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mr_bad_exampleI saw Watchmen this afternoon. It was better than I was expecting—I think it was as good as it could possibly be, given the complexity of the source material.
I'm worried, though, about the influence it's going to have on future comics adaptations, it and The Dark Knight. See, around 1985-86, DC published the one-two punch of the Watchmen comic and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. It kicked off what some people call the "Dark Age" of comics. Suddenly, everybody was competing to see who could put out the most DARKNGRITTY comics, each one more godawful than the last. They tried to emulate the style, and the concept of superheroes as damaged people, but they failed to capture the qualities that made Watchmen and DKR great. Every mainstream comic looked like this.
I'm afraid of the same thing that happened to superhero comics happening to superhero films. It's been an awesome couple of years for good, fun films that are simultaneously faithful to the comics and yet also deliver what Tom DeFalco called "hoo-hah." I'm thinking of the first two X-Men films, the first two Spider-Man films, Batman Begins, Iron Man, and hell, I even liked The Incredible Hulk. We don't need the filmic equivalent of Rob Liefeld coming in and wrecking the whole thing. (Some would argue that this has already happened, but that's just uncharitable.)
So if superhero movies could skip the whole "superheroes as sociopathic douchebags" era that the comics industry fell into after Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, I'd be a happy man. That's why I think they need to make a Nextwave film. Less of the derivative brooding anti-hero nonsense, more of THE EXPLODO, please.
I'm worried, though, about the influence it's going to have on future comics adaptations, it and The Dark Knight. See, around 1985-86, DC published the one-two punch of the Watchmen comic and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. It kicked off what some people call the "Dark Age" of comics. Suddenly, everybody was competing to see who could put out the most DARKNGRITTY comics, each one more godawful than the last. They tried to emulate the style, and the concept of superheroes as damaged people, but they failed to capture the qualities that made Watchmen and DKR great. Every mainstream comic looked like this.
I'm afraid of the same thing that happened to superhero comics happening to superhero films. It's been an awesome couple of years for good, fun films that are simultaneously faithful to the comics and yet also deliver what Tom DeFalco called "hoo-hah." I'm thinking of the first two X-Men films, the first two Spider-Man films, Batman Begins, Iron Man, and hell, I even liked The Incredible Hulk. We don't need the filmic equivalent of Rob Liefeld coming in and wrecking the whole thing. (Some would argue that this has already happened, but that's just uncharitable.)
So if superhero movies could skip the whole "superheroes as sociopathic douchebags" era that the comics industry fell into after Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, I'd be a happy man. That's why I think they need to make a Nextwave film. Less of the derivative brooding anti-hero nonsense, more of THE EXPLODO, please.
