Alan Moore criticises HBO adaptation of ‘Watchmen’ as “embarrassing”
The creator of Watchmen, Alan Moore, has shared his thoughts on HBO’s 2019 adaptation of his vital graphic novel, admitting that it’s “embarrassing” being associated with the show.
In a new interview with GQ, Moore revealed that before the show went into production, the showrunner, Damon Lindelof, openly admitted to “destroying” his source material to create a product he could bring to television.
The Northampton writer said: “[I received] a frank letter from the showrunner of the Watchmen television adaptation, which I hadn’t heard was a thing at that point. But the letter, I think it opened with, ‘Dear Mr. Moore, I am one of the bastards currently destroying Watchmen.’ That wasn’t the best opener.”
“[The letter] went on through a lot of, what seemed to me to be, neurotic rambling, ‘Can you at least tell us how to pronounce ‘Ozymandias’?'” He continued. “I got back with a very abrupt and probably hostile reply telling him that I’d thought that Warner Brothers were aware that they, nor any of their employees, shouldn’t contact me again for any reason.”
“I explained that I had disowned the work in question, and partly that was because the film industry and the comics industry seemed to have created things that had nothing to do with my work, but which would be associated with it in the public mind.”
He expressed: “I said, ‘Look, this is embarrassing to me. I don’t want anything to do with you or your show. Please don’t bother me again.'”
The mind behind Watchmen and V for Vendetta then explained that he”would be the last person to want to sit through any adaptations of my work. From what I’ve heard of them, it would be enormously punishing. It would be torturous, and for no very good reason.”
The show was highly successful and took home 11 Emmy Awards, which included accolades for Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Regina King. However, this made Moore worried that the show had altered how people saw Watchmen, and that they now misunderstood its message.
“When I saw the television industry awards that the Watchmen television show had apparently won, I thought, ‘Oh, god, perhaps a large part of the public, this is what they think Watchmen was?'” he explained.
“They think that it was a dark, gritty, dystopian superhero franchise that was something to do with white supremacism. Did they not understand Watchmen? Watchmen was nearly 40 years ago and was relatively simple in comparison with a lot of my later work.”
He counted: “What are the chances that they broadly understood anything since? This tends to make me feel less than fond of those works. They mean a bit less in my heart.”
Moore then maintained that Watchmen is a “critique of the superhero genre,” just like his 1980s revival of Marvelman.
“They were trying to show that any attempt to realise these figures in any kind of realistic context will always be grotesque and nightmarish. But that doesn’t seem to be the message that people took from this,” he finished. “They seemed to think, uh, yeah, dark, depressing superheroes are, like, cool.”
Never Miss A Scene
The Far Out Film Newsletter
All the latest film news from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.