The Dark Knight:

The Dark Knight's "third act" involves multiple tense hostage situations, and it's not just a huge concluding fight scene. [Comic Book Resources]

More Joker-isms from the film: "You can't let me go." "In their last moments, people show you who they really are." The Joker does a deadly and stomach-churning "pencil trick" when he introduces himself to a room full of Gotham mobsters. He induces city-wide evacuations and "social experiments" that involve driving citizens to kill each other. [New York Post]

Watchmen:

It's almost as if director Zack Snyder read our rant about how superhero odyssey Watchmen should be about the history of superhero movies the way the original graphic novel was about comics history. (Although I'm sure he didn't.) In an interview with Collider, he mentions that Ozymandias' costume has nipples on it like the Joel Schumacher Batsuit, and this is part of an effort to acknowledge "where comic book movies are right now," the same way the graphic novel did for comics. Color me intrigued, actually. [Collider via Comic Book Resources]

Star Wars:

In the eagerly awaited Star Wars video game The Force Unleashed, Darth Vader travels to the planet Kashyyyk to track down one of the last surviving Jedi (after Revenge Of The Sith.) That's when you have your first major "boss battle" in the game. And then Vader is about to strike the killing blow, and a small child disarms him using the Force. Vader sees potential in the kid, who becomes his Secret Apprentice, going on missions and hiding from the Imperials as well as the Rebels. In the course of the game, you'll see important events like the birth of the Rebellion. [Comic Book Resources again]

Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog:

Some more details about Joss Whedon's online serialized musical Dr. Horrible have emerged. Dr. Horrible's real name is Billy, and when we first see him he's practicing his evil laugh in hopes of being taken seriously by the Evil League Of Evil. And he reads snarky emails from his skeptical online following.

He sings, "The world's a mess and I just want to rule it." He works on a freeze ray that will stop time and "stop the pain," as he sings at one point. But really, Billy's heart belongs to Penny, a goody two-shoes whom he meets at the laundromat. But whenever he's around Penny, he's bashful and stammering — and of course she falls for his arch-nemesis Captain Hammer, who's a boorish cad who says things like, "I don't go to the gym. I just naturally look like this."

Buffy The Vampire Slayer producers Marti Noxon and David Fury, who had cameos in the Buffy musical episode, show up as snarky newscasters. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

Heroes:

Remember how we said Heroes' Ali Larter would be back, but not as Niki Sanders? Turns out her new personality is named Tracy Strauss. Meanwhile, psychic cop Matt will end up in the desert with a nameless horse and a tortoise. Matt's story is about to get super trippy. [E! Online]

Chuck:

The fifth episode of the new Chuck season starts with a flashback to 1983, and a much younger Jeff winning the Moto Industries Missile Command video game championship, sporting a mullet and mustache, with bikini-wearing babes on each arm. In the present day, a virus is sweeping through Moto Industries' computers. Chuck and Casey go undercover as Nerd Herders to find out what's going on, but in the end it's Sarah's blonde wiles that get the inside scoop. Turns out terrorists have hacked a dormant satellite and want to launch nuclear missiles, causing World War III. The key to stopping the satellite can only be found on the final level of Missile Command. Chuck must beat the game and save the world, but to do that he needs the music of a certain Canadian band. [Chuck TV]

The Middleman:

Spoilers for the awesome new superhero show The Middleman: The Middleman and Wendy's roommate Lacey go on a date in episode seven, and he sneaks milk into the restaurant in a flask. In another episode, someone climbs into the Middle Mobile and presses "autopilot." The possible destinations are the creamery, the duck pond and church. Upcoming villains include a haunted tuba, a boy band that's actually five banished intergalactic dictators, a vampire ventriloquist dummy and a haunted sorority where the Middleman gets possessed by one of the girls. [NY Post]

Stargate: Atlantis:

The 15th episode of the new season of Stargate: Atlantis is called "Remnants," and some alleged details have leaked out: Sheppard finds himself tied up in the middle of the forest, while Woolsey struggles to flirt with a newly arrived attractive female colleague named Vanessa Conrad. Sheppard gets free, but his gun and radio are gone, and he's got unpleasant company, in the form of Mr. Koyla, nearby, who's eager to torment him. Meanwhile, Woolsey can't find any trace of Vanessa, the woman he was crushed out on, and he begins to doubt his own sanity.

