BellaOnline Forums Career Fiction Writing Alan Moore

Just a sidenote about Alan Moore and V for Vendetta is that he has never been happy with ANY movies done of his work. And it's understandable given From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentleman. LXG failed to catch the magic of the series completely and came off as a typical action flick. I enjoyed it for what it was, but it was a poor adaptation of the comic. With that though, Moore is known for his massive ego and him not wanting his name on it should be taken with a grain of salt.

On the otherhand, it is hard to adapt his work to movie form as well. His stories are extremely character driven and use various forms of symbolism throughout them. These are lost on the silver screen. His most famous work, Watchmen, is in development hell right now, but I don't see how Hollywood will be able to make it into a movie that captures what the comic had. What some see as simply dangling plot points are conscious decisions on Moore's part to have the reader fill in the gaps or present as you said, a more realistic scenario. Life's problems aren't solved and wrapped up with a bow within 90mins.

Another reason that Moore didn't like the movie were some of the decisions such as the motion of the knives when they were thrown. When the graphic novel was done, the knives were purposefully drawn not to have circular motion to make it as realistic as possible. Then the Walchowskis tried to capture some of their Matrix magic and added the knife effects negating his decision on the original story.

All-in-all Moore is a fantastic writer but I think he did himself a disservice with V for Vendetta. It was a great movie and a fairly faithful adaptation given the differences in mediums.

That's exactly it - I think a lot of writers battle to understand that film and print are two completely different media. They work differently, they have different nuances, dynamics, and rules, and while there are some writers who are able to switch from one to the other, I would say most writers are better off specialising in one or the other.

However, it is well worth understanding both as art forms, and if a novelist is ever in the excellent position of seeing their work transformed into film, I think it makes it easier on everyone if they look at it as an entirely new item. "Interpretation" doesn't quite cover it - it's almost a case of all the elements of the story are dissolved and reformed by other people's brains. To me that's a very exciting concept. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Very true. And few comic writers can do. Mike Mignola can and did exactly that with Hellboy. He redid his story specifically for the silver screen. And Robert Rodriguez actually followed Frank Miller's vision for Sin City making it a faithful movie of the books. He even left SAG I believe it was because they said the film could not have two directors as I recall and he wanted Miller to be a part of it.

Moore has indicated that he doesn't want his work turned into movies. However he doesn't own the rights and fan clamor has lead the companies to do so. He has now withdrawn himself from any association with DC because of what he perceives to be mishandling of his work by them. It's alot easier to control the quality of your work onscreen when you own the rights.

I think the attraction of turning comic books into movies is that the storyboard is almost already there. And it's a visual medium too so it is probably a lot easier to visualise translated from one form to the other. Where some comic writers (and some screenwriters too) probably fall down is understanding the difference between dialogue that scans well on paper and dialogue that sounds natural spoken out loud. Good actors can bridge this gap for them, but often directors settle for an actor who can handle the action sequences and look good. Stilted dialogue is incidental.

Totally. With the lack of facial expressions and body motion in comics, the dialogue sometimes has to explain things more. This changes when turned into film.