His confusion clears when he returns to Earth and confronts Ozymandias, which leads to Hamm's largest alteration to the original story: Ozymandias no longer unites the world against a feigned alien attack. Instead of Spectre learning the truth about her parentage on Mars, she's instead cured of cancer by an increasingly befuddled Doctor Manhattan. There's also no talk of the original Nite Owl and Silk Spectre, or any of the backstory relating to the 1940s heroes.Īnother deviation has Ozymandias as more baldly evil - so evil, he gave his former teammate Silk Spectre cancer as a part of his scheme to drive Doctor Manhattan from Earth. ![]() ![]() We also have imprisoned crime boss Big Figure renamed as "Little Bigger" Nite Owl and Silk Spectre leaving retirement to stop police violence against protestors instead of rescuing civilians trapped in a tenement fire aging villain Moloch given a girlfriend and a cocaine habit and, in his retelling of the gruesome child-abduction case, Rorschach's actions are even more gratuitous.Īlso missing from the script is the narrative technique of Rorschach's journal, Nite Owl's secret lair, the parallel images and dialogue that transition one scene to the next, and all of the Comedian flashbacks. Hamm introduced the Civil Terrorism Unit as Comedian's new employers and the government's shadowy replacement for the Watchmen they're cartoonishly nasty and add nothing to the story. Other deviations come across as arbitrary, however. Also, Ozymandias has invented a cigarette that actually cleans the lungs, and Nostalgia is no longer a perfume but an anti-aging cream that truly works, as Silk Spectre attests. Some of Hamm's alterations make perfect sense: He combined many of the early conversation scenes so that the exposition moves along quickly, and demonstrated how different from our world the Watchmen reality is, establishing that the fashions are "off" here (police drive "bubble cars," and crystals have taken the place of LP records). It reads as if Hamm had a list of points he knew he had to hit, yet wanted to offer his unique take on each scene. Despite the familiar plot, little dialogue is borrowed from the Watchmen comics, and virtually every scene plays out at least a little differently. Throughout everything, a newsstand vendor offers his commentary while an indifferent kid peruses his comic books. In the midst of that, beloved mogul Ozymandias attempts to assuage his old friends' fears, while secretly planning the conspiracy that's disrupted their lives. Hamm acknowledged that, given how much "work, intelligence, and emotion" Moore put into Watchmen, "it would be difficult to read somebody else's watering down of it." Hamm described Moore as being "very complimentary" about his draft, although he confessed that as a "natural gentleman" Moore likely would keep any reservations to himself. ![]() Fans assumed Hamm would tackle the very adult themes of Watchmen with the same seriousness and fidelity to the source material.Īmazing Heroes #160, published in 1988, featured an interview with Hamm, offering teases for his takes on Batman and Watchmen. Sam Hamm is an excellent screenwriter he's been signed to write the Watchmen film."Įven before the 1989 release of Batman, comics fandom shared a similar faith in Hamm, as rumors had persisted for years that his script was a brooding take on the Caped Crusader worthy of Frank Miller (in an era where the average civilian still associated Batman with Adam West). Moore was publicly supportive of Hamm's hiring, telling Comics Interview in 1987, "I have got as much confidence as it is possible to have in the people who are handling the Watchmen film.
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