While I'm Thinking About It

I'm torn

As you might recall, Watchmen was a well-made movie with fine acting and decent special effects, and I rather severely dislike it. The fact it's on DVD shouldn't matter to me one way or the other, right?

The thing of it is, I am also a fan of the process of filmmaking. All that behind-the-scenes stuff fascinates me. True story: my favorite part of the Superman Returns set is the part where they showed Brandon Routh getting strung up on wires and flown around, proving not everything was CGI.

But I digress.

I want to see the screentests for most of the cast (maybe not Billy Crudup, though). I want to see them model the owlship, to compare comic panels to storyboards to footage, to hear the writers and director and everyone else involved discuss the loss of the giant mutant alien squid. Interview Dave Gibbons and Frank Miller*. Discuss the various other permutations of the script, including the one where Ozymandias fires a bullet backwards through time to kill Dr. Manhattan, and the survivors all wind up on Earth-Prime. Explain how in the world Time-Warner let Fox get the film rights twenty years ago, when TW owns DC Comics, the publisher that keeps the graphic novel in print at least partially to spite Alan Moore.

I want to see all that, but I won't. But I want to.

Meanwhile, go watch this.

*Yes, of course I know Miller didn't write Watchmen. But Alan Moore wants nothing to do with the project, and since Dark Knight Returns was the other half of the 1-2 Punch that made superheroes all dark-and-gritty, Miller's a handy substitute.