Watchmen trailer!

As I am not one of the five kajillion people who have been to see The Dark Knight yet, the first time I saw the trailer for Watchmen was yesterday. Give it a gander:



The amazing thing is, with the possible exception of three or four* I can trace every one of these scenes to a specific page of the graphic novel. That's how much respect the filmmakers have for this work. I understand that they used panels from the book as storyboards!

Someday I'll write a review of this book. But it's just so huge, so complex, even though it's just twelve 32-page comics put together. Every time I re-read it - several times a year since I bought it, shortly after September 11, 2001 - I discover something new. Last time it was that each character can be looked upon as the "main character" of the story, even - especially - the one who died before the book began, and the other one I had always thought of as a poorly-fleshed-out background character. Most recently it was that each character's story fits together with and interacts with the stories of the other characters like the parts of an intricate machine. Like a clock. Like a watch. No accident there, obviously; it just took me nearly seven years to get to that point.

If the movie is as faithful as this trailer makes it look, this will be a good version of the story. Though not the best one. The best version is the one you construct for yourself in between the panels of the book. Pick up a copy for yourself and give it a shot. Then re-read it several times each year and see what you missed all the previous times!


*These would be the Silk Spectre crashing through a flaming building from :41 - :45 - a toned-up version of the tenement fire in Chapter VII, pages 24-25, perhaps?; Nite Owl landing at 1:02 - 1:05 - is this in Sing Sing, maybe, Chapter VIII page 16?; Blake having a tantrum at 1:33 - possibly a variation on Chapter I, page 2; and the Nite Owl angry at 1:35 - is this his initial reaction to what he learns at the end of page 15 in Chapter X?