It turns out Vanessa Conrad is just a manifestation of Woolsey's romantic and sexual ideals, from an alien "seed carrier" that a civilization that was on the verge of extinction sent out across the galaxy thousands of years ago, to start over. The "seed carrier" lay dormant at the bottom of the ocean for centuries, until Sheppard's jumper woke it up. The vision of Koyla was meant to distract Sheppard, since as a military man he might use force against the seed-carrier's vessel — but any torment Sheppard experienced was of his own making. (Sort of, it's confusing.) Meanwhile, the seed-carrier connected with Woolsey, to study him and maybe enlist his aid. In the end, our heroes have to make a tough decision of some kind. [Notes... Written On Water]

This really hit me while I was watching an interview with Watchmen director Zack Snyder the other day, and he was talking about trying to do justice to the graphic novel. Judging from his Spartan war movie 300 and the early Watchmen images, Snyder's a graphic-novel fetishist who will do everything in his power to do a perfect "cover version" of Moore and Gibbons' comic. And I don't really doubt that we'll end up with a note-for-note mimicking of the graphic novel, transplanted to the screen. But will it be worth watching?

Here are some reasons I don't think Watchmen will be that great of a movie:

It's about the history of comics. Originally, Moore was writing a comics series about the old Charlton comics heroes, like The Question, the Atom, Blue Beetle, and so on. At the time, DC had just acquired these properties, and Moore was going to have free reign to fuck them up. But then someone at DC decided to play it safe, and Moore had to come up with all new characters: Nite Owl instead of Blue Beetle, Rohrschach instead of the Question, Dr. Manhattan instead of Captain Atom. In the process of developing all these new characters, Moore came up with a whole detailed history of their Minutemen superteam, including a ton of backup documentation, including Hollis Mason's book Under The Hood. The result is like a history of superhero comics, going back to the Golden Age and showing how the superhero in comics had matured and darkened. It influenced the generation of superhero comics that followed.

Why couldn't we have had a Watchmen movie that commented on the history of superhero movies in the same way that the graphic novel commented on comics history? With sly references to the 1966 Batman movie and Tim Burton's 1989 version, and the weird history of Supergirl/Elektra girl spinoff movies? And the Corman Fantastic Four versus the superslick recent ones? Wouldn't that have been more interesting than a slavish Alan Moore tribute?

It's about experimenting with the comics format. Moore, of course, doesn't want there to be a Watchmen movie because of his struggles with Hollywood in general. But he also makes an important point, in an interview:

The problem with taking Watchmen to another medium is that we deliberately set out to establish—hard—some territory for comics. We tried to exploit the things in comics that cannot be done in any other medium... In a perfect world I’d rather see it as a comic. This insistence that if something is a success in one medium then it can automatically be translated to another and still be a success…

The most famous format experiment in Watchmen, of course, is the Black Freighter comic that we see a kid reading. It's a weirdly meta moment: not just a comic within a comic, but also a comic portraying the experience of reading a comic book and being caught up in it. The Black Freighter won't be in the theatrical release of Watchmen at all, of course — it'll be a separate animated DVD, and included in a DVD version at some point. But either way, it won't represent the same kind of experiment with the comics format that the graphic novel was.



Also, Moore explained in another interview:

What I’d like to explore is the areas that comics succeed in where no other media is capable of operating. Like in Watchmen, all that subliminal shit we were getting into the backgrounds. You are trapped in the running time of a film – you go in, you sit down, they’ve got two hours and you’re dragged through at their pace. With a comic you can stare at the page for as long as you want and check back to see if this line of dialogue really does echo something four pages earlier, whether this picture is really the same as that one, and wonder if there is some connection there... Watchmen was designed to be read four or five times.

According to Moore, Terry Gilliam was looking at directing Watchmen, but he got stymied thinking about all the texture and narrative complexity he was going to have to cut out to make it work. Gilliam ended up coming around to Moore's point of view.

Watchmen is of its time. Just look at this set photo from Snyder's movie. It's trying very, very hard to look like New York, circa 1985 — and it's mostly succeeding, way more than the American version of Life On Mars manages to capture 1972 Los Angeles. But it's also missing the point: Watchmen is supposed to take place in the present day, an alternate present where Richard Nixon is still president, superheroes are real, and the Cold War is even more fucked up than it really was. The storyline loses a lot of its impact if you put it 24 years into the past, no matter how lovingly you construct that past. And it's going to take a lot more than gorgeous sets and obsessive attention to detail to conjure the long-gone Cold War mindset for moviegoers, many of whom were in diapers when the Berlin Wall fell.

Without being too spoilery for an old comic book, the story's climax depends heavily on understanding Reagan-era concepts like Mutually Assured Destruction and the winnable nuclear war. Even people who were grown-ups back then can barely wrap their minds around those things now.

