Director Zach Snyder was fully aware of the impossible task before him when he took up the reigns on adapting the critically-acclaimed but “unfilmable” Watchmen graphic novel. He readily admits that his motivation was out of love for the comic and fear that it would end up in the wrong hands:

If I made it, I had a chance to not screw it up. If I did screw it up, at least it was me who screwed it up. But if I let them take the script they showed me to someone else to screw up, it would have been my fault. So I had to make it.

Homage to the original is apparent in every shot—many of which are lifted straight from the panels of Dave Gibbons, the original’s artist and artistic collaborator for the film. Alan Moore, the original’s writer who asked to not be associated with the film in any way (not even a writing credit), must admit it’s a loving rendition… though his ability to find fault with his novel-turned-film V for Vendetta surprised me.

Unfortunately, it’s in this rigid formalism—a simultaneous love for the original and fear of “screwing it up”—that the film loses its way. While unafraid to make changes for the sake of coherence and duration (gone is the artist’s colony and thus the giant squid, gone too is Adrian Veidt’s climactic autobiography and thus the Gordian Knot tapestry), after the nearly three hours that remain have come and gone we’re left wondering about its purpose and relevance. Why, other than a desire to make the best adaptation of Watchmen ever, was this movie made?

The original had a strong unifying voice: the true confrontation of an evil requires such a deep understanding that it can lead to becoming the evil oneself. Most notably, we see this theme in Adrian Veidt’s quest to end the mass destruction of nuclear war resulting in mass destruction. It’s also present in the dedication to fighting crime turning Walter Kovacs into a criminal under the Keene Act and in supporting characters like the criminal psychiatrist Dr. Malcolm Long tortured by truly fathoming the evils he studies. All of these transformations are underscored by the story-within-a-story, Tales of the Black Freighter, featuring a character so determined to save a village from pirates that he kills innocent people and desecrates the dead. While I don’t blame Zach Snyder for leaving out the Tales of the Black Freighter (although I’m looking forward to the extended DVD which includes it), I do blame him for leaving out the conceptual focus it represented.

Perhaps I’m asking for the moon. Shouldn’t I be tearfully happy with such a faithful replication of the comic I loved so much in high school that I xeroxed panels and scotch-taped them in my locker for motivation? Is a middle-ground between Zach’s Old Masters reproduction version and the “modern-day, War on Terror, PG-13 monstrosity open to a sequel” that producers initially demanded too much to ask for? Although, with the 80s anxiety of a world on the brink of nuclear war no longer a pervasive experience, doesn’t something have to replace it as the emotional heart shared between the audience and the characters we’re watching?

For instance, let’s say we wanted to focus on modern distrust of corporations (although a cliché to be sure). There’s ample source material from the original. In the film, the smoldering hole left by Ozymandias’ masterstroke resembles a modern day Ground Zero, complete with humming trucks labeled as Veidt Enterprises. It’s there the attempt at relevance ends, short of any 9/11 Truth allusions, even though such conspiracy theories actually hold true in this universe and the original even provides a crank news service in the New Frontiersman.

Or let’s say we wanted to investigate themes of sexuality. Several homosexual characters were left out entirely (though a smoking hot Silhouette plays a larger role in the opening credits than throughout the original) and Rorschach’s homophobia is underplayed. The original suggests non-traditional sexualities as motivation for several characters donning costumes in the first place. The film does connect adrenaline-fueled superheroism and sex, but plays it for laughs (dodging the original’s question, “Did the costumes make it good?”). A shame, as a film about sex as the unspoken ambition behind becoming a superhero may have had the same deconstructive effect on modern movie superheroes that the original had on 1980s comic book ones.

In the end, Alan Moore is having the last laugh. Perhaps he’s just a cranky old man who likes to complain… or perhaps he knew something that the rest of us had to watch the film before we understood. Watchmen was complete as a graphic novel. It’s long and complex and treats its characters and the world they inhabit with depth and grace and… movies can’t. If the movie version is to be merely the original writ large on the silver screen, then why watch the Watchmen when you can read it?

I’ve mentioned before that I worry that truly revolutionary communication is fast becoming impossible. I’m not one of those “there are no creative works left for our generation!” kinds of artists; instead I’d trace the problem to a new totalitarian semiosis. Let’s define those words quickly.

to·tal·i·tar·i·an, adj.

of or relating to a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state

sem·i·o·tics, n.

the study of signs and symbols, how meaning is constructed and understood

Let’s dive a bit deeper, shall we? By totalitarian, I am not referring to any government that controls its people by force, as is commonly understood by the word. We don’t live in that kind of culture. Police are not beating down my door, I’m allowed to vote and even have a blog to express my views, for the most part people don’t disappear to some secret prison.

Still, ideas concerning what a life might be like where I didn’t pay rent or concerning a life-long romantic partnership that was not a state-sanctioned marriage are difficult to express if only because we lack both the literal vocabulary but also the emotional vocabulary to allow such feelings to transfer between one another. For this reason, I make a distinction between semiotics and semantics, as I’m primarily interested in the emotional resonance of a phrase and not its discrete meaning. Looking up “Hippie” will probably not accurately convey what is meant by calling someone one. Maybe I’m still rehashing The Spectacle.

