Alan Moore's Turning In His Grave (If He Were Dead, That Is)

There was a time, not too long ago, when movies based on comic books didn't get made. Oh sure, there were Batman and Superman, but they got sequelized to death. And once that happened, no one made Comic Book Movies, because, well, no one wanted to see them anymore. (If you've seen the last two movies in both the Super/Batman series, you know why people didn't want to see anymore.)

It was this way for some time, until Marvel Comics, emerging from bankruptcy and in need of money, took a chance and made a movie based on an obscure Tomb of Dracula character named Blade. Blade turned out to be a hit, and Marvel decided to crank out more Comic Book Movies. Next up was their most popular franchise, The X-Men, whose movie was a bigger hit than Blade. And then Spiderman emerged from copyright hell, and suddenly there all kinds of Comic Book movies. (All three of the previously mentioned films are into their second sequels.) Now, every comic book property has a movie coming out.

Let's go in a different direction here for a minute. Whenever you get talking about influential people in comics, the one name that almost always comes up is Alan Moore. While Moore is only a writer (I don't know if he has any drawing ability), his work is some of the most well-regarded in comics. His work for DC Comics was groundbreaking: he revitalized Swamp Thing (and introduced John Constantine, who later got his own movie, within its pages), turned the original Batgirl into a paraplegic, and wrote the last Superman story before DC and John Byrne rewrote the Man of Steel's history.

But those were only his contributions to existing titles; it's his original work that is really the stuff of legend. Miracleman, Watchmen, From Hell, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen took comic books to another level: they were gritty, intelligent, literary, and mature in their depiction of violence. His books were like great novels disguised as comic books. To call him genius would not be an understatement.

All that being said, when the Comic Book Movie came back into vogue, it was only a matter of time before someone decided that Moore's work deserved the Hollywood treatment. And it got it in 2001, with the adaptation of From Hell. It was shortly followed by League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. These movies have problems, as does the latest adaptation of a Moore book, V for Vendetta.

Vendetta tells the story of V, a man bent on the destruction of a fascist government in a futuristic London. Honestly, if you didn't know anything about Moore or his book, this is an enjoyable movie. It has a good story, decent action (there's some Matrix-esque bits toward the end that I'll admit to enjoying), and perfectly suitable acting. It's enough to hold John Q. Moviegoer's interest.

However, the problem with this movie (and the problem with every Moore adaptation) is that adapting Moore's work is impossible. His books are so complex and detailed, that you would need to write a script about twice as long as Towne's script for Chinatown to do it justice. So, you're faced with the task of paring down all of this stuff into something that's going to fit into a two hour movie. And the Wachowski brothers have done that. Unfortunately, what they came out with really doesn't resemble the book in any shape or form.

The odd thing is what they chose to keep and to omit. They rewrote almost all of the dialogue (yes, I have recently reread the book), even though what Moore wrote is better in most cases (the speech at the TV station is a good example). For every important detail they chose to omit (like V destroying every governmental building in London over a year's time), the small details they kept (like the story of Valerie) just pad the running time. And the stuff they outright made up (like everyone getting a Guy Fawkes mask) is mostly stupid. It really doesn't surprise me at all that Moore chose to have his name removed from the credits, because, well, this and what he wrote bear very little resemblance to one another.

It's unfortunate that this movie may actually make money, because that means that someone is going to think that Moore properties are hot, and put Watchmen into development. It's totally unadaptable for the screen, but I'm willing to bet there's someone in Hollywood stupid enough to give it a try. Just you watch.