Watchmen Scavenger Hunt
As discussed in Monday's class, we will be finishing our Watchmen unit with the 2009 movie adaptation. One of our Honors Composition students asked that we watch the film and "look for images that recreate the panels in the book!"
Another student quickly replied, "That would be all of them!"
It's true. Watchmen (2009) has some striking visual similarities with the original text, which I, as an English teacher, appreciate. Film has a way of bringing life to an illustration that may not have been there before; yet, it also has the ability to take away some of that life that is unique to the story on the page, best represented in ink, glue, and paper.
 |
| Left: a panel from Chapter 1 of Alan Moore's Watchmen. Right: a frame from the 2009 movie of the same name. Both images represent the same character, scene, and sequence, but what do we gain from duplication, recreation, or adaptation? |
When we read a book that has been adapted for the screen and then watch that adaptation, are we experiencing the same story? So many people say, "ah, the book is better than the film," an emotion rooted in a belief that a story should retain its original meaning, theme, characters, and values.
Yet what some readers don't realize, however, is the fraught relationship authors have with Hollywood when their books become movies. Moore has been vocal in his criticism of the movies based on his books, and his critiques of the 2009 adaptation of Watchmen are no different. In a 2007 interview with a reporter from The LA Times, Moore argued:
"I find film in its modern form to be quite bullying . . . It spoon feeds us which has the effect of watering down our collective cultural imagination. It is as if we are freshly hatched birds looking up with our mouths open waiting for Hollywood to feed us more regurgitated worms. The 'Watchmen' film sounds like more regurgitated worms. I for one am sick of worms. Can't we get something else?"
In the comments section below, provide a level 1, 2, and 3 analysis of Moore's quote (1: what the quote is saying; 2: what the quote means; and 3: how the quote relates to the book Watchmen and its 2009 film adaptation).
When you are finished, watch the film we have scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday and identify a frame that you find best represents a panel within the book. Describe what is gained and what is lost in the adaptation. Then, tie it into Moore's quote.
The following images are some examples of past "scavenger hunts":
1.) Moore is saying that films produced by Hollywood show us everything and give us everything as though we were baby birds.
ReplyDelete2.) The quote means that films have the affect of telling us everything, instead of the audience figuring it out for themselves.
3.) By showing us everything, or perhaps just what we need to see in order to understand the plot, we lose the ability to interpret the story and thus we lose the different messages and ways to think about the story. We will also lose all the different minor details from the book that seem trivial but actually are very important.
Alan Moore finds the modern film industry quite insulting. He thinks that Hollywood is removing all of the thinking from the artform, comparing its content to "regurgitated worms." Moore believes that the obvious way Hollywood films present their storylines takes away from the thought-provoking experience of other, more subtle, media that appear in print. He really expects Moore from Hollywood.
ReplyDeleteExcellent use of puns!
Delete1. Moore is saying that modern day films lack meaning that can be seen differently to different people. He says that he is tired of being told what to think by movies.
ReplyDelete2. It means that movies don't leave any room for interpretation and the theme of a story is shoved down the audience's throats rather than left for them to decide what it is.
3. In Moore's book there are multiple themes in it, which have different meanings to different readers. The movie, in Moore's opinion, does not allow the audience to interpret these themes on their own and in their own way.
1. Moore believes modern films boil down information into easily digestible and understood clips.
ReplyDelete2. Through this, viewers no longer have to use their imaginations as information is absorbed immediately without thought process.
3. When portraying comic books such as The Watchmen through movies, many of the opportunities for interpretation by the audience are removed as the illustrative choices (color, arrangement, etc.) made by the author are no longer as prominent within the new medium. The way a scene is filmed may also distract the viewer from details included in the environment, taking away from the deeper meaning of the story line.
Level 1 - This quote describes Allan Moore's distaste for movie adaptations, describing how he thinks they take away the intellectual value found in the book.
ReplyDeleteLevel 2 - The quote captures an opinion held by many who believe that "the movie is always worse then the book." In saying this, it means that Alan Moore believes the medium of film is not capable of making a person think like they would when interpreting a book.
Level 3 - This quote relates to themes of control through media in some of Moore's other books, like V for Vendetta, as well as applying those same themes in other novels, like Brave New World. In terms of the real world, the quote confirms and supports and growing worry that humans are growing to rely too much on movies and other screen-based media, and neglecting more "intellectual" pursuits like reading and writing.
1. Moore believes that the modern film industry is an insult. He finds it to be a simple form that tells you exactly what to think, rather than a more complex form that can be interpreted differently by different people. He compares the watchers to "freshly hatched birds" eager to receive "regurgitated worms."
ReplyDelete2. The quote states that modern films lack imagination. Modern films tell you exactly what to think and leave no room for interpretation, something Moore finds essential to a good work of art.
3. Moore's books, such as V for Vendetta and Watchmen, use many techniques to leave the reader curious and thoughtful. Many themes and concepts in the books depend on the reader's interpretation. Moore believes that the film adaptions strip away the ability for one to create their own interpretations and come to their own conclusions.
