Hollywood, Please Make A Good Alan Moore Movie

Sir Alan Moore

You know, every time I sit down to write an article for MRFH, I realise that if I’m to find something I wish to speak passionately about to you, the reader, I’m going to have to continue to kick holes in the façade that I am a suave and interesting human being, and expose you all to the bitter cynical nerd that lurks inside me. So prepare to cast away once more any of the shreds of respect for me you may still be clinging on to, as I vent my frustrations in the form of this overly wordy and subtly self-deprecating article.

Now, we’ve all got our pet peeves. Maybe you can’t stand the fact that your housemate squeezes the toothpaste from the middle instead of the end. Maybe you hate it when your significant other forgets to leave the toilet seat down. These are perfectly normal irrational dislikes, and anyone who says they don’t have them probably has an irrational dislike of admitting what really ticks him off. Man, that would suck. Anyway, I am a veritable morass of things that wind me up to the point where I am seconds away from some form of personal nuclear meltdown. Easily cresting the wave of these neurotic dislikes at the moment is my growing hatred of the shoddy treatment certain forms of entertainment get when being translated onto the big screen. I’m talking, in particular, about comic book movies.

Now, I like comic books, and I will fight anyone who says it’s wrong for someone in their late twenties to do so, as long as you give me a few minutes to get into my spandex outfit and put on my Hulk Hands. The medium of comics and graphic novels have come a long way since the four-colour lycra-clad defenders of truth and justice in the 1950’s. Today comics have had moments of drama, emotion, interaction, and beauty as many times as your favourite TV show, movie, book, or theatre play. I know that when a lot of people see speech bubbles and guys in outfits that would make Richard Simmons think twice, they immediately dismiss the genre as strictly for the pre-pubescent guys who get beat up for their lunch money; but the truth is, if you scratch the surface, there is as much talent writing comics today as there is in Hollywood, or on the shelves of Waterstones. It’s all a matter of perspective.

LXG

Now, if you talk to anyone who likes comics – good, well written comics – then the chances are you might hear the same names mentioned again and again. Grant Morrison; Neil Gaiman; Frank Miller; Garth Ennis; these are the luminaries of the comics writing world, along with many others – even familiar names such as Kevin Smith (of Clerks fame) and Joss Whedon (of Buffy, Angel, and other stuff) have penned critically acclaimed comic runs. But, for me, one man will always and forever be the finest comic writer in the world – and his name is Alan Moore.

Chances are, you know more about Moore (see what I did there? I made a funny) than you think you do. Remember terrible summer ‘blockbuster’ of 2004, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Of course you do. Well, that was based on a series of fantastic comics of the same name, written by, you guessed it, one Mr A. Moore. How about From Hell? Remember that generic Jack The Ripper murder-mystery starring Jonny Depp and Heather Graham? Also based on a graphic novel by Alan Moore.

What’s the other thing that you notice about those two examples? If you said “Well, they both kinda sucked”, you can have a gold star for being right. Now, personally, I can’t watch those films without referencing the original material and crying inwardly like a little schoolgirl. I know that’s not fair, but that’s just the way I’m wired; and had those films been good, solid, stand-alone films in their own right, then maybe I wouldn’t have cared so much. But even people who had no concept of what a comic book was, let alone that one was linked to these rather effluent Hollywood outpourings, recognised that they universally sucked.

In fact, Moore had a famous falling out with Hollywood in general after the release of LXG, when hilariously a Hollywood screenwriter accused Moore of plagiarising his ideas in order to write the film, without realising that it was based on the comics written by Moore in 2000. Subsequent to settling the lawsuit, Moore declared that he wanted no more to do with Hollywood, and any monies due to him for the film rights of any of his works should just be divided up and given to the other people involved. That’s how peed off at Hollywood he was, and to be honest, I can’t really blame him.