The movie will pander to fans. That's the thing that will probably doom Watchmen, actually — it's aimed at the ultra-obsessive fans of the graphic novel. Not just the people who read it and enjoyed it once or twice — the people whose original copies are dog-eared and sweat-stained, and who then went out and bought the Absolute edition for $100. Not just because of the obsessive copying of every facet of Moore and Gibbons' accomplishment — even down to using newsreels to copy the text portions of the story — but also because of the story's insularity, and the way it comments on superhero narratives. Snyder's 300 worked because it was a fairly simple story that really was from history, as opposed to Watchmen's byzantine wheels-within-wheels story.

In short: the Watchmen movie won't be able to duplicate the things that were awesome and juicy about the original graphic novel. And in its attempt to grasp at something that can't be captured, it may wind up being kind of boring.

Additional research by Lauren Davis.

A couple of months ago, Watchmen director Zach Snyder invited fans of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' graphic novel to create fake advertisements for products created by Adrian Veidt's corporation that would then be played in the background of various scenes of the actual movie. The fans, of course, delivered, and the fruits of their labors are now available for us all to see on the Watchmen YouTube channel.

Five videos were selected by YouTube viewers as worthy of receiving High-Definition Canon Vixia HG10 camcorders, while a further ten were hand-picked by Snyder himself as being worthy of appearing behind Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Billy Crudup as they wrestle with Alan Moore's dialogue. Here are some of the best:



Veidt Enterprises Advertising Contest [YouTube]

Incredible Hulk:

You know how the Hulk talks in the new movie? And says "Hulk Smash!" Well, here's a TV spot where they show it. There, that's your last reason to see the movie gone. [Cinema Gaslight]

(BTW, I saw Hulk, and there was no Captain America cameo that I noticed. I even sat all the way through the endless credits, and no easter egg — other than the Tony Stark cameo before the credits. But maybe there will be a post-credits easter egg in the non-preview versions, as there was for Iron Man?)

Transformers 2:

More details about the filming of the air-and-space museum scenes of Transformers 2, where Shia and friends are searching for a hidden Transformer. Shia dresses in an old-timey aviator outfit, with white scarf and goggles (maybe to blend in with the mannequins?) and tasers a security guard. And at one point John Turturro points at the Blackbird SR-71 (which plays a huge role in the movie apparently) and yells "Decepticon! Get behind the MIG!" [Superhero Hype]

Hancock:

Here's a featurette about the making of Hancock that includes some new footage, including Hancock taking a whiskey bottle into the bathroom. Plus it puts the footage you've already seen in a bit more context. (It's from a Korean site, hence the subtitles.) [Naver via Comic Book Resources]

Watchmen:

The scene from the dystopian Alan Moore graphic novel Watchmen where the young Kovacs (Rorschach) walks in on his sex-worker mother with a client will appear in the movie. And in fact, director Zack Snyder's own son plays young Kovacs in that scene, where he sees his mother in bed with a strange man, who then flees. And the mother belts the child in the face for losing her business. The scene will be a bit shorter than in the movie and may appear during flashbacks when Kovacs is talking to his psychiatrist. [ComicRelated]

Lost:

Apparently ABC has been asking focus groups how they feel about Michael's death on Lost, and whether they'd want Michael to come back from the dead. So maybe his death isn't final after all? Also, it's possible Walt, and Sun and Jin's child, also have to go back to the island along with all the adults. [E! Online]

Heroes:

In the first few minutes of Heroes season three, Claire shoots at her uncle Peter. And we see Claire with dark hair, due to a "shift in time." (It sounds as though this will be a future version of Claire.) [E! Online again]

Chuck:

On Chuck, Morgan saves Anna from some video-game jocks who are being mean to her. (Probably the same jocks who are taking over the home theater dept. at Buy More for their own personal frat house.) [E! Online again]

Also, Chuck dies this season... twice! And they've cast the role of the debonair ex-spy who teaches Chuck to be more of a ladies man, and it's not Roger Moore. It's... John Larroquette??. (Okay, that's different.) Also, as we may have mentioned, Arrested Development's Tony Hale plays a "corporate efficiency expert" who comes in to shake up the Buy More. And Michael Clarke Duncan plays a great villain. [Chuck TV]

Doctor Who:

Supposedly this is the first picture of Davros, the evil creator of the cyborg Daleks, from the tail end of the current Doctor Who season. Real or fake? You decide. (I'm thinking it looks a bit too cheesy to be real, but you never know, and people are posting it all over.) [Pop Culture Zoo]

The Middleman:

Here's the official synopsis for the second episode of superhero show The Middleman:

When a Terra Cotta Warrior is brought back to life, The Middleman and Wendy set out to stop him before he can take the last living heir of the Qin dynasty to the land of the dead, releasing a hail of fire that will rain down on the Earth for a thousand years. With some help from fashionista and reformed succubus, Roxy Wasserman, the two must make a daring trip to the underworld to get the deed done. But will Wendy be able to focus on their latest mission, or will the fallout of her argument with Lacey get in the way?

