In fairness, he also then said "because nobody can make anything but a filmed mockery of my genius," and masturbated.

On the other hand, they announced the casting for Watchmen at San Diego and the biggest name involved is Billy Crudup. I take some reassurance in the fact that the studio didn't insist on casting Bruce Willis as Dr. Manhattan because "you have to hae a big star for a movie like this."

The cast, by the way is:

Patrick Wilson: Nite Owl
Jackie Earle Haley: Rorschach
Matthew Goode: Ozymandias
Billy Crudup: Dr. Manhattan
Jeffrey Dean Morgan: Comedian
Malin Akerman: Silk Spectre (Laurie Juspeczyk)

Christopher Bird: Technically, I think that was the Grant Morrison of Earth-3X2(9YZ)4A wearing an Alan Moore fleshsuit.

Jackie Earl Haley? So that sets up the sequel...Watchmen: Breaking Training

You know considering that they were able to film The Outer Limits episodes, Alan Moore should really just take a lude.

I think Alan pretty much summed everything up. I hate the fact that every single famous book or comic book needs to be adapted into a movie. The fact that this movie is directed by Zack Snyder, who directed one of the more racist movies I've ever watched, makes me pessimistic about this project. Watchmen is a masterpiece, perfect on its own terms. Why the hell would anyone try to hurt that by making a movie? I think I'll just ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist. It will probably be a blockbuster, however, which will only serve to make me hate humanity (even more).

On the other hand, they announced the casting for Watchmen at San Diego and the biggest name involved is Billy Crudup. I take some reassurance in the fact that the studio didn't insist on casting Bruce Willis as Dr. Manhattan because "you have to hae a big star for a movie like this."

And Whoopi Goldberg as Rorschach.

I think it's possible to do justice to Watchmen in film. You'd have to have someone really creatively wild in charge; names I came up with tentatively were Gilliam, Charlie Kaufman and Tarantino. And even then you aren't assured of success. But I think it's doable.

Will this be that movie? I dunno. But I'm not getting that vibe.

Casting Bruce Willis as Dr. Manhattan just because he was bald would've been silly. He could do an OK turn as the Comedian, though.

They cast Denny from Grey's Anatomy as the Comedian.

There's a reason that I side with Moore on this one.

To borrow terms from Bakhtin (whom I'm probably misusing), there are two levels of a story. There are the events of the story (the sjuzet), and there is the telling of the story (the fabula). The sjuzet of Watchmen is extremely good and it is, to me, almost conceivable that a brilliant filmmaker could create a film which captures some of the dramatic effect of Watchmen on that level. However, the fabula of Watchmen is one of the most striking works ever created in comics, and is inseparable from the comics medium. No film could capture the panel-by-panel comicness of Watchmen--the juxtapositions, the background detail, the panel-by-panel and whole-issue structure of "Fearful Symmetry".

I'm not saying there couldn't be a film that is as good a film as Watchmen is a comic. I'm pretty sure there are some out there. What I'm saying is that what makes Watchmen such an accomplishment is inherent in the fact that it is a comic book. Trying to make a film of Watchmen is like trying to make a painting of "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" or a short story of M. C. Escher's "Relativity". You can make a good short story about a world which violates the rules of perspective, but you can't make a short story which is "Relativity".

The fabula of Watchmen reinforces the sjuzet, and the sjuzet reinforces the fabula. Separating them might still leave you with a good film, but it won't be Watchmen, and, more importantly, it can't capture why Watchmen is the landmark that it is.

Kevin: Yeah, pretty much. Although I agree that Watchmen is a singular example, this is why I'm not much of a fan of comic-book movies in the first place. A lot of what I like about comics is the medium itself, so pulling the characters and stories out of that medium and sticking them into another isn't terribly compelling to me. Because I'm not horribly interested, I haven't seen a huge number of comic-book movies, but of those I have seen, I can't think of any that wouldn't have worked better as a comic.

As to Watchmen itself, I expect that the filmmakers will take however much of the plot they want to (and the fact that Zack Snyder had to fight to keep it in a Cold War context rather than move it up to the current-day War on Terror suggests that many of those involved have no idea of what the plot's even about), and they may get a couple of the character notes right, but that's about it. Any higher expectations than that simply set us up for smashing disappointment.

I'm sure what we'll get will be a rather 2-dimensional effort but the simple story isn't impossible to bring to film. The thing is even today, 20+ years later the ending where the villain actually succeeds in carrying out his plan is still unique. If they bring that scene to film, and don't cheat to have some sort of "happy" ending, it will be worth it, even without all the back story, subtext, and creative tricks that are only available in the comic form.