Looking Through a Gilded Glass at Alan Moore

I was happily munching away at dinner my roommate made for me when we discovered there was nothing on television, seeing as I really don’t watch TV anymore outside of the primetime lineups that haven’t started again, and she couldn’t find anything in the mess of reality shows that were on. I suggested a little movie I thought she’d like, given she has a wide array of films that she enjoys, among them the X-men titles and Van Helsing.

She put in my copy of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, yet another one of those movies that my mother suggested, she knowing my tastes before I even did, and I outright refused to watch it when I was younger. I constantly mocked it, frequently calling it “The League of Men in Colored Undies” because I thought it was about superheroes.

I knew it was a comic book movie, but I didn’t realize until this time around that it was based off the works of—guess who—Alan Moore. This is the third film inspired by his works that I just really, really love. The other two include V for Vendetta and of course as I’ve stated before, Watchmen. I will say that Extraordinary Gents is probably the weakest and cheesiest of the three, but it’s still got a place in my heart.

Now I will tell you, of these three movies, I only own two of the books and I’ve only read one. (This has something to do with me scoffing at the previews for Watchmen where it was said that the graphic novel was one of the best and most critically hailed of all time, and I hadn’t heard a lick about it before the movie trailer. The trailer was perfectly true.) So really, since I’ve not read but Watchmen of Moore’s actual works, perhaps I have no right to make this post about him. According to Wiki (because the internet is always true), there’s been a lot of hell in Moore’s life over his comics being made into movies. He claims he was doing all he could to make his comics a unique medium, to portray so much information in the panels that it couldn’t be replicated in any other media. I agree with him to an extent. I certainly get what he’s saying by trying to cram the huge stories into 2-1/2 hour film segments. Watchmen was pushing it. But between directors changing the story, falsifying statements of Moore’s endorsements and what have you, he wants nothing to do with any movie adaptations.

So, not to disrespect the author, I won’t insinuate that he approves the movies made after his work, nor will I say that the films come from solely his ideas, though I do believe the core of each of the movies did come from Moore. Of course, you say, because they share titles and major characters and entire story lines from their comic counterparts. There’s a difference. Maybe they’re not major differences, but there are going to be differences when someone outside of the author’s personal literary sphere comes in to make their own rendition of the work. They can’t possibly know what all is going on in the author’s head, especially not in the case of Alan Moore who has really stood at arms length (if not more) from these things.

However, I still love these movies. I love the stories they’re trying to tell. I’ve said before that Watchmen is just one of my favorite stories...well, ever. It’s a recent history tale of the deconstruction of the superhero and the minimalization of the human being. V for Vendetta is the story of a hyper-survelliance, hyper-political future in England and a man’s attempt to go against the common grind. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen takes beloved characters out of classic literature and pits them against a great force of evil for the sake of humanity’s longevity—much like Watchmen or perhaps, I noticed this time, Marvel’s Avengers?

Based on the movies, Moore’s stories are, for the most part, historical fiction. Even in V for Vendetta, set in the future, there are references to November 5, 1605. The story itself is an attempt to make a huge change in society and write the history of the time. Watchmen is set through the 1940’s to the 80’s and the story is promoted as the telling of an alternate history of America. Extraordinary Gents is most definitely historical fiction, taking characters out of classics like Dracula, the Picture of Dorian Gray and so on and so forth, and writing a future for them and rewriting a history for Europe (that is set in the late 18^th to early 19^th centuries).

I really like historical fiction. It’s something I’ve grown into, but I feel like it’s almost second to my like of science fiction. Probably has to do a lot with the fact I just like history. I, though you may find it strange and repulsive, have a great deal of interest in the WWII era and the Holocaust, because I find it incredibly appalling/curious/unbelievable that people that evil truly existed in real life. It’s always fun to watch historical fiction and just think about if these people had really existed…well then perhaps the movie would have been true! For better or for worse, I suppose…

So, given I’m labeling Moore as a historical writer, I just really appreciate him. It sparks my curiosity to think about these characters existing in our world. And to the girl that though for the longest time that vampires could have existed, ghosts probably walk our halls and somewhere out in space other life exists, its just nice to know that other people enjoy this kind of stuff too. Its even more incredible the time and effort people put into historical writing, what with the research and precision of dates and all.