Still stinging from Wendy's harsh criticisms, Lacey lands herself a job as Roxy's assistant, which tests her activist spirit.

[Spoiler TV]

There's more of this making-of video at the link. [CHUD]

Black Freighter is an interweaving comic-within-a-comic story. It's actually the comic book read by the kid sitting outside the newsstand in the Watchmen books. The kid becomes the narrator while reading his comic. The actual Black Freighter tells the story of a castaway who is desperately trying to get home to warn family and friends about the arrival of the Black Freighter, a ship of ghosts.

"I thought the 'Black Freighter' story would never see the light of day," Snyder told the New York Times. "The main picture is nearing three hours long and I know I have a fight on my hands just with that."

The new movie was originally going to be shot in Snyder's familiar 300 style, but when the budget went past 20 million the studio changed it to straight animation. Still, this stunt by Warner won't be cheap. Retaining Snyder and some of the members from the Watchmen cast (if they reappear) has got to be pricey. And Warner's revealed they would be spending 30 to 50 percent more on the DVDs than in a typical direct-DVD project.

And if your Watchmen saturation level still hasn't been reached, the studio plans to release an additional 12 webisodes each about 22 to 26 minutes in length titled, The Watchmen Motion Comic. The web shorts will be a slide show of comic panels with a narrator. Snyder is also overseeing this project, which he should have an eye for after his meticulous comic-panel set design that's been showcased in recent set photos.

Although I'm incredibly excited to see Snyder piece together the entire Watchmen story (and be given the creative space to do so) I'm not so sure about the whole DVD affair. Blu-ray is neat but with the creation of the new Netflix set-top box, DVDs appear to be going to the way of the Dodo. [New York Times]

The movie's extra, writing for Comic Related, has also provided a virtual "tour" of the movie's sets. We've already seen pictures of the Watchmen sets and a video of their building, but the extra took a ton of pictures of the whole block of buildings that were built for exterior shots. You can see quite how run-down and destroyed these buildings look, which adds to the sense of a dystopian New York. There's even a complete map of the sets that were built. I've labeled all the pics, to make it easier to figure out what is what:
These are just a few of the set pics. To view all of the pics, go here and here.

And our intrepid extra also spilled some plot details.

• The supplemental material at the ends of each chapter in the comic will be reproduced as newsreels, either in the opening credits or interspersed throughout the film.
• The scene between Nixon and Kissinger, discussing Dr. Manhattan leaving Earth and the tensions with Russia, has been reproduced using prosthetics to make the actors resemble the real-life figures. They hear about a potential doomsday scenario for the East Coast of the U.S., and Nixon cackles, "Let's see those bastards at Harvard figure a way out of that one." There may actually be a limited nuclear strike.
• We'll see Rorschach's tragic childhood in detail, and Zack Snyder's son plays the young Kovacs. We see the whoring mother, the bullies and the eventual employment in the garment industry where Rorschach finds his mask. We also see Rorschach use his "interrogation methods" in a bar, resulting in broken fingers. And Snyder has "upped the ante" for Rorschach's confrontation with Big Figure (Danny Woodburn): as in the comic, Rorschach binds Big Figure's henchman's arms in the cell door — but in the movie, Figure's other flunky cuts the guy's arms off with a circular saw. Rorschach makes his escape the same way as in the comic, and Big Figure dies off-camera in the restroom.
• Veidt's domed Antarctic retreat appears in the movie, but there's no greenhouse, and he doesn't murder his three accomplices. Nite Owl and Rorschach have to walk to Veidt's retreat from Owl's ship, instead of using hoverbikes. Dr. Manhattan will crash through the ceiling of the retreat, and he'll be 100 feet tall. Veidt catches the bullet Laurie shoots, but doesn't break Nite Owl's nose with a plate. Veidt fights Nite Owl, Rorschach and Laurie at the same time. And Rorschach meets his "explosive demise" at the hands of Dr. Manhattan. (Update: Not Veidt as we erroneously reported before.)
• And finally, the biggest spoiler: "The squid is in." The climax of the graphic novel, where Veidt unleashes his "hideous brainchild" on New York, has been filmed.

