By [ad_1]
Welcome to the 18th installment of Page One Rewrite, in which I examine comics-to-screen adaptations that just couldn’t make it. This week, we’re looking at what would’ve been the most comics-accurate movie at the time, yet one filled with questionable deviations from the source material. This is the first attempt to adapt Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ famously “un-filmable” comic, Watchmen.
Moore reportedly was offered the opportunity to write the adaptation, but turned it down due to his lack of experience with film. Sam Hamm, an in-demand screenwriter due to his work on Tim Burton’s Batman, was ultimately chosen to handle the script, with Monty Python‘s Terry Gilliam attached to direct.
Even Alan Moore Expressed Confidence in This Watchmen Adaptation
Moore was publicly supportive of Hamm’s hiring, telling Comics Interview in 1987, “I have got as much confidence as it is possible to have in the people who are handling the Watchmen film. Sam Hamm is an excellent screenwriter; he’s been signed to write the Watchmen film.”
Even before the 1989 release of Batman, comics fandom shared a similar faith in Hamm, as rumors had persisted for years that his script was a brooding take on the Caped Crusader worthy of Frank Miller (in an era where the average civilian still associated Batman with Adam West). Fans assumed Hamm would tackle the very adult themes of Watchmen with the same seriousness and fidelity to the source material.
Amazing Heroes #160, published in 1988, featured an interview with Hamm, offering teases for his takes on Batman and Watchmen. Hamm described Moore as being “very complimentary” about his draft, although he confessed that as a “natural gentleman” Moore likely would keep any reservations to himself. Hamm acknowledged that, given how much “work, intelligence, and emotion” Moore put into Watchmen, “it would be difficult to read somebody else’s watering down of it.”
Other tidbits in the interview included Moore verbalizing Rorschach’s dialogue at Hamm’s request (“Very sedate, toneless, very slow with pauses between words…it was spooky, especially with Alan doing it!”), and Hamm stating that Howard Chaykin viewed his Watchmen draft as superior to his Batman script. Hamm cited the obvious challenge of writing a Watchmen movie, considering the comic is a deconstruction of comic book narratives, a subject the average moviegoer knows nothing about.
Hamm Changed Watchmen’s Opening to Introduce the Characters
In attempting to translate a 12-issue comic book miniseries into a two-hour film, Hamm has to introduce the cast quickly, and fold together numerous scenes. The opening sequence is his invention: In 1976, the “Watchmen” team (Captain Metropolis, Ozymandias, Comedian, Silk Spectre, Nite Owl, Rorschach and Doctor Manhattan) face a terrorist cell at the Statue of Liberty. Each character is given a brief introduction, with Hamm providing trailer-ready one-liners, reminiscent of his Batman dialogue. Comedian, of course, has to quip “Joke’s on you” when confronting the terrorists in his uniquely nihilistic way.
When Doctor Manhattan fails to stop the detonation of the landmark, the public turns against the group, and law enforcement unions pressure Congress to pass the Keene Act, which outlawed vigilante activity. The scene is admittedly dopey, but it does the job of establishing the cast, setting the tone and creating a specific reason for vigilantes to be outlawed in this world.
Hamm’s Watchmen Script Used Little Dialogue From the Comic
The story then jumps ahead to 1986, and follows much of the same beats from the comic. Government operative the Comedian is thrown out of his penthouse window, leading the outlaw Rorschach to investigate his murder, reuniting with his former partner, the listless and retired Nite Owl. Meanwhile, Doctor Manhattan has grown increasingly distant from humanity, eventually departing Earth for Mars and causing his lover Silk Spectre to find comfort in Nite Owl’s arms. Manhattan’s disappearance emboldens the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan, leaving the world on the brink of nuclear war.
