Warner Brothers obviously has big plans for Watchmen, their adaptation of the classic '80s graphic novel. They debuted the trailer in the prime-time slot before The Dark Knight, which means that something like 29 million people have already seen it -- never mind the crowds at Comic-Con and the thousands of downloads. The reaction? Oh. My. God.

It's an explosion of images rather than a plot summary, but it really shows off the Watchmen feel. The guys at Rope of Silicon did a comparison of stills from the trailer with panels from the graphic novel, and the results are great news for fans: In just two minutes they found ten shots taken right from the pages of the comic.

Even the most unhinged (least hinged?) fanboy knows that director Zack Snyder isn't making a shot-for-shot remake of the graphic novel; for one thing, it'd be longer than Gandhi. But this is a good indicator that he cares about the source material and aims to stick closely to it. Two more recent releases prove the point: a black and white photo of The Minutemen, Watchmen's "Golden Age" heroes, and a Vargas-style pinup of Carla Gugino as Sally Jupiter, a hero who tries to make the jump to starlet. It's not just a story, it's a world, and Snyder seems to get it.

But no matter how devoted he is to the original, it's not like Snyder gets the final say. The three-hour version he has now will be cut, probably closer to two-and-a-half hours. The climax has been changed (though not to the happy ending people worried about), and Tales From the Black Freighter, a pirate comic that runs alongside the events of the book, will be a separate DVD release.

Still, it'll be a lot closer than the last version; in 2005, The Bourne Supremacy's Paul Greengrass was in production with a script that updated it to a modern-day terrorism story, which would have scared off anyone who'd ever even heard of the book.

So the trailer has the fanboys (and girls) foaming at the mouth for March 6, '09. But did it make any sense at all to the millions of people who saw The Dark Knight because of Heath Ledger, or because it's Batman, or because they think Christian Bale is dreamy? Maybe not -- this one was a nod to the fans. Still, plenty of stuff blew up, and there's lots of time to win over the rest of the world. Lose the fans now, and they'll trash it till spring.

Recommend (0)

|  Comments (0)

|  Email

|  Share

Share  Facebook Digg del.icio.us