Looks like were going to get a glimpse into the past of some of the costumed adventurers (at least a look at some of Doctor Manhattan's mistakes). Wilkinson shows us a V-Day scene, the JFK assassination, anti-war protests, and crazy Nazi uniforms. [Watchmen]

Last year, dystopian future movie Babylon A.D. held a contest on MySpace to generate user video to appear on video screens in the background of some of the film's scenes:

[Director] Mathieu [Kassovitz]'s goal is to enhance the authenticity of this film by adding futuristic and innovative ads and fake news footage. We will integrate them, throughout the film on various screens : futuristic TVs, personal tablets, vehicles and especially on a huge scale, on the sides of New York buildings. That is why he thought he should launch this contest to give a chance to anyone who wishes to show their vision of the future.

Talking about how the movie's Times Square set is "kind of realistic but with our own Watchmen overtones," production designer Alex McDowell spends four minutes comparing movie sets to panels from Dave Gibbons' artwork from the series, and earnestly telling you how seriously he's taking his job:

It's really important for us to establish a world that is real to an audience, but absolutely remains faithful to the vision of the graphic novel.

The First Watchmen Video Journal! [ComingSoon.net]

Really, it's impossible to recapture the era when something originated completely. The past is a foreign country, and all that. And the older the work in question, the more stuff there's likely to be that a 21st century audience would find bizarre or offensive. The best you can hope for is a kind of retro-futurist look back at the golden age.

(I was inspired to think about this by yesterday's discussion of the rumored John Carter movie, and how many people were violently opposed to a WotW-style update.)

How likely is it that film-makers will be able to reconstruct the look of a bygone era and make us understand the real-world issues that the old stories were dealing with metaphorically? (Even Watchmen, which only takes place 23 years ago, is going to have a hard time hauling our asses back into a Cold War mindset.)

And there's another dimension to the issue of filming Golden Age science fiction: stories set in the future, like the Lensmen saga or The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, both in development right now. Should movies of those books try to recapture a 1930s or 1960s vision of the future? How far should film-makers go in trying to pay a retro-futurist tribute to these classic works, maybe in a sort of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow style?

Instead of doing a poll, I'm just throwing the question out there. On one level, it's just a yes-or-no question: should film-makers try to be faithful to the eras when classic SF texts were written? On another level, it's a much more complex issue. What do you think?

I only have one nitpick about these gorgeous images, and that's that Nite Owl looks way more like Batman than Blue Beetle, the old-school superhero which Moore and Gibbons actually based him on. But having a Batman-esque figure in the film is probably a good thing for its marketability... even if he turns out to be as much of a schlub as his counterpart in the graphic novel. [Watchmen blog, thanks Abraham and Jamais!]

According to Butler, "It's this descent into madness but explained in such a sane way that you totally feel it yourself." Which doesn't make much sense now, but we'll go along with it. If all future comic book related DVDs received this much attention to detail, it might create a new market and medium for comic books. Just imagine X-Men: Days of Future Past, The DVD. Unfortunatelty, it also means you'll have to double dip at the theater and later on DVD if you want the full experience. [Empire Online]

Here's how director Zach Snyder describes the political backdrop in his movie of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen:

I do believe the cold war stakes are pivotal to the film's success because in order to believe Adrian's storyline, you have to believe that he believes that the threat of nuclear war is not only real, but also imminent. We've put a lot of effort into trying to infuse the story with that notion — using every appropriate opportunity to reinforce the Soviet presence and the looming threat of a nuclear war on a global scale.

More spoilers:

On Torchwood, you know how Owen dies, and then comes back from the dead as the Weevil King? (And we all stop watching Torchwood forever?) Apparently he does eventually go back to being human. And here are pics to prove it. Is Owen holding a gun at Gwen's wedding in that second pic? [Doctor Who Mania]

The documentary is produced by Shadowsnake Films, and can be purchased in a much cleaner looking DVD edition with 5.1 surround sound here. We're not saying it'll help you understand how Moore's brain works, but it's definitely fascinating and well worth watching.

Free Online Alan Moore Documentary [Comic Mix]

SpoilersLost has posted more incredibly detailed Lost spoilers, for tonight's episode and next week's episode.

In tonight's Lost, Hurley decides to go with Locke instead of Jack when everybody splits up. But future Hurley, in his mental institution, says going with Locke was a mistake and led to all his future crazitude. Future Hurley is seeing the ghost of Charlie and wants to go back to the island, but future Jack (who doesn't have his beard yet) says they're never going back.

And then next week, we meet one of the freighter people, Myles, who can talk to the dead and ask them where their drug stashes are hidden (really.) And someone has gone to elaborate lengths to fake the recovery of Oceanic Flight 815 — but the news reports mess up and show a picture of the pilot who was supposed to be on the plane, not the pilot who actually replaced him at the last minute.

