And speaking of blind sallowing amidst immutable realities, The Watchmen is coming out tomorrow, which means we get to watch another epic get condensed into a two-hour flick that misses the depth of character necessary to get its point across. I suppose it’s just me but the first thing I thought of in terms of how to deal with distilling massive verbiage on the topics of society and philosophy to 90 minutes was Mamoru Oshii’s version of Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell.
At best you can hope for a pastiche that gives a taste of the flavor of those characters while limiting its purview, a la Lord of the Rings or every Batman movie ever made. At worst your characters talk like they’re on helium just to fit in every minor point of the creator’s Theory of the Universe, a la Ghost in the Shell.
Alan Moore, understandably, doesn’t much like such efforts. Read the rest of this entry »