Between trailers, convention footage and new promotional images, the Watchmen movie has become a big topic for conversation.

Thom Wade is cautiously excited:

Snyder seems to be approaching the film from a much smarter place that some in the comic community are willing to give him. It is interesting to note that the movie went the opposite direction of 300, which was primarily green screen. Here, he had sets built, and it appears much of the computer work is surrounding the one character that requires it(Dr. Manhattan). It suggests to me that Snyder works to remain true to a creator’s vision when bringing something to the screen. 300 is a pretty shallow story and more memorable for Miller and Varley’s artwork than how deep the story is. And he focused on bringing the art to life.

Here, he seems dedicated to bringing the themes of Watchmen to life.

Michael K. Willis gives the trailer credit:

I have not changed my feeling that a Watchmen movie might not be the best idea but after seeing the trailer I have to give them credit for, at first blush anyway, making it look pretty amazing and seemingly very true to the source material (visually at least.)

One might nitpick some little things…Nite Owl is too buff for a character who was presented in the comic as going to seed somewhat and Silk Spectre looks more like “Leather and Rubber Spectre”…but there’s no point in going all fanboy on the thing…well, at least until it actually comes out.

Trevor Dodge believes it’s unfilmable:

The comments thread on this post reminds me of the several times I’ve taught Watchmen in my literature courses over the years, as I’ve made a lot of those same points myself during class discussions about translating Alan Moore’s writing to film. I’ll teach the graphic novel at least one more time before the film comes out next spring, and I’m coming to think of it as probably the last time my students will have a mostly textual relationship with the source material. Once Snyder’s film rolls out, future readers of Watchmen will inevitably suffer from what I’ve come to call The Ed Norton Complex (named, natch, after Mr. Norton’s portrayal of “Jack” in David Fincher’s adapation of Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club, in which the narrator is essentially erased and unnamed), where the film version of a book skews a reader’s first encounter with the source text. For the large part I have absolutely no problem with this skewing, and I even think this skewing is helpful in appreciating how much we really do read in a consumer culture that–strangely enough–is always telling us that we aren’t reading; Fincher smears the line between his film and Palahniuk’s novel to great effect, and Norton’s voice-overs in the film are lovingly appropriated from the source text.

But Zach Snyder is no David Fincher, and as I’ve noted before here on this humble blog, Snyder seems to revere Watchmen as much as he does filming a Miller Lite commercial. Furthermore, I’ve said it plenty of times before in both class and casual conversation: if Terry freakin’ Gilliam says Moore’s Watchmen is freakin’ unfilmable, well sir, the freakin’ story is freakin’ unfilmable.

So what do you think?

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