Locke and his crew have custody of Ben, who's trying his usual mind games. And one of the freighter people, a blonde woman named Charlotte, parachutes in front of Locke's crew. Meanwhile, Jack's crew ends up with Myles and another freighter person, Daniel, who are suspicious about Naomi's death. A fourth freighter person, Frank, gets hurt when his chopper crashes and lights a flare. We see a flashback to Naomi talking to her boss about how unsuited Myles, Daniel, Frank and Charlotte are for this mission.

It turns out the freighter crew's mission on the island is to capture or kill Ben, who has a spy on the freighter. [SpoilersLost]

More spoilers:

• In the live-action Dragonball movie, James Marsters plays Lord Piccolo. Here's how he describes the character: "He's thousands of years old and a very long time ago he used to be a force of good but got into a bad argument and was put into prison for 2,000 years. It got him very angry, and he finds a way to escape and then tries to destroy the world. The cool thing is, anybody who has seen Dragonball knows that Lord Piccolo transforms into a character named Piccolo, and that is a whole other ball of wax. That is one of the most popular characters in the whole series. I've been told I'm working for people who will just flay me alive if I give too much information, but what I can tell you is the character is green, bald and has pointed ears. Heroic wouldn't be the wrong term by the end, but it's a long journey." [TVGuide]
• The Watchmen movie includes the rape scene from the comic, Sally Jupiter actress Carla Gugino says. It'll also have fancy opening credits that show off the whole history of the Watchmen. [MTV Movies]
• And here are a bunch of new pics from Stephen Chow's CJ7. The coolest of these are ones we've already seen before, but they're better quality. And apparently there's a tranny with a heart of gold. [IGN]

Explaining the importance of storyboards to his process, Snyder wrote:

Storyboards play a vital part in my process long before I start sharing them with my team. I've always storyboarded my commercials and movies. It is a key part of my process for envisioning the entire film from beginning to end. In addition to using that drawing time to figure out blocking and action, it is also when I can begin to get a sense of whether the dialog and pacing are working. As you can see from these frames, my storyboards aren't necessarily super-finished art pieces on their own. I often find that the frames that get the most detail are the ones where I'm stalling - thinking of the next shots. In contrast, if I already have a sequence sorted out in my head, the boards tend to be much sketchier.

Storyboards [Watchmen blog]

Note: hit the links to read these suckers for yourselves. The Alex Tse draft was out there at one point (we saved an older copy), so you might be able to find it by sifting the web. Or you could just put David Hayter's draft in a tumbler and give it a couple of shakes, it's roughly the same experience.

Sam Hamm, 1989: Hamm is probably best-known for writing Batman, also in 1989, so it's probably no small wonder that studios suits thought he'd be perfect to adapt Watchmen for Joel Silver at Fox. However, the resulting script is pretty much utter trash.

• 
  
• In the opening scene, the Watchmen try to foil a terrorist scheme in the Statue of Liberty, although it results in the death of their teammate Captain Metropolis, and Lady Liberty gets blown up. Cue the government's war on "masks" and superheroes.
• 
  
• The opening credits are described as dozens of watches floating around the screen. Lame.
• 
  
• Adrian Veidt has developed smokeless cigarettes that are supposedly non-cancerous, while "cleaning your lungs at the same time." A far cry from the glass pipes in the original, plus it turns out Veidt was actually giving them cancer. Evil.
• 
  
• Veidt has also created "Nostalgia," which isn't a perfume like in the comics, but rather an "anti-aging" Dick Clark-esque skin cream.
• 
  
• The whole premise is built on the fact that the creation of Dr. Manhattan changed the world forever, so Veidt spends his time and millions trying to create a wormhole in time and space so he can kill Jon Osterman before he becomes the good doc. Dr. Manhattan stops him, but realizes he was right and goes back in time to prevent himself from existing, thereby changing the future.
• 
  
• This "new world" (actually, our own present-day New York City) shimmers into existence around Dan (Night Owl), Laurie (Silk Spectre), and Rorschach, leaving them confused and wondering what happened. Fin.
• 
  
• Lamest moment: EXT. SEAPORT - THAT MOMENT - DUSK
  Ground level. From the midst of the bewildered CROWD we watch as the OWLSHIP and the CTU talk some serious trash:

  NIGHT OWL OVER OWLSHIP LOUDSPEAKER— "or we'll BLOW YOUR ASSES OUT OF THE SKY!"

  CTU LOUDSPEAKER — "UNREGISTERED CRAFT. IDENTIFY YOURSELF."

