The Watchtower of Destruction: The Ferrett's Journal - March 6th, 2008
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08:41 am
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Just So You Know....
 ...my favorite limited-series comic of all time is almost certainly Watchmen. But though I do adore it, and there's a movie coming out, and the stills from the movie are being released...
...I will not see this movie. Don't ask. Not in the theaters, not on DVD, not ever.
This is not because I think it's a bad movie. I actually have no opinion on it whatsoever, since it's still way out there; despite the many yelps of fans, it's almost always impossible to know a movie's status this far out. (You can tell how faithful it is to the source material... But I've seen faithful adaptations that sucked and wild departures that worked on their own merits.)
It is, rather, than I enjoyed the original so much that I don't want to have my personal casting overwritten with the external movie casting.
This happened with the TV-movie The Stand, based on my favorite Stephen King book. I watched the first ten minutes of it, and realized to my horror that I had a very concrete image of the hospital/prison where the first outbreak hits, and an extremely detailed idea of what Bill Hapscomb's gas station looked like. The movie wasn't bad, but within seconds my original idea of what those places had looked like were erased and blurred beyond repair, to be replaced with the much more visual images of TV.
I love the voices I have for Stu, and Fran, and Harold, and Larry. Talented as the actors may be, I don't want them replacing that. My mental enjoyment is fragile, and I don't want it bumped... So even if Watchmen is the greatest adaptation EVAR, I won't watch.
The miracle of Harry Potter, on the other hand, is that for at least the first three movies the casting was pitch-perfect. Harry was great, all the teachers were great, and they synced up perfectly with my book-ideas. Then it began to drift a little, to the point where Voldemort wasn't even close to my idea of him (and, speaking as a whiny nasal guy, the fact that they punked out and went from the specifically high-voiced description in the book and went with the low undertones of Ralph Fiennes remains a crushing blow). So I've lost Voldemort to a silly movie, which is a little disappointing.
Watchmen is mine. I read it, issue by issue, theorizing with my friends in a netless world - if there had been an online to be there, my blog would have been alive with theories as to what [BIG_VILLAIN] had planned between #10 and #11. It is, perhaps, the comic I clutch second-closest to my heart (the closest being Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing, which I'm reading again with delight).
I will not let some movie take it away from me.
(Plus, as Mike Sterling notes, the picture here is The Silk Spectre. I'll disagree with him on Rorschach, which looks great to me, but this Spectre? Not even close, folks. Plus, they're conspicuously avoiding Dr. Manhattan, which means that he probably looks like a cross between Conan and a Smurf with a dot on his head.)
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10:29 am
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Teh Heh
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) yuki_onna has written about the n00b thrill of putting balloons on art and becoming an honest-to-God COMIC WRITER. (So much so that I'm stealing her stolen icon.) But here's the trick, O has-only-slightly-less-experience-than-I:
That thrill never goes away.
After eighteen months of working with Roni, I still squeed when I got the roughs. There's something intrinsically awesome about the alchemy of watching your words turned into some external art, like what you did but not quite the same. There are some downsides, of course - sometimes, you envisioned something drastically different and this new take changes the tone of what you were trying to get across. Sometimes you realize that it's your description that's at fault, since it wasn't quite enough to convey what you wanted to do and oops my bad.
But nine times out of ten, when that new art came in, I did a little dance. It's like watching Pinocchio rise off the table, his strings in a heap. Something you did is now inextricably real, walking around outside of your own head, and that is an amazing amazing thing.
Then you put your words back in, and it's suddenly your baby again, birthed with the help of a friendly penman. The w00tness has you.
People thought that I wrote about Home on the Strange so much because I was cynically attempting to sell it. No, you dimwits; I was writing about it because I was over the moon at the transformative process. It's neat, learning what works (and what doesn't) in this bold new format! Even your failures are somehow fun! And unlike a novel, which everyone sees at once, the combined frustration and joy at watching everyone react to a page a day is highly entertaining.
My Name Is Might Have Been is slated to run for about eighteen months, which is really as much as one could expect from this. It's not open-ended like HotS was; we've already got the ending (and the final words) stashed away safely in a vault.
But I know come the end of the script, if Cat's anything like me - which, you know, she kind of is on many levels - she'll still be going, "Hey - that ruined building? That came from me. And now it's that. Isn't that awesome?"
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01:26 pm
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A Very Bizarre Poll With No Sequel Planned
So chadu had this to say:
"Yes, it's a FACT (tm) that after mentioning the number 2 as regards a sequel story or character, you must say 'Electric Boogaloo.'"
Now, I'm not opposed to the "Electric Boogaloo" approach. But I, on the other hand, prefer the "X Harder" approach of the "Die Hard" series. So if we were discussing a sequel to, say, "Lord of the Rings," for him it would be "Lord of the Rings 2: Electric Boogaloo," but for me? "Lord of the Rings 2: Ring Harder." Likewise, for "Gone With The Wind," Chad thinks it would be "Gone With The Wind 2: Electric Boogaloo," and I think it would be "Gone With The Wind 2: Wind Harder."
Obviously, there are some slam-dunks on his end: I don't think there's any reasonable person who'd disagree that "There Will Be Blood 2: Electric Boogaloo" is just funnier. But "Rear Window 2: Rear Harder" is also, I think, funnier. Every movie's going to have its own fit. But on the whole, I think "Electric Boogaloo" gets repetitive, but the "X harder" format allows for all sorts of strange and unthought of creativity.
But of course, I have a paid account, so let's abuse it: Poll #1149923 A Poll With No Sequel
Open to: All, results viewable to: AllWhich sequel style is more consistently funnier:
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102 (29.1%)