Allen Moore says that the film industry has diluted the experience of stories such as V for vendetta or the Watchmen via "spoon feeding" the viewers the information rather than allowing the audience to figure it out themselves. What this means is that Moore is asking for the film industry to do something different to allow the person watching to think for themselves and mimic what the person would experience if they were reading the graphic novel. The relation to this quote and the Watchmen would be that due to the amount of detail there is in the illustrations in the panels there are many easter eggs that allude to other events in the novel, and in the movie it would require many replays to get and that would almost completely ruin the movie watching experience.
ReplyDeleteThe frames I have picked both show the emotions that Moore is trying to show but in two different ways the movie doing it via actions and the novel doing it via color, what stays the same though is that the picture of Sally Jupiter is up on the wall which alludes to their connection that is revealed later in the story
ReplyDelete1. Alan Moore states that he finds the modern film industry and their adaptations of stories insulting, believing that they take the meaning away from stories.
ReplyDelete2. Alan Moore is saying that with the way stories are adapted into films, Hollywood is taking away the audience's freedom to interpretation. This is something that many people, including Moore, find extremely important to enjoying a story.
3. In terms of Watchmen, an adaptation into a film can take away subtlety and the ability of the reader to figure things out for themselves. A film also means that some crucial elements may have to be cut out from the story, with the most notable absence being the "Tales of the Black Freighter" comics.
1. Moore believes that film today is watered down and "regurgitated" for a general audience.
ReplyDelete2. He is saying that filmmakers today take the source material, in this case his comic Watchmen, and give the masses back only a small fraction of the original meaning.
3: Moore, after watching the trailer for the then upcoming Watchmen movie, believes that Zack Snyder and Hollywood as a whole have only taken the larger concepts from his comic and left the smaller, hidden meanings behind. The audience of the film is getting a "regurgitated" view of Moore's world, they cannot get the full view as they are only seeing the ideas and concepts the writers thought necessary to include. He seems to be sick of Hollywood making movie adaptations, as can be seen by his comment, "I for one am sick of worms. Can't we get something else?" He is sick of people only seeing the movies and missing out on the deeper meaning of the source material.
Moore is comparing modern films to regurgitated worms that are being fed to the audience, which are the baby birds. He also says that this dilutes everyone’s imagination. The quote means that films of today give the audience all of the details they need, rather than pushing them to come to their own conclusions and imagine different parts of the story. The comparison to regurgitated worms suggests that the films change important parts of the story so that it is easier for the audience to understand. Moore’s books, as well as other books that have been adapted to film, often have complex ideas woven into them that are left to the reader to interpret. When they are turned into films, they lose these ideas and concepts, as well as certain timing and plot elements. Moore is asking for this to be changed, so that films leave more to the audience to think about and let them make their own ideas about the story.
ReplyDeleteThough both the comic scene and movie rendition were beautiful, both have different strengths and weaknesses. The comic scene shows the light of the stars more prominently , and the coloring and line work on the castle is more bright and vivid. Additionally, Laurie and Jon seem very small in relation to the castle in the comic scene, while in the movie they appear larger. The movie adaptation, however, has the advantage of motion, so the scene is all the more breathtaking when you can actually see the wheels and gears in the castle turning. Alan Moore might disagree with this, as his quote describes how movies "spoon feed" us. The idea that the reader no longer has to interpret how Laurie's voice sounds or imagine the movement of the gears on their own might be one aspect of this spoon-feeding.
ReplyDeleteThe two frames that I picked are nearly identical to each other. The panel is in chapter 6 of the comic, but in the movie the image appears in the opening sequence with the Bob Dylan song playing in the background. The image is of two men tied on opposite side of a fire hydrant with the Rorschach symbol in front of it. In the movie, by the time you are able to see the symbol the men's heads are cut out of the frame, unlike the comic, which gives a full image. I believe the image loses a bit of meaning in the movie as it was put in so early. By the time the audience would have been able to understand the significance they would have forgotten all about it. In the comic, it is seen while Rorschach is talking to his therapist about changing from Kovacs to Rorschach. He talks about how Kovacs was soft and would let criminals live and in the next panel the image of the men is shown inferring that the men are still alive. In the movie, however, the men appear to be dead. Although, the song in the movie helps with the meaning of the image as the song is about times changing and the image is significant to how Rorschach is a changed version of Walter Kovacs.
ReplyDeleteThe picture I chose was the scene where the two dogs were fighting over the girl's bone. In the comic, it is a clean white bone that looks very much like the bone that a dog would be found playing with. However in the movie, the audience sees that it is clearly the leg of the little girl because there is a shoe and the remains of a foot connected to it. I think this takes away from the scene slightly because in the comic, the realization hits one, and it is harder to look away from that scene because the reader is shocked and horrified by the discovery that the inconspicuous bone is really the bone of a murdered child. In the movie, adding how the bone was more of a leg made the scene more gritty, but it was easy to look away because it was a little too much to watch. The audience also doesn't feel the creeping horror like they do in the book, since in the movie they are "told" right out, this is what happened to the girl. This change from the book to the movie goes along with Moore's belief that movies give the audience what we need instead of letting them figure it out for themselves. In this case, the audience is shown very clearly that the girl was killed and fed to the dogs, whereas in the book, all the reader sees are some butcher knives, and dogs fighting over a bone.
