Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Who's Going to Watch the Watchmen - Watchmen movie confirmations

the WatchmenMy brother sent me this blog link at Rorschachs Journal saying the Watchmen movie cast has been confirmed. The only cast member I recognize is Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Supernatural, Grey's Anatomy) cast as the Comedian - an important role, but not a very extensive one! While we're on the topic of Morgan, I find it interesting that last season both of his characters were both killed off on their shows, but this past season he was able to reprise both roles and yet remain dead in both!

It's interesting that the Watchmen movie may be coming to fruition now, on the heels of DC's Identity Crisis saga. The Watchmen story originally was an exploration of the heroes from Charlton comics that would have left these iconic characters unusable:

  • Dr. Manhattan = Captain Atom
  • the Comedian = Peacemaker
  • Ozymandias = Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt
  • the 2nd Nite-Owl = the 2nd Blue Beetle (Ted Kord)
  • Rorschach = the Question
  • Captain Metropolis = Judomaster
  • the 2nd Silk Specter = Nightshade
What Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore (who has a history of mucking about/deconstructing established characters) chose to do instead, was to create characters from scratch that built on the archetypes of the existing characters, so that they could express their story while leaving the originals intact. DC, on the other hand, has recently chosen to take another route to revise old characters by introducing successors after killing off the originals.

I've always had a fondness for both of the Blue Beetle characters and felt that Ted Kord's death in Identity Crisis was pointless, as they could have easily used any number of characters that have lapsed into obscurity, such as one from the Bloodlines story arc, for the same effect. And why not resurrect a youthful Dan Garrett with a new look (Ditko left plenty of room for even a writer of limited ability) in stead of giving the scarab to a new kid?
- But I digress!

While they may have a cast lined up it's still way too early to start planning your Watchmen parties as we've seen time and again great comic to movie concepts fall victim to a variety of early deaths and indefinite delays. That being said, Warner Bro's has set up an official site, though there's nothing there but the proposed date of March 6, 2009, and IMDB has a listing for the Watchmen movie. Additionally, according to a Wikipedia listing, this single frame of Rorshach was imbedded in Frank Miller's
300! Again, this is Wikipedia, so this may not necessarily be true, but possibly may be! I'll be keeping my fingers crossed.

Watchmen movie