![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I'm not planning to write a lot of reviews of this show [update: I eventually wrote about the whole thing here], but the first episode (and the background text pieces for it) made me think about what it's trying to do, and what I'd like it to do, and how it relates to the comic that was pretty much my favorite thing in the whole world 33 years ago.
First, I think this is really interesting so far. I don't know if what I think they're up to is what they are really up to, and it could still go bad in so many ways. But I do think that if it is a good idea to do any kind of Watchmen follow-up at all(*), then this is the right approach in general: set it in the present day; treat all of the outlandish events of the original series as history; try to create an alternate 2019 that has a similar relationship to our world as Alan Moore's 1985 did to our world then, rather than imitating the style of Moore's 1985; and don't worry about trying to say anything about comic books per se, but do say something about power and fear.
(* I realize that "should this even exist" is a whole other can of worms. Moore is absolutely justified in resenting DC's behavior regarding the Watchmen rights among other things; any project like this is at least partly the fruit of a poison tree, although Dave Gibbons's involvement helps a bit. I'm going to just try to look at this as if I didn't know about any of that, for now.)
( Read more... )
First, I think this is really interesting so far. I don't know if what I think they're up to is what they are really up to, and it could still go bad in so many ways. But I do think that if it is a good idea to do any kind of Watchmen follow-up at all(*), then this is the right approach in general: set it in the present day; treat all of the outlandish events of the original series as history; try to create an alternate 2019 that has a similar relationship to our world as Alan Moore's 1985 did to our world then, rather than imitating the style of Moore's 1985; and don't worry about trying to say anything about comic books per se, but do say something about power and fear.
(* I realize that "should this even exist" is a whole other can of worms. Moore is absolutely justified in resenting DC's behavior regarding the Watchmen rights among other things; any project like this is at least partly the fruit of a poison tree, although Dave Gibbons's involvement helps a bit. I'm going to just try to look at this as if I didn't know about any of that, for now.)
( Read more... )