  OWLSHIP LOUDSPEAKER — "BABY . . . WE'RE A BLAST FROM THE PAST."

• David Hayter, 2003: Hayter was tapped to write the script once the project ended up at Paramount in turnaround from Fox. Hayter, who also wrote X-Men and X-Men 2 (and plays the voice of Snake in the Metal Gear Solid video games) stayed much closer to the source material than Hamm did, but he took some liberties as well.

• Dr. Manhattan is much more godlike in this script, creating a "magic mirror" for Laurie that can allow her to see any point in her past. This only seems to serve as a plot device so that we can see her fighting with The Comedian in the past.
• 
  
• Dr. M also uses his abilities to give Laurie one of the lamest superpowers since Jubilee: she can now shoot a blue ball of energy from her fingers, slingshot-style.
• 
  
• She uses this power to try and stop Adrian, but he catches the ball and pummels her. Not quite as dramatic as catching a bullet, is it?
• 
  
• Instead of a vat-grown alien-tentacled telepath, Veidt fires a concentrated beam of radiation at orbital mirrors which reflect into New York City, killing 20 million people.
• 
  
• Night Owl and Veidt square off in the end, and although Veidt beats the crap out of him, Night Owl still wins by tricking Veidt with an Owl-o-rang and killing him. Yes, really.
• 
  
• Lamest moment: ADRIAN — "Why an Owl? I mean, assuming your intention is to intimidate the criminal element... What's so frightening about an owl?"

  DAN — "I don't know, really. I guess it's because... No matter how hard you listen, you never hear them coming."

  Dan DUCKS. Having circled the room, the OWL-WING ZOOMS OUT OF THE DARKNESS, OWL-FACE SCREECHING INTO FRAME —

  — And STRIKES ADIAN THE IN THE CHEST, KNOCK HIM OFF HIS FEET. Adrian SLAMS to the ground, THE BOOMERANG'S LEFT WIND IMBEDDED IN HIS SOLAR PLEXUS. He wheezes blood.

• Alex Tse, 2006: Novice writer Tse was hired to come in and work on David Hayter's draft, which remains mostly intact. He changes a few things, but it still seems like it's mostly Hayter's script.

• Dr. Manhattan is seen as the "peacekeeper of the world," keeping all of the world's government in check, for better or for worse.
• 
  
• Rorschach busts in on an army officer with a hooker, beats the crap out of him (and her) and takes his uniform. Later, he disguises himself as the officer, so he can enter Dr. Manhattan's army lab and tell him about The Comedian's death.
• 
  
• Veidt impersonates Dr. Manhattan, and fires beams of concentrated... er, "big blue energy clouds" into key cities around the globe, killing three million people.
• 
  
• Dan and Veidt square off again, but this time Dan crashes the Owl-Ship via remote control into Veidt, wounding him badly. You think he might survive, but as Laurie flies the ship out, she sets his body on fire. Whoops.
• 
  
• Lamest moment: ADRIAN — "I have to say, I've always thought your choice of an owl was quite juvenile."

  DAN — "Really? I've always liked owls..."

  Adrian sees that Dan has pulled one last item from his belt. Adrian STEPS on Dan's WRIST, bones crunching. Dan's hand falls OPEN, revealing the OWL-SHIP REMOTE.

  DAN (cont'd) — "... because you can never hear them coming."

  BEHIND ADRIAN: FLOODLIGHTS BLAZE, targeting Adrian as the OWL-SHIP CRASHES THROUGH THE WINDOW and into Adrian and Dan.

• 
  

At any rate, we'll be watching these Watchmen.

Our heroes on Lost break up into two opposing teams at the start of season four, led by Locke and Jack. Sawyer joins Team Locke, but reading between the lines, it sounds as though Kate joins Jack's squad, but Jin and Sun stay neutral. Meanwhile, Ben stays a step ahead of everybody else, including the crew of an incoming vessel. And the show is casting a group of "fluent Franco-Tunisian actors" for episode eight or nine.

