Why Watchmen Deserved A Damned Oscar!

I had a chance the other day to blow some money, and so I went in search of good movies to watch. And one that I hadn’t seen in a while occurred to me as the perfect film for the context I find myself in — that is, writing a book about the, er, “downside”—to say the least—of there being actual superheroes and supervillains in the world. That movie was, of course, Zack Snyder’s much-debated adaptation (though some would insist ruination) of Alan Moore’s epic (and historic) graphic novel masterpiece, Watchmen. Moore’s name doesn’t appear on the opening credits anywhere (as you may or may not know, he despises Hollywood), so you know he didn’t sanction the film whatsoever. (David Gibbons, however, did contribute to the film creatively. And it shows. A lot.). 
 But, you know what? These days, I find myself\ less and less interested in what the “experts” and “critics” in one medium—even the expert who wrote the source material for the work in question—offering their (often boorish and uninformed, and patently unrealistic, in some cases) comments on Hollywood’s job of adapting their work to the silver screen. How can I say that, and still call myself a “writer?” Did I just “sell out,” big time, as they say? Nay, not at all. It goes like this. Stephen King once told a story about two writers. I’m paraphrasing a lot here, but, basically, he said, “The young author comes to visit the older author, and asks him why he isn’t more angry that Hollywood has made (poor) adaptations of his works, thus ruining them forever? And the old author simply smiles and says, ‘Son, they’re not ruined at all. They’re right there on my bookshelves where they belong. That’s their true form, and the one I’d prefer be remembered. But if someone goes and sees one of these ‘bad adaptations, and that spurs them on to read the original source—my book—then how in the world is that possibly a bad thing, for me especially?” That is the question we must put ourselves in — that of the “older author” in the parable — if we ourselves are going to take Watchmen seriously as a film. Now, what follows is my opinion, nothing more. Feel free to call this a load of fanboy bullshit if you want to; like I said,, I care less and less these days what other people think. You can call this opinion a bunch of stinking offal if you wish, but please at least try to understand that I’m critiquing the film from the standpoint of having grown up with the graphic novel, having read it many times, and loving it more each time I did so. That’s where I’m coming from — a place of deep love and respect, and honor, with regards to Moore and his writing, his work. But—I also grew up in the golden age of “Age of VCRs and video tapes,” and it was during my lifetime that we made the switch from cassette to disc, and from disc to the cloud. I’ve watched Hollywood itself very carefully in that time, and to say that it has “gone down hill” a bit is an understatement, believe you me. That’s one reason I think Watchmen’s star burns so brightly—because it does so against an unfathomable darkness, bereft of any other lights that shine quite as distinctively as it does. Another reason is—yes, I’m going to come right out and say it—the book’s narrative involving the “giant monsters from another dimension” (neatly appropriated from an Outer Limits episode, entitled, The Architects of Fear, which still gives me the creeps whenever I see it on TV) would simply not have worked on film. Why, you ask? Because it’s far too complicated a concept to easily get across in a visual medium (like a movie), rather than a cerebral medium (like a book). For another thing, Snyder’s ending is more logical than the book’s, and is actually carefully foreshadowed throughout the entire film, and amazingly, they manage to do that without butchering the rest of the tale.