ReplyDeleteIt says that Holly wood spoon feeds its audience everything.
ReplyDeleteIt basically means that Moore feels like a lot of themes and massages that are implied in original works are too overtly put in Hollywood recreations. It leaves the viewer no time to think for themselves and therefore crushes all of the themes' original meanings.
In the context of Watchmen, it can be obviously seen the the movie tries to spoon feed morals and blows over a lot of themes of inescapable fate to replace them with a focus on the fact that the costumed hero business consumed the characters lives.
The image I took was of Hollis, just before he died in both the movie and the book. I think this shows the point of the thematic differences between the two forms of media nicely. In the book, a couple of knot heads break into his apartment. He doesn't suspect anything, and opens the door ready with candy for trick or treaters. Then he's beaten. Flashes of his old life costuming juxtapose those of him being beaten by the group. In the flashbacks, he's standing and fighting heroically. In the 'present', he's helpless, an old man with nothing but memories, killed because he was mistaken for his protege. There is nothing he could have done in the short term to prevent it, and it more tragic for it. In the movie, however, he makes a last stand. He opens the door suspiciously, and his flashbacks happen side by side with him defending himself. He's strong, and fighting off masked villains and random gang members alike. Just before he dies, he does not seem so old or terrified. He fought back, and was gotten the better of, not because age got the better of him, but because numbers and circumstance did. The movie did a lot to strip away the impotency of a lot of the characters, especially the two Nite Owls, therefore stripping away an important part of their thematic narrative, and making the new simplified theme more forced.
The scene I chose is directly before Rorschach's mask is taken off during his arrest. His mask is crucial to his character, and the book and movie took different approaches to it. The movie has the obvious advantage of being able to smoothly shift the appearance of the mask, while the book has the advantage of being able to pinpoint specific emotions of the mask. The scene in the book is a good example of amplification through simplification. Although the motions in the movie add a special effect, you get a more basic, perhaps more telling, effect from the book. It leaves more room for the reader to interpret the expressions in their own way, backing up Moore's point of modern movies stripping away the ability to use one's imagination to enhance a story's plot.
ReplyDelete1) Moore says that Hollywood is spoon feeding us watered down material that offers little to no value.
ReplyDelete2) In this quote, Moore tells us how what we view is useless. He describes how he predicts that the Watchmen film will be like so many others in the way that it will "water down our collective cultural imagination."
3) This quote relates to the book Watchmen in the way that it is an attack on the film version. While Moore makes the point that the movie is weak in material, the book, which he wrote, would fall far from this. In other words, the book has more cultural and intellectual stimulant then the film could ever hope for.
Level 1: The Alan Moore quote states that Hollywood films spoon feed us films, and that he is sick of this trend.
ReplyDeleteLevel 2: The quote has the intended meaning that Hollywood films tend to oversimplify and overemphasize subtle aspects of other mediums in order to make it more easily recognizable/comprehensible to a viewing audience. Alan Moore takes a negative stance about this oversimplification of film adaptations, and says that they have a negative effect on our overall society's imagination.
Level 3: The quote says quite a bit about Alan Moore's opinion of Watchmen and its 2009 film adaptation. He directly references the fact that the Watchmen movie falls victim to spoonfeeding its viewers specific subtle references and imagery. Overall, he believes that the Watchmen movie lacked subtlety, and had to spoonfeed audiences subtle references in order to fit a trend of modern Hollywood movies. He disliked this aspect, and says he is "sick" of it. He also talks about collective cultural imagination, and how explicitly pointing out images intended to be subtle has the effect of "watering [it] down". Subtleties allow our mind to work and develop hypothetical connections between various ideas, exercising our imagination. Moore argues that modern Hollywood movies destroy the viewer's need to use imagination and cogniscient processing of film.
The scene I chose was right before Laurie and Dan leave on the airship for the first time, in which Dan sits down next to his Nite Owl costume. One thing the movie adds is a significantly muted color palette, as the entire scene is tinted dark green/grey. This helps portray the depressing and worn out feeling of the Watchmen as a substitute for deeper characters and a longer medium in the comic. Furthermore, the movie sacrifices the meaningful, long term character development of the comic in favor of a faster medium. However, this is common in films, as a film is consumed far more quickly than a comic book is. This relates to the quote, as Alan Moore believes the Watchmen movie spoonfed people concepts that were supposed to be intricate and complex in the comic book. One of these is a feeling of depression and uselessness in the Watchmen. In the comic, this is expressed through extensive character and backstory development. In the movie, this is done through a sad grey/green tint on the screen. This limits the imagination of the viewer, but makes it almost universally understandable and observable.
ReplyDelete