In the midst of that, beloved mogul Ozymandias attempts to assuage his old friends’ fears, while secretly planning the conspiracy that’s disrupted their lives. Throughout everything, a newsstand vendor offers his commentary while an indifferent kid peruses his comic books. Despite the familiar plot, little dialogue is borrowed from the Watchmen comics, and virtually every scene plays out at least a little differently. It reads as if Hamm had a list of points he knew he had to hit, yet wanted to offer his unique take on each scene.
Some of Hamm’s alterations make perfect sense: He combined many of the early conversation scenes so that the exposition moves along quickly, and demonstrated how different from our world the Watchmen reality is, establishing that the fashions are “off” here (police drive “bubble cars,” and crystals have taken the place of LP records). Also, Ozymandias has invented a cigarette that actually cleans the lungs, and Nostalgia is no longer a perfume but an anti-aging cream that truly works, as Silk Spectre attests.
Instead of a lengthy investigation into Ozymandias, Nite Owl and Rorschach arrive at Karnak in the finale simply because they view it as a safe place to hide during the inevitable nuclear holocaust. Hamm also removed the coincidence of Comedian stumbling across Ozymandias’ secret island. Instead, he learned of Ozymandias’ plan while investigating Russia’s suspected role in the abduction of numerous scientists.
Hamm seemed to have fun playing with the alternate history established by Moore and Gibbons. The Vietnam Memorial in this world is a “chiseled marble representation of Doctor Manhattan; his eyes are turned skyward, and he’s cradling a wounded American grunt in his massive arms, Pieta-style.” Only 400 names are on the memorial. And instead of a pirate comic, the kid loitering at the newsstand reads Colonel North and His Howling Commandos.
Many of Hamm’s Changes to Watchmen Seemed Arbitrary
Other deviations come across as arbitrary, however. Hamm introduced the Civil Terrorism Unit as Comedian’s new employers and the government’s shadowy replacement for the Watchmen; they’re cartoonishly nasty and add nothing to the story. We also have imprisoned crime boss Big Figure renamed as “Little Bigger”; Nite Owl and Silk Spectre leaving retirement to stop police violence against protestors instead of rescuing civilians trapped in a tenement fire; aging villain Moloch given a girlfriend and a cocaine habit; and, in his retelling of the gruesome child-abduction case, Rorschach’s actions are even more gratuitous.
Also missing from the script is the narrative technique of Rorschach’s journal, Nite Owl’s secret lair, the parallel images and dialogue that transition one scene to the next, and all of the Comedian flashbacks. There’s also no talk of the original Nite Owl and Silk Spectre, or any of the backstory relating to the 1940s heroes.
Another deviation has Ozymandias as more baldly evil — so evil, he gave his former teammate Silk Spectre cancer as a part of his scheme to drive Doctor Manhattan from Earth. Instead of Spectre learning the truth about her parentage on Mars, she’s instead cured of cancer by an increasingly befuddled Doctor Manhattan.
His confusion clears when he returns to Earth and confronts Ozymandias, which leads to Hamm’s largest alteration to the original story: Ozymandias no longer unites the world against a feigned alien attack. Instead, his scheme is to travel back in time and kill Jon Osterman before he can become Doctor Manhattan. Ozymandias’ reasoning is that the emergence of a literal “superman” has created global unrest, and that his elimination will negate the impending nuclear Armageddon.
“I see what the watchmaker made. I see the universe!” said Doctor Manhattan, who realizes Ozymandias is right only shortly after he’s been vaporized. Traveling to 1962, Doctor Manhattan rescues his younger self from the accident that granted him powers, causing the timeline to readjust.
The three heroes observing this event are suddenly transported to the streets of our New York City, where superheroes only exist in comic books. As beat cops approach, they question whether anyone will believe their story. “They’d better,” hisses Rorschach as the screen cuts to black.
The Long Road to Zack Snyder’s 2009 Watchmen Adaptation
Gilliam rejected Hamm’s draft, reportedly dismissing it as “just a bunch of superheroes.” The director then attempted a new draft with collaborators Warren Skarren and Charles McKeown for a tentative 1991 release date (coincidentally the year the USSR dissolved, which severely undercut Watchmen‘s warning of the Cold War inevitably turning hot). Gilliam eventually left the project, as did a few more directors. Decades passed before director Zack Snyder would have his go at Watchmen.
