Comic Filmmakers Trash 'Watchmen'

At the recent Los Angeles Film Festival, a trio of comic-movie professionals waxed philosophic on some much-beloved (and much-derided) comic book movies, including "Watchmen", "X-Men 2", and "A History Of Violence". Fittingly, the writer of "Watchmen" and "X-2" (including a slew of other upcoming comics projects) was on the panel: Zak Penn. Joining him were fellow writer Josh "A History Of Violence" Olson and Radical Publishing’s Barry Levine.

Zak was the most forthcoming and candid at the panel–admitting his own writing failure with "Elektra":

"We blew Elektra, …We blew chunks. It should have been R-rated, like Sin City. … It should have been La Femme Nikita: She is an assassin, and you can’t do that unless it is R-rated. I should have known that Fox would not make an R-rated movie, so it’s probably my fault. They denuded it."

He also praised Bryan Singer:

"Bryan Singer deserves the credit that we’ve reached today where movies like Dark Knight are getting nominated for awards. He did the science fiction incarnation of these movies. These are not comic-book scripts; they are science fiction movies that are just based on comic books. And Bryan Singer is no fan of these movies. … Yet no one else adapts The Matrix or the The Fly better than we do."

And yknow what? I think I agree–to an extent. It was a cumulative thing, this ramp-up to the current Golden Age of Superhero Movies. And in MY humble opinion, it began with the surprisingly well-done "Blade", way back in 1998. THAT movie took a basically-non-existent comic character, updated him in clever and vital ways, and entertained the holy hell out of us. That was the first modern drop in the bucket for modern superhero movies, when people started saying ‘hey, just because they wear capes (or trenchcoats) and are super-strong doesn’t mean the movies have to be inheritly ridiculous (coughcoughtheDonnerSupermanmoviescoughcough)’.

Then came "The Matrix" a year later (that dastardly clever hodgepodge of a thousand other concepts and comics and ideas), which was hailed as a ‘comic book movie’ even though it wasn’t directly BASED on a comic. It again showed us an intriguing, cooler-than-cool world where ordinary people found themselves capable of doing improbable things (every superhero origin story ever) and it FELT like a comic book. Naturally, that movie was fantastically successful, which helped the bottom line of the similarly-attired mutants in the first "X-Men", which again took a more grounded and well-rounded look at the world of the fantastic, and yes, since that movie WAS directly based on a well-known comic, it can be popularly hailed as the first direct comic book movie to point out that comic books can a good movie make. And here we are smack-dab in the middle of Comic Book Movie Nirvana.

A Nirvana which COULD have reached its apex with the adaptation of the medium’s Holy Grail: "Watchmen", and didn’t, because the movie was just plain blah. Penn and Olson even address the issue of co-screenwriter David Hayter’s plea to "Watchmen" fans:

"The panel were pressed for their thoughts on the recent Watchmen movie and about screenwriter David Hayter’s editorial plea for fans to come see the movie, lest its failure spell doom for the genre. (Hayter worked with Penn on X2.) ‘That was silly to say that if not enough people went to Watchmen, it would stop all the other movies,’ Penn said. ‘No one told me to change anything because of the failure of Watchmen.’

Olson chimed in, ‘That was a candy-ass thing to do.’

And Levine said, ‘And there’s that 25-foot blue penis.’

‘Now it’s true that this was a big nostalgia trip for me, and for that reason it succeeded for me,’ Penn added. ‘That’s not how you should write, though, out of nostalgia for a moment in your comic-book history.’

Refreshing to hear Hollywooders admitting to mistakes, isn’t it? Head to scifiwire to read the whole synopsis of the panel, including Levine’s thoughts on Radical’s upcoming movies, right here.