Nerdery

Obviously, a lot of people have Watchmen on the brain.  With the release date looming closer (if Fox’s lawsuit doesn’t screw that up), I thought I’d show you a couple of the previous attempts at adapting the classic graphic novel.

(Obviously, there be spoilers.)

First up– Sam Hamm’s draft. Sam Hamm is probably best known for his Batman and Batman Returns screenplays.  I’ve read earlier drafts of both movies, and, while not perfect, they were much better than what we saw in theatres.  Hamm also created M.A.N.T.I.S. (which is finally coming out on DVD).

The film opens with terrorists taking hostages in the Statue of Liberty and the Watchmen (basically the Crimebusters group actually formed, but was named ‘the Watchmen’ instead) come in to stop them.  This act is what sparks the Keene Act that outlawed masked adventurers.

Because the terrorists blow up the Statue of Liberty.

There’s tension between the police and the group.  A lot of it.  The debacle on Liberty Island seals the deal.  The Keene Act is passed shortly after.

And that’s the opening of the film.  Hamm manages to squeeze at least a dozen cliched lines in the space of ten, maybe fifteen minutes.

Something I love about the book is the fact that they never mention the title anywhere.  Okay, it’s in there, but it’s never completed.

Nite Owl (spelled Night Owl in this draft) comes across as incompetent, asking for simple direction from Ozymandias.  I realize Dan’s not the smartest guy in the book, but he’s no slouch.  He’s intelligent and has a pretty good mind for tactics.

In this draft, Veidt is set up as something of a centerpiece of the masked adventurer community.  After Dan receives his first visit from Rorschach, he calls Adrian (who offers him money).  Veidt is the one to inform Jon and Laurie of the Comedian’s murder.

Another thing that bugs me is Rorschach’s dialogue.  It’s complete sentences, for the most part with a dark sense of humor.

This script ignores the Minutemen– the so-called Watchmen are the first and only team in this world.  That means no Hollis Mason and no Sally Jupiter.  No Hooded Justice or Silhouette or Mothman or Dollar Bill.  Captain Metropolis is a member of the Watchemen in this script.  The history is a big part of the book and it just doesn’t seem to work without it.

Overall, the script has a much stronger science-fiction feel.  Watchmen, obviously, has a little of it, but there’s so much more here.  The police have airships, Veidt manufactures cigarettes that clean your lungs along with anti-aging cream that actually makes you younger.

Another problem with this script is the mystery itself.  Rorschach and Night Owl don’t figure it out until they go to Veidt’s Antartic fortress.  And the only reason they go is to run and hide.

Once there, Ozymandias’ plan is revealed.  He’s going to kill Jon before he becomes Dr. Manhattan.  He plans to fire a bullet back in time in order to change history.  Dr. Manhattan stops him, only to step back in time to merge with Osterman in the I.F. chamber, which protects him from dying and reforming.  The past changed, Rorschach, Night Owl and Laurie are somehow transported to the real world.

And that’s how the movie ends.  It’s incredibly weak.  Hamm tried to maintain the basic plot and several scenes, but there are so many changes it barely resembles the original work.

Oddly enough, David Hayter’s script is closer to the original (plot-wise, that is) despite moving it to the present.  He maintains a lot of dialogue from the book, but, to be honest, the script doesn’t work.

First of all, you can’t change “Russia” to “North Korea” and expect the same results.  Watchmen is a story that’s firmly rooted in the Cold War.  The so-called “War on Terror” isn’t remotely the same thing.  Especially given Ozymandias’ plot to “save” the world, but more on that later.

Rorschach is insane.  I know he’s not exactly all there in the book, but he’s needlessly violent (at one point, he cuts off a police detective’s finger for no reason) and his backstory is glossed over with a brief shot of kids calling his mother a whore and him putting a cigarette out in the kid’s eye.

That’s it.

The kidnapping case is there, as well.  In the novel, it pushes him over the edge.  He can’t deal with the sheer horror and inhumanity of that crime the way he has with everything else he’s seen so far.

A lot of the history of Watchmen is ignored in this screenplay.  The original Nite Owl is there– barely– as well as Sally Jupiter.  Mothman gets one mention and that’s it.  There’s no Minutemen and not much in the way of flashbacks to the older characters.

For her eighteenth birthday, Dr. Manhattan give Laurie superpowers.  Her new codename is Slingshot and she, well, here, let me just show you:

Like I said, a lot of the same basic plot is intact.  The Comedian is murdered, Jon leaves Earth, Veidt is shot at, Rorschach’s arrested, blah blah blah. But the ending…

Okay, I like the weirdness and relative absurdity to the novel’s ending.  Scare the world into playing nice by tricking them into believing another lifeform has invaded and decimated a major city.  (Yes, I know it was done on an episode of Outer Limits before, but as Alan Moore said when his editor pointed it out, “I haven’t done it yet.”)  I’ve always wondered if the existence of extraterrestrial life would have a similar effect on our world.  I doubt it.

Back to Ozymandias’ masterstroke.  It’s a big laser.  Better than a time-traveling bullet, huh?  He fires the space-based weapon at New York City and then anonymously threatens to keep firing if the world leaders don’t stop fighting and listen to him.  He bullies the world into becoming its invisible leader.

Jon, Laurie and Dan all agree to keep quiet and it seems like everything’s going to be okay.  Except Dan can’t sleep.  He decides to kill Veidt for what he’s done.  He manages to pull it off and sends one final message to the world leaders: “And in the end: The love you take… Is equal to the love you make.”

I guess Hayter’s a big Beatles fan.

Would it have been a good movie?  Maybe.  The potential’s there, but it wouldn’t have been Watchmen.  Obviously, I haven’t read the script for Snyder’s movie, but from the trailers and what I’ve read about it, it sounds like it will be a much more faithful adaptation.