The Watchmen (Sam Hamm)

Is it just me or does Mr. Freeze look like Dr. Manhattan's brother?

Genre: Action-Adventure (It's not nearly as slapstick or black comedy oriented as the comic. In fact it reads like a pretty bland genre piece in places).


About: The Studio wanted to do a Watchmen adaption since the late 80's when Moore's comic was still pretty recent. After Moore declined to risk turning his master work into a film, the studio hired Sam Hamm. (Why, I have no idea, his only credit to that point was Never Cry Wolf, which is entirely not related to this genre at all). Hamm turned in his first draft in 1988, claiming it was too difficult to condense a 338 page, nine panel a page comic into a feature film script (read under 150 pages). So Hamm did what any Hollywood writer does when faced with an umanageable situation, he completed discarded the original story line and all the things that made it wonderful and created his own story. Why not! What did Alan Moore know? He was only one of the best comic creators alive and had worked on pretty much every major DC hero. So Hamm threw in some random stuff about an assassination and a time paradox. Once again, why not? Everybody loves time paradoxes that make absolutely no sense. In one of their finer moves, Fox put the film in turnaround. And so it was, Watchmen entered development hell.


Writer: I assumed some Hollywood Hack had done this. Sam Hamm? Who the hell was that? And then I checked out his wiki page. Monkeybone....yeah that sucked! Tim Burton's original Batman....rip off of Mankiewicz! And then I saw it, one of my all time favorite films....Never Cry Wolf and I was reminded that yes, even talented writers can produce crap.



Premise: I'd been referred to Watchmen while in college when I was attempting to a story within a story, and from that day had great respect for Moore and the comic. This July, thanks again to the Pasadena library, I got a chance to finally the read the comic. And wow. Just wow. It's brilliant. Watchmen is one of the few things I can say I wish I read a decade ago. (I actually would be hard pressed to name anything else. And as anyone can tell you, I'm always reading).



It'd also make a great movie. It would have made a great movie if Gilliam had directed (it may not have been a success, but it would have been a glorious failure if nothing else. And although Gilliam was slated to direct this Hamm script, he hated it and called for many rewrites. Cause Gilliam although wacky is no fool). And the version that eventually made its way into theaters was pretty good, and at least for the most part it was faithful to the book. And then....there's this Sam Hamm crap. If I was Alan Moore, the complete crapiness of this script would have driven me to also not want to have anything to do with Hollywood or its adaptions of my films.



Now let's get down to business....



I don't know about you, but whenever I'm faced with adapting anything that's too long for my number of pages my first instinct is to start creating some random scenes that have nothing whatsoever to do with the main story line. Hamm blows the first 30 pages on a terrorist situation at the State of Liberty. It reads like a generic thriller. Boring dialogue. Little Watchmen personality. And it sets up Captain Metropolis and Veidt (Ozymandias...you may remember him as the guy with the cool looking cat). Dr. Manhattan, ever the eteranl douche bag, fails to stop the destruction of the statue and the media backlash results in the Keene Act, which outlaws superheroes and causes the group to disband.



Remember how Rorschach had voice over which cemented all these miscellaneous events together? It's completely gone. (Now, if it had been underwritten, I may have agreed. Moore does have a tendency to overwriter, but gone completely? That's just retarded. We lose a central narrative)



Alot like the actual film, The Tales of the Black Freighter is entirely absent. Remember the whole Sally Jupiter rape storyline by the Comedian and how Silk Spectre ultimately underwent a transformation? Gone. She's now a pretty static character. Actually, all the back story for Night Owl, Rorshach, and everyone else is gone. Why? Cause Hamm needed time to create a Statue of Liberty showdown and a subplot where Laurie/Silk Spectre gets lung cancer...duh!



Hamm spends the next ten pages on needless exposition....Rorshach learns of Kovac's death and discusses what this will mean with the former Night Owl. He then goes to see Veidt (who is much, much more likeable in this film...actually that's another thing, Hamm created no antagonist in this script. The quintessential superhero story without a killer bad guy...right.) Rorasch then, if you haven't had enough talkign scenes, discusses the matter with Dr. Manhattan Silk Spectre. (I know this scene is similar to what appeared in the actual movie, but it always seemed the weakest and most boring part to me. If I was gonna rewrite Moore with Hamm's recklesness, this is a part I might consider touching.)



Laurie splits with Dr. Manhattan and becomes romantic with Dan, Night Owl (who is hotter in this version and doesn't even suffer from erectile disfunction....too risque for Hollywood?) Laurie discovers she has lung cancer from her time with Dr. Manhattan (which makes his whole I'm leaving cause I don't give a crap about mankind thing even douchier...mankind is pointless, and guess what? You have a cancer. Bye!) The Manhattan TV interview now revolves around these allegations. He flees to Mars and recalls his backstory (which is actually pretty faithful to the comic...good job Sam!)



The middle part of the second act is pretty faithful. It takes it's time, and for the most part works. But then the team arrives at Viedt's Anartic base of operations, and the script goes from kind of bad to a complete disaster.



Turns our Veidt framed Rorshach, murderer Moloch, exiled Dr. Manhattan and killed Blake. He's planning to revise the timeline of history. (Cause obviously Alan Moore's showdown with Veidt dropping an ATOMIC BOMB on MANHATTAN just wasn't suspenseful enough. I mean, seriously. This is like rewriting The Sixth Sense so Haley Joel is a ghost. It makes no sense. It's not the plot. It's not what things are leading up to. Why do it?) Also, remember how Moore made this great point that some people had to die to save the world? Hamm's whole point of the time machine idea is to rewrite history. Was this some Back to the Future inspired frenzy? I liked this much, much better the approximately first five thousand times I saw this plot line used.



Veidt is ultimately vaporized. Dr. Manhattan regains his humanity and sacrifices himself by going back in time to avert the "accident" that turned him into a superhero, and Jon is given the chance to be with Jane/Silk Spectre. Furthermore, America doesn't win Vietnam, Nixon resign, the Cold War never happens, Super Heroes cease to exist.



The ending is particularly nonsensical and kind of ironic (read, stupid). Rosrasch, Nite Owl and Silk Spectre are transported to NYC where Watchmen is a popular comic. Crowds flock to see them dressed up like the fictional characters. It's dumb. Actually this whole thing is dumb.



Sam Hamm dropped the ball here. This is a horrendous adaption of a brilliant comic. And to think I love Never Cry Wolf (which as I reflect now is also way different from the published novel) and used to defend Monkeybone as a botched effort. Wow. Bad Sam!



[ X ] - Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)

Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)

Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)

Hot Rod (Good)

Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good)



Isla Prospects: The Silk Spectre is hot, and Isla is hot. But in two very different ways. Silk Spectre is sly and seductive and very smooth. Isla is the exact opposite of this. (We all saw her in the Lookout. She can't pull off intelligent/quick if her life depends on it).



What I Learned: The Pallenberg draft of the to-be-directed-by George Romero copy of The Stand falls into very similar loopholes. (I plan on reviewing this script too one day, The Stand is one of my all time favorite pulp novels). If you're dealing with a massive story, don't be afraid to just break off a chunk of it and develop a script around that story. When writers attempt to create versions of Epic Novels, they inevitably try to ping pong their way through the Greatest Hit scenes and the end result is everything feels rushed and there's no breathing room. These scenes worked in stories because the reader could stop and take them in. Not because the screenwriter somehow managed to pack 10 of them within five pages. Stop. Breathe. Plot well. Stories are meant to be savored. Quick plots only serve to annoy and alienate your audience.