Last week I chatted with Patrick Reinsborough of smartMeme concerning my thoughts on activating the creative class (more on that some other time). He brought up his surprise and fascination with Capitalism’s ability to account for the Commons, which he had previously thought an incorruptibly non-Capitalist idea. Indeed, even anti-Capitalist ideas have a place in Capitalism. In fact, as Capitalism grows more oppressive and undesirable, demand for anti-Capitalist or revolutionary ideas grows, creating a price point for dissent. All is accounted for. Patrick describes such a world and offers some solutions in his seminal “Decolonizing the Revolutionary Imagination“.

Yesterday, I walked into a comics store and walked out with “Channel Zero“. The introduction from Warren Ellis claims:

We’re in cultural lockstep, taking holidays in other people’s misery, asking for our stinking badges, dead heads nodding over phosphordot fixes.

The actual comic follows Jennie 2.5, a media activist who gradually becomes a media terrorist, who gradually becomes just a face on a t-shirt like Che Guevara (sidenote: a friend tried to get “ClicheGuevara” as an AIM name, but it was taken). Though the book was written in 1997 and imagines a world of overt censorship—this was in the middle of Giuliani’s rampage against art—it gets everything else right. It’s not apathy that undercuts the modern revolution, it’s that revolution reaffirms the status quo. Subversion has been subverted.

Nor is the truth being suppressed. Bush gets caught violating the Constitution left and right. How many scandals can he weather? Honestly, he can probably keep going until the food runs out. The American that needs to revolt in order for revolution to occur, the mass consumers of mass media that provides the social mass that lowers the momentum of social change to zero, doesn’t have it that bad. But when they do, will they realize it?

Perhaps brigades of Black Bloc standing against riot cops are doing more than inviting violence. Perhaps they’re taking and holding the territory necessary in case the rest of us need to join them. Considering that Giuliani is the current Republican front-runner, we may both get another chance re-enact Channel Zero.

It’s my third day at SXSWi and there’s now a clear winner in the Best Panel category (congratulations to the other winners, as well). He receiving standing ovations on both his entry and exit—neither of which superfluous.

Considering that I was literally surrounded by bloggers transcribing his every word, I’m not sure I need to play reporter here (sidenote: he finds the phrase “Investigative Reporter” redundant). Instead, let me try to explain my, admittedly unexpected, awe. I don’t get celebrity jitters normally, but halfway through his speech I couldn’t help but feel like I was sharing the room with a real hero.

For several of the questions he was asked, he asked questions of his own. “Do we still believe that it’s important that our news be independent? That we ask the follow-up question? Do we believe that our government belongs to us? Do we believe that democracy is about informing people and letting them decide?” One could have confused it for a presentation on crowd sourcing, but it was actually a challenge to the audience: take journalism seriously or lose it forever.

The man has credentials to talk. When he was the age of many of the bloggers in the room (early 30s) he was in Vietnam covering the war, headed to the middle of hurricanes to cover relief efforts, and part of the White House Press Corps by 33. He had the pair to go toe-to-toe with Nixon; most of us back off when someone leaves a rude comment.

We are, indeed, well on the path to losing journalism forever. The Couric Era of CBS Evening News, the program Rather just vacated, has for its current top stories: “Famous Alaskan Bears”, “The Death of Captain America”, “Blind Auto Mechanics”, and “Sniffing Your Way to a Better Memory”. Hardly Watergate.

It’s the death of Captain America that might sum it up the best. Cap’s creator, 93-year old Joe Simon, lamented the decision saying, “We really need him now“. Joe Quesada, President of Marvel Comics disagrees. “That to me is why this story is worth telling… How do we get along without Captain America? Do we stand up? Do we step down?”

Ditto for Dan Rather.

Courage.

Briefly stated, fantasy is reality minus details, plus details.
F = (R - d1) + d2

Delving more deeply, there exists a reality. Some may say there are many, or that there is one but viewed from many angles, all of which I don’t care to debate. Whatever it is, it’s full of details.

These details often get in the way of our full apprehension of it. Scott McCloud makes reference to this in his theory of “masking“, in which a less-rendered protagonist is more accessible to a reader than a fully-rendered one.

Once the reality has been distilled from its trappings, additional details can be re-introduced safely. In the inarguably well-rendered Buffyverse, there are specifics to the point of trivia. Still, the writers of the show have stated that the Monster-of-the-Week is merely a metaphor for abstracted human issues. Dealing with stress becomes demonic slave-drivers. Reality is still intact, but wholly transformed into fantasy.

This is no thought exercise. These issues come up on a regular basis for many of us. Granted, I may have first become aware of them in my high school days, where my own hobbies were under constant scrutiny by the hacky-sacking upper crust, despite their established positive effects… More recently, watching an episode of Firefly with my girlfriend led to questions like, “Why are they speaking in Chinese?” and “Why does that guy have a sword?” which pulled my relationship with fantasy (specifically sci-fi in this case) to the center of my human relationship. I was forced to confront why (or better yet, how) I better relate to Malcolm Reynolds than an office-mate.

The details in “Children of Men” are not what made it a great film, but they are what made it fantasy. I’ve seen plenty of movies about men with kids, but none have so well abstracted the concept of fatherhood. No doubt an excellent script and flawless acting helped create the world, but the world was what made the film reach me and establish a connection between my abstracted model of myself-as-father all the way back to the reality of my being one someday.

Fantasy is the laboratory in which many of us discover reality. It may take a certain kind of mind, but to those people it is invaluable.