New York Comic Con is happening this weekend and we were onhand Saturday (January 7) for the big movie day of the festival which included sneak-peek footage of “Up,” “Watchmen,” “Terminator Salvation,” the “Friday The 13th” reboot, Alex Proyas’ “Knowing” with Nicolas Cage, and Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker.” It’s a lot to catch up on, but hopefully we’ll have at least one report on every movie we saw. There was also footage of “Astro Boy,” or at least a panel with images, but we didn’t stick around for it.
One of the more interesting panels this weekend was with “Watchmen” illustrator Dave Gibbons. None of the cast or crew from the WB movie were there which was a disappointment on the surface, but Gibbons candid and intelligent thoughts on the film adaptation and the graphic novel’s larger context were insightful. It was interesting to hear him say the influence of the comic book he and Alan Moore created was for the worse.
“Certainly the ‘Watchmen’ graphic kind of changed comic books, and not entirely for the good either. What we did was do a different, hopefully fresh take on superheroes, but unfortunately, that was seen as, “Ahhh, the way you have to do super heroes now is to make them very dark and grim and gritty — make it very negative.” That’s not what Alan [Moore] and I set out to do. We love superheroes and [Watchmen] was all about getting to know them better. And we were really disappointed — along with Frank Miller’s wonderful book, “The Dark Knight” — that we set the agenda for years to come with super heroes. I would hate to think that all [comic book] films have to become dark, [very adult] and R-rated, because I think there’s space for all the flavors. I love the “Spider-Man” movies and the “Iron Man” movie and I hope they continue in their way and we have variety.”
Gibbons said he had a tremendous amount of faith that “Watchmen” director Zack Snyder would do the project justice as soon as he met him. “I met Snyder at the U.K. premiere of “300” where I was bowled over how faithful it was to the spirit of Frank Miller’s novel… and I introduced myself and we talked for 30 minutes and I had a gut feeling then that he got it and haven’t seen any [footage] since that’s changed that gut feeling.”
New York Comic Con fans were treated to the first 20 minutes of “Watchmen,” plus one never-before-seen sequence of Rorschach (actor Jackie Earle Haley) in prison. We’ll get into that footage in more detail soon enough, but we will say two things: some of it was really impressive and faithful to the novel, but some of it was predictable . To everyone claiming the “Matrix”-y stop and start slow-motion techniques are in the trailer only, you’re dead wrong. “Watchmen” seems poised to have tons of the overdone slo-mo of “300.”