Here are some pics from Lost season four, which don't seem to reveal much. And don't forget, season four will feature "flash forwards" instead of flashbacks. [E! Online]

Meanwhile, ABC is having a dispute with its affiliates over whether to air Lost at 9 (a better ratings slot) or 10 (when it can help local news broadcasts). And the show's producers want ABC to hold off on airing it at all, since they weren't able to finish the season. Apparently, the last script they have ends with a cliffhanger that would be fine for one week, but would drive the fans crazy if it lasted months. [SyFy Portal]

Nicholas Cage will star in the spooky-ass Knowing, about a teacher who unearths a prophetic time capsule at his son's elementary school. The capsule, buried long ago, predicts events that have already happened. And it says the world will end that week, and Cage and his son are somehow involved. Alex Proyas (i robot) will direct. In other words: save the kindergarten, save the world. [Variety]

The live-action Jetsons movie will be (maybe excessively) true to the TV show, with lots of cute little plots like George Jetson inventing a dog-walking helmet and Elroy getting space-bullied at school. And lots and lots of in-jokes involving futuristic micro-ipods and MySpace in virtual reality. The Jetsons is still stuck in development, with no director or stars yet. [IESB]

Finally, Batman seems to be overcompensating for his new brassiere by zooming around on a really small motorcycle. [Slashfilm]

Jeffrey Dean Morgan photo by INF/Goff.

Don't get me wrong; there are a lot of things to enjoy about the 208-page secret history of Moore and artist Kevin O'Neill's super-team of fictional (and, more importantly, copyright-free) icons. But almost all of those things are to do with how impressive the pastiche-recreations of past comics, novels and illustrated-fiction pulp are ("Why, this On The Road parody is almost as unreadable as the real thing!"), or the technical novelty of a book made up of so many different forms and formats of storytelling (including, but not limited to, a Tijuana Bible written in the Newspeak language of Orwell's 1984 and 3D section, as well as maps, diagrams and recreations of the 1950s British comics that Moore was raised on) as opposed to the story such devices are in service of. Reading the book, one is distracted by, dazzled by, and ultimately pummeled over the head into submission by, the gimmickry of the book as it attempts to disguise the fact that there's very little of actual substance in the whole thing; characters are cyphers beyond whatever their historical importance may be, and plot development has been replaced by in-jokes and yet another damn reference to a book that you've heard good things about but have no desire to actually read any time soon.

The plot of the book, such as it is, centers around League members Alan Quartermain and Mina Harkness stealing the British government's files on the League and then escaping to their multi-dimensional headquarters, with that (remarkably easy) escape being broken up by portions of the files themselves. As is becoming Moore's way in the wake of his self-consciously "controversial" self-styled porn book Lost Girls, there's also some poorly written sex and embarrassing innuendo to attempt to spice things up, but like Lost Girls, it's the kind of sex-writing that makes you wonder if Moore has ever actually had sex, it's so unreal and awkward. While O'Neill's art is impressive throughout - as is the book's design and presentation, with different sections being presented on different paper stock making the patchwork nature more convincing - the lack of heart or emotional center renders everything else fairly moot. It's as if Moore was, in the end, much more interested in the source material he was ripping off instead of writing something that was of any interest on its own. In the end, The Black Dossier is a failure, but a well-executed one; a book that's easy to admire, but impossible to love.

In the 12-issue series, occasional panels are devoted to a young boy sitting next to a newstand, reading a comic book about pirates called "Tales of the Black Freighter." Over the course of the series, it becomes clear that the book is meant to serve as a metaphor for the events occurring in the main Watchmen storyline, but it's also beautifully written as a standalone story that holds its own, even after repeated readings.

Director Zack Snyder told audiences at this year's Comic-Con International that he'd be including that story in the feature film. However, Warners has threatened to make it the first thing on the chopping block in the vein of keeping the film short. Although after they'd seen what he'd already filmed, he was given the go-ahead to film it as a special feature for the DVD.

Now it looks like Snyder will be doing it as an animated film, and the studio will be sending it out to store shelves just as Watchmen starts hitting the big screen. How will Snyder be able to keep his focus on making a good movie while working on this direct-to-DVD project? We're already concerned that Watchmen is getting short shrift because of Snyder's high on visuals, low on writing style (see his 300 as evidence of this).

Plus you'll have to buy a movie ticket and a DVD to get the whole story. Darn double-dipping. Still, we're gonna do it.

The Watchmen Universe Expands [CHUD]

Famous names: Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons

Crunchy goodness: 5

Spinoffs/Sequels/Copycats: A Watchmen movie has been in development forever, but recently seems to have been picking up momentum, with Zach (The 300) Snyder directing and Billy Crudup playing the all-powerful Dr. Manhattan. It's set to bow in March 2009.

Backstory: Moore was supposed to have a free hand to tell a story about a set of characters published by Charlton Comics, which DC Comics had just bought. They included Blue Beetle, the Question, Captain Atom and Nightshade. At the last moment, the suits changed their minds, and Moore had to create a whole new set of characters.

Design breakthrough: The interlocking narratives, including excerpts from books the characters have written, and a horrific pirate story, form a much more complex piece of storytelling than any superhero comic before or since.

Fighting Evil, Quoting Nietzsche by Tom Shone