From Hell

And this is where I take off my hat of journalistic integrity and don the tinpot helmet of geek rage, because there’s precisely one reason and one reason only that both of those films were dull for the average movie goer and some kind of mental torture for fans of the original material – absolutely no effort was made on the part of the studios to make it ANYTHING like the comic in question.

Imagine you’re the next Stephen King, and you’ve written the next great American novel. You sell the rights to the movie to a Hollywood studio, and all they do is bolt your books name and some of your character names on some generic made-for-TV drama they’ve had sitting in a filing cabinet for 8 years, and release it. How do you think you’d feel? And what about the fans of your book, who had waited patiently for a faithful film representation? Upset? You bet your literary ass you would be. But no-one does that to Stephen King. Sure, scriptwriters have to cut corners here and there in order to make a book work on screen – but underneath it all, the basic structure and ideas of the book remain intact.

Yet comics remain mysteriously immune to this kind of courtesy. Because they’re just books for ‘kids’, Hollywood scriptwriters seem to think it gives them carte blanche to tack any old story onto these characters which are beloved by millions and expect people not to notice that it blows harder than a force 9 gale. Now, that’s not always the case, I’ll admit. In some few instances, the screenwriters have been true to the characters and the story, and have managed to craft exactly what the fans wanted to see – a vision of their comic heroes in real life. Films like X-men and Spider-man are perfect examples of remaining true to the comics.

Guess what, they’re also the most successful and watchable of the comic book movies. Who would have thunk it?

Given the talent, depth, and genuinely great storytelling in all the Alan Moore stuff, I can only offer up a fervent prayer that at some point in the near future, someone makes a film of his work that actually bears more than a passing resemblance to the story it’s based on. And thanks to Hollywood, we’ve got not one, not two, but three upcoming shots at seeing a good Alan Moore movie. Over the course of 2005-06, three of Moore’s most influential works are turning into big budget film properties.

Constantine

First out of the blocks is the upcoming Constantine. Based on a character created for his run on DC’s dying Swamp Thing comic, hard-drinking, heavy-smoking British urban magician (not in the David Blaine sense, but in the waving his hands, making your nose fall off and giving you ants instead of hair sense) John Constantine later went on to appear in his own comic, Hellblazer, which is where the Constantine film gets its license. Now from what we know, things aren’t looking good for the comic fans on this one.

First of all, in the comics, Constantine lives in London, is a blonde haired, smoking and drinking black hearted cynic, who’s dabbling in the arcane arts often brings him into contact with the gritty and unpleasant parts of the Underworld and routinely endangers the lives of all those around him. He doesn’t throw his power around lightly, and more often resorts to his quick and acid wit to deal with situations rather than resorting to violence.

However, if we throw the Hollywood magic sheet over that, say the magic words “Script rewrite”, and hey presto we have Constantine, where dark-haired Keanu Reeves plays LA resident John Constantine who battles demons with the aid of a holy shotgun.

Now, I don’t want to rubbish Constantine out of the gate. After all, I’ve not seen it, and it could be a masterpiece of modern dark gothic action. However, as far as translations from the comic go, it’s managed to make itself pretty distant from the source material. In fact, the director has even gone on record to say that he’s ‘not trying to make a comic book movie’, which given the license it’s based on, seems somewhat counterproductive. The black-hearted nerd cynic in me thinks that perhaps the only reason the Constantine license was used was that less people were likely to go see a film called LA Magic Cop.

The chances of this being a good Alan Moore film adaptation? I’m guessing not very good.

Fortunately, towards the end of this year, and no doubt fighting each other for movie screen time, the two Alan Moore movies currently in production will appear in our theatres. Well, I say ‘our’ theatres, I of course mean US theatres – here in the Land of Hope and Glory we’ll have to wait another 6 months or so, you know, because. But that’s another rant for another time..