Oddly, Snyder’s 2009 film borrows a few lines of dialogue in Hamm’s draft. In the comic, Ozymandias doesn’t refer to his faux-assassin as a “son of a bitch,” nor does Rorschach have the line “If God saw what any of us did, he didn’t seem to mind,” when speaking to his psychiatrist. Those are elements from Hamm’s draft that survived decades into the actual film (in addition to his appropriating the story’s title as the name of the vigilantes’ team).
Snyder’s adaptation is a far more loyal adaptation of the source material, yet it still shied away from some comics-inspired elements in Hamm’s draft. The 2009 film chose not to reflect the comic’s odd fashions, cigarettes and advanced technology — elements Hamm latched onto — instead sticking to a very “real”-looking New York.
While Snyder was determined to craft a faithful adaptation, he also felt justified in altering Watchmen‘s ending. That’s a defensible choice, as the massive squid monster was another element Moore fondly remembered from the Silver Age comics of his youth (an archetypical Justice League villain), now reimagined as something as equally frightening as a nuclear holocaust. It’s a reference the average viewer will never get, and as Hamm pointed out in his Amazing Heroes interview, it’s debatable whether this event would truly unite humanity.
Did We Dodge a Bullet When the First Watchmen Movie Was Shelved?
By 1980s standards, Hamm’s Watchmen would have been a fan’s dream. It’s R-rated, broadly faithful to the comic, and the antithesis of a Christopher Reeve Superman film. Decades later, Snyder’s far more reverential film maintains a cult following, despite being polarizing upon release.
To Hamm’s credit, his script streamlines much of the narrative in a reasonable way, and he keeps the story moving. There are also some arguable improvements over the original story. Ozymandias is introduced as a more genuine friend to Nite Owl, making his later betrayal more dramatic. As for Nite Owl and Silk Spectre’s quickie romance, Hamm establishes that it’s helped along with several glasses of wine. And while the comics’ tease of a nuclear response to Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan feels rather detached from the lead characters’ dramas, it remains heavy on the heroes’ minds in Hamm’s version, even playing a role in bringing the cast together for the finale.
Hamm’s biggest failing isn’t his revised finale, which is a little too cute with Watchmen‘s “realistic superheroes” conceit, but instead his ham-fisted portrayal of the characters. Most of the cast lacks any nuance, as Ozymandias is pretty much the “Republic serial villain” he mocks in the comics, and there’s no effort to flesh out the Comedian, perhaps the story’s most important figure.
Rorschach ends up with the worst of Hamm’s characterizations, as the new ending robs him of his firm moral stance and his revised dialogue recasts Rorschach as a crude thug and little more. While Moore is content to let the reader infer Rorschach’s blank-faced reactions to his court-appointed psychiatrist, Hamm asserts that Rorschach takes great joy in giving the man nightmares. Hamm’s Rorschach is foul-mouthed and needlessly cruel, fitting with the screenwriter’s stated goal of topping Moore’s “gags” and making the character’s portrayal “more violent and insane than it was even in the comic book.” Moore clearly wanted readers to be disturbed by Rorschach, but he also recognized the irony in casting him as this story’s most principled character. Hamm just wants him to gross you out.
Fixing those issues actually wouldn’t be too much work; sticking with Moore’s dialogue would solve much of the problems. Hamm’s script is a solid starting place for a Watchmen movie, and it’s possible the landscape of comics adaptations would be different had it been released decades earlier. Most likely, Hamm’s script would’ve seen even more revisions, however. The big casting rumor at the time was that Arnold Schwarzenegger was playing Doctor Manhattan; accommodating that would’ve made for a fascinating second draft.
About The Author
[ad_2]
