion, both very good - but unfortunately Alan Moore's works seem a bit to literary and complex to translate well to the big screen, especially when handled by studios/producers/directors who are not interested in remaining faithful to the original work.
I'm a newcomer to both Alan Moore and Watchmen, but it didn't it certainly didn't take much time for me to become a fan. In my experience, the more I connect with and enjoy a particular text, the more "protective" of its content I become. We all have highly unique, personal ways of reading texts, so it follows that we should want to see the same ideas visually represented when it comes time for a text to hit the silver screen.
That said, Hollywood has been responsible for creating some true abominations when it comes to comic book characters. "Batman Forever" and "Batman & Robin" come to mind in particular, because there was very little loyalty to source material. "Batman Begins", however, was at least a believable if not completely faithful recreation of the character seen in the comics.
So it's a crapshoot, apparently. We all have different ideas of how a film should look, and how a story should be told, especially if we've already experienced and engaged with the story.
One statement that the director made that bodes well for the movie is that it will not be "cleaned up" to pander to the teeny-bopper set. I'd argue that the teenagers are going to see it anyway, so why distort the text?
Anyway, I guess we'll just have to wait and see...
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