"I find film in its modern form to be quite bullying. It spoon-feeds us, which has the effect of watering down our collective cultural imagination. It is as if we are freshly hatched birds looking up with our mouths open waiting for Hollywood to feed us more regurgitated worms. The Watchmen film sounds like more regurgitated worms. I for one am sick of worms. Can't we get something else? Perhaps some takeout? Even Chinese worms would be a nice change." - Alan Moore, Los Angeles Times, 9/18/08.

There may be fanboys everywhere counting the days until Zack Snyder's Watchmen hits theaters, but the man who wrote the original masterpiece is not remotely interested. Comics legend Alan Moore has been burned once, twice, oh hell, EVERY time he's had to watch one of his works adapted by Hollywood. Even Moore films that arguably worked - V for Vendetta being one - have been absolute production nightmares for its creator. Regardless if the final product is great or awful, Watchmen fits the Moore pattern of projects that were incredibly difficult to get to the big screen. Lawsuits, massive changes to the source material, pre-release controversy. They can pump out High School Musicals like Kisses at a Hershey factory, but adapting an Alan Moore graphic novel is apparently like climbing Mount Everest - it might be worth it, but it's going to be painful and not everyone is coming back in one piece.

What is it about the works of beloved writers that often leads to such crappy movies? Is there something about Stephen King or Alan Moore that simply doesn't work on the big screen? Show me one good King adaptation and I'll show you four or five awful ones. Is it just bad luck? Moore has had to watch as his films have struggled through horrific behind-the-scenes turmoil, most of which has negatively impacted the final films and, as a result, this brilliant writer has declared himself done with the Hollywood scene. As he told the LA Times in the interview quoted above, he will be "spitting venom all over [Watchmen] for months to come," and you won't see his name anywhere on the advertising. I bet half the audience for Watchmen thinks it was written by "that 300 guy". It's just sad.

How did we get here? Four titles - From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Constantine (based on the comic Hellblazer), and V for Vendetta. All are WELL worth your time in their original form. All were strangely altered on their way to the big screen and, understandably, infuriated their original creator. Granted, V for Vendetta is an underrated film and there are design elements of From Hell that work, but Alan Moore's movie track record proves a rule that critics have been repeating for decades - READ THE BOOK FIRST. Even if the film version of Watchmen is absolutely amazing, READ THE BOOK FIRST. That way you'll know what you'll be missing.

On the Road to Hell

The first book-to-screen nightmare for Alan Moore came in the nightmarish form of Heather Graham as Mary Kelly. Is there anyone who looked less period-appropriate than Heather Graham? It still sounds kind of funny, doesn't it? It wasn't supposed to be. From Hell, Moore's ten-volume series (created in conjunction with artist Eddie Campbell), published from 1991 to 1996 and collected in one book in 1999, was a massive hit and a no-brainer for Hollywood adaptation. Who doesn't love a good Jack the Ripper story? The problem is that Moore's From Hell is not your standard slasher movie. It's closer to a procedural or mood piece like David Fincher’s Zodiac than the thriller that the Hughes Brothers wanted to make. Moore simply uses the world of Victorian London during the days of Jack the Ripper to tell an amazing story. The murders are a symbol of the end of the entire Victorian age. But, unfortunately, Hollywood doesn't do well with symbols.

The film version of From Hell took Moore's mood piece and turned it into an action-laden cop drama, altering major passages and some of the characters completely. An interview in The Comics Journal in 2006 asserts that the film is actually closer in plot to a thriller from 1978 called Murder by Decree than Moore's source material. Screenwriters Terry Hayes and Rafael Iglesias took Moore's general idea and turned it into a whodunit. Anyone with any knowledge of history will immediately recognize the problem there – we still don't know the "who" of the "whodunit" in the Jack the Ripper story and, even though From Hell does posit a theory on the Ripper's identity, his identity is revealed early on in the narrative. The team behind From Hell made a well-designed interesting film to look at, but the miscast Graham, the misguided whodunit, and the tacked-on, insulting happy ending, drained the piece of what made Moore's book interesting in the first place.

Moore was nervous from the very beginning. He saw a trailer and could sense that this was not his From Hell. He told Stewart Lee in 2002 that he was starting to get annoyed by "the fallacious modern notion that making a movie of something somehow validates it." Alan was already set to give up on Hollywood. He claims to have still seen none of his films and felt assured that no one would confuse his originals with the film interpretations. He probably had no idea that it would get much, much worse.

A Very Ordinary League

One of the best comic series of the past decade is, unquestionably, Moore and illustrator Kevin O'Neill's amazing The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. If you've only seen the movie, you probably don't believe me. Trust me. Just read it. Pretend the movie never happened. Denial is how I make it through without shuddering every time I see Shane West on TV.

League originally appeared as two six-issue limited series, with the first beginning in 1999. (The League has since appeared in a one-shot hardcover graphic novel, The Black Dossier, and a new series is reportedly in the works.) The first series, the alleged basis for the alleged film, is set in 1898. Miss Wilhemina Murray of Bram Stoker's Dracula gathers together an unusual league of "extraordinary" individuals that Moore admittedly conceived as a "Justice League of Victorian England." Headed by pulp fiction hero Allan Quartermain (now an opium addict), the group includes The Invisible Man, Captain Nemo, and even the infamous Dr. Jekyll and his alter-ego, Mr. Hyde, who looks something like a 1800s version of The Hulk. Professor Moriarty and Fu Manchu appeared as villains, and the whole thing felt perfect for the big screen. It's a landmark work for the medium and a blast to read.

So, how did they screw this one up? It seemed like they hired the right guy to adapt - James Robinson, a comics writer known best for his work on DC's Starman - and Stephen Norrington, the director of the first Blade movie, clearly had the right experience. What the hell happened? First, casting Sean Connery, clearly tired of doing the same old routine and ready to phone it in, as Quartermain was a mistake, but it was merely the beginning. They turned Mina Harker into a full-on vampire, