Movie Insider Rates "Watchmen" Script
If you think "The Watchmen" movie adaptation is such a massively interesting, obsession-rife fixation that I would cover a story on what the musical composer for the movie thinks of the script, well, you are right. Although, to his credit, we aren't talking about just any composer here. We are talking about Tyler Bates, who composed the excellently scored "300" movie and now is back together with Zach Snyder scoring "The Watchmen."
We are also talking about someone who has definitely read the script and is giving it a thumbs up. Now, Bates admits he had never read "Watchmen" before being placed on the movie, but says that he read it after getting the job and from what he says it sounds like he "gets it." Here is Bates' take on the script in it's full glory:
"I thought it was really great. I love the characters and I love Rorschach (note: who doesn't?), and they just sent me the script a couple weeks ago and I read it and thought, "Wow, this is a fantastic adaptation of this book." I didn't know how they could possibly condense that book, but you know what, people thought that about "300" as well. There were people trying to make "300" and there were several versions floating around town and they couldn't make it," said Bates.
That's good enough for me to be very hopeful... not that someone who works on the movie gives it praise, but that he realized the problems of condensing the work and sees them as dealt with. We all know this is the single hardest (by a mile) work to adapt that is in the comic-book movie pipeline right now, but with each little release, my massive skepticism reduces bit by bit.
I don't know... 300 was 5 or 6 issues, and mostly huge spreads with little speaking. Watchmen is 12 issues with huge amounts of backstory that were told in prose format. They had to add stuff to the 300 movie to make it feature length, whereas Watchmen will require a ton on the chopping block.