The Watchmen

Slightly leading the chase is the movie adaptation of Alan Moore’s most well known and oft-referenced work, The Watchmen. The story (like a lot of Alan Moore’s stuff) is a kind of study of what the world might be like if masked superheroes really did exist. Having been outlawed years ago, a group of retired costumed heroes are forced out of retirement when someone or something starts bumping them all off. The graphic novel is brilliant, dark, gritty, and compelling, and like most of Moore’s stuff, plot-wise would make a very, very cool (if slightly depressing) movie.

On the surface, the pacing of the Watchmen book seem like it would make it hard to turn into a film which will hold everyone’s attention. Fortunately, the screenplay has been written by David “I’m Solid Snake” Hayter, who did a great job on the original X-Men script, and by all accounts appears to be sticking fairly faithfully to the plot of the original while pruning away just enough to keep the pace above that of a snail. Whether directorially it’s possible to make Watchmen work as a film remains to be seen, and casting certain of the characters might be potentially…well, challenging, but with the quality of the source material and a dash of inspiration, it truly could turn out to be something special.

My only real concern on The Watchmen is the rating the studio is aiming at. To do a faithful reproduction of the events of The Watchmen, I’m fairly certain it would be hard to avoid an R Rating in the US. But are the movie studio’s ready to release an R Rated comic book movie? I hope so. I hope that someone, somewhere in some studio has read the novel and thought to themselves “Hey, I don’t think this book is strictly aimed at little Johnny – so maybe the film shouldn’t be either”. In any case, with fingers crossed and baited breath I wait for more word on The Watchmen and offer a fervent prayer that this, at least, might get a little credit from the movie studios and they don’t find it necessary to butcher the plot or introduce new characters just to make it ‘play better’ to movie audiences.

V For Vendetta

The final shot we have at a good Alan Moore movie by the end of 2005 is V For Vendetta, which has just been announced for (hopefully) release before the end of the year. I’ve got to admit that I’m definitely in two minds about the possibility of a V film, simply because the original graphic novel is absolutely my favourite Alan Moore work.

The story of V is set in a militant Britain, where global war and collapsing economy have made the government turn to fascism in order to keep the country alive. Into this controlling and Orwellian state comes the anarchist and terrorist who calls himself ‘V’, who embarks on a lunatic quest to bring the government crashing down around them. All this is seen through the eyes of Evey Hammond, a young girl V saves from assault by brutal and corrupt cops.

Now, you’ll notice that that’s some pretty inflammatory stuff, with words like ‘terrorist’ bandied about, but it draws inspiration from any number of common British folk legends, characters like Dick Turpin or Robin Hood, villains in every sense of the word but with a higher purpose, rather than trying to be a social commentary on world events (it was written, in fact, in the 1980’s and was actually a social commentary on the state of the country at the time though). I would dearly, dearly love to see V for Vendetta turned into the brilliant film I think it could be.

My worry is that in the strange and troubled times in which we live, no studio is going to produce a film with a guy who blows up government buildings as the protagonist. The last thing I want to see is a wishy-washy, watered down version of V for Vendetta where V brings England’s totalitarian government to its knees by telling them all what bad boys they are and taking away their allowance for a month.

There’s also a lot of ‘business’ in V, and it’s obviously not all going to make it to the big screen. What they take out and what they leave in will no doubt be the cause of many girly slapfights in comic stores around the land, as the proud nerds amongst us wax lyrical about how they totally ruined the movies significance because they didn’t put in the song V sings at the beginning of the third act (actually, I will be really upset if they take that out. I am such a sad case).

So there we have it, my impassioned plea to Hollywood. You’ve got two and a half chances left to make a good Alan Moore movie this year (I’m only counting Constantine as a half-chance because of what we know about it already), and we’re quickly running out of Alan Moore work to adapt once Watchmen and V are done – that only really leaves Swamp Thing, Marvelman/Miracleman (a complicated story for another time and a different website perhaps), Batman: The Killing Joke (one of a finest Batman stories ever told), and Supreme.

Seriously, I’m pleading with you. Make one of these work.

Please?