Entertainment Weekly has an interesting interview with Alan Moore on comics and motion media.
Do you think that any good can come of comics movies?
I increasingly fear that nothing good can come of almost any adaptation, and obviously that’s sweeping. There are a couple of adaptations that are perhaps as good or better than the original work. But the vast majority of them are pointless.
We all know that Alan Moore has never been a fan of his work being translated into motion picture or television form. I just thought this was a good summation of his overall argument.
13 Comments
Awesome interview, then again wouldnt expect anything less from Moore.
me neither.
but whether he likes it or not, he is a god.
and even if this interview is exactly what i would’ve expected from him, he can be kind of a jerk sometimes. there’s almost nothing he likes.
I’m with Alan Moore. Hollywood has absolutely butchered his works. Even though the Watchmen movie trailer looks spectacular and Grant Morrison is uncharacteristically gushing over the footage he’s seen, Moore is correct in his scathing criticism of Zach Snyder’s 300. 300 was racist and homophobic.
I think that Grant Morrison probably wants Zach Snyder to direct an “Invisibles” movie.
@Hermit
Come on you cant get a jerk vibe from him not liking stuff, hes a fellow South Park fan and thats all i need to hear to know hes as balanced as they come.
@Lifeisaglitch
i love alan moore, i see his name somewhere and i buy the stuff without thinking. and i understand what you’re saying, but sometimes he just sound like a bitter old man.
honestly, i expect him to shout: ‘get off my lawn’ in an interview within the next year.
I agree with hermit. You can’t deny that Alan Moore’s work is legendary, but how long can you listen to the same message before you go “FINE!! I GET IT!!! Don’t you have anything else to say?”
I also question the wisdom of asking him that question. Did Entertainment Weekly think he was gonna say something else.
Well he wasnt really preaching, the interviewer gave him some questions and he answered them honestly… All im saying. I used to think he was a bit to much of a pessimistic, avant garde-esq eccentric to, but thats only because his darker works are what have put him in the spotlight as a comic witing genius, and yes the beard add to the crazy ol miner image as well :D But he only radiates that image because journalist keep asking the same things in search of drama and controversy. The man is a Bosh watching, Tom Strong writing South Park fan, his hatred for all things mainstream and hollywood is not bigger then any of our (Meet The Spartans anyone?) he just gets the questions fired at him in rapid succesion. Its hard being a deity.
Agreed. I’d also cite the introduction to the Anniversary edition of “The Princess Bride” as another description of Hollywood’s exasperating pettiness and unnecessary importance of egos, and a comparison between the book and the film of “Stardust” as a staggering example of why some books or graphic books DO NOT WORK ON THE SCREEN.
i agree with all that, but we’ve heard it all before, countless time, and half of it was from alan moore.
and stardust was a great movie. i didn’t read the book, but my roommate did and liked the movie anyway.
i think that, when you watch a movie adaptation, you have to dissociate it from the original book/comic/game and take it only as a movie. best example is wanted. so you have to ask yourself, is the movie good? is it entertaining? are the actors good? did the dialogues works? etc. yes you can compare it, but never to say that it’s bad because it’s not like the original. from hell was a bad movie just because it was bad, not because it was not like the book.
you’ll probably say, what’s the point of doing it if they don’t do it right. but that’s the thing, they try to do it right. yes the hollywood studio system suck and all they want is our money, but sometimes you have things like iron man, incredible hulk, sin city (i liked it) and others.
i think the future looks bright for comic adaptation because i think the studios are starting to see that if they put the right people on a movie and give them a little freedom, they can do great things.
anyway, that’s what i thinkand i’m willing to risk my hard earned money to go to the theatre and hope that i’ll have a good time.
oh, and i just want to add that nothing is perfect. the perfect movie doesn’t exist, the perfect music doesn’t exist and never will. so we have to stop asking for it and just enjoy what we can.
At the end of the day this stuff comes down to personal preference. One person’s greatest issue ever is another’s garbage. We must be at peace with the fact that comic fans opinion of films will always differ from the “mainstream” because we’re too close. But I think we can all safely agree what’s total crap (i.e. Elektra), what was a worthy, but bothched attempt (Superman Returns) and what’s superior storytelling for the film medium (The Dark Knight, Iron Man).
“i think that, when you watch a movie adaptation, you have to dissociate it from the original book/comic/game and take it only as a movie. best example is wanted. so you have to ask yourself, is the movie good? is it entertaining? are the actors good? did the dialogues works? etc. yes you can compare it, but never to say that it’s bad because it’s not like the original. from hell was a bad movie just because it was bad, not because it was not like the book.”
-Hermit
Damn straight :)
“but whether he likes it or not, he is a god.”
Actually, I’d argue that this statement encapsulates every reason why I dislike Moore. He isn’t a god, but he and many of his fans think him one.
He has managed to write a few good comic books, many of them focusing on the same basic theme and preaching the same basic message with different details and different characters thrown in for variety.
Judd Winnick can boast the same, though certainly no one is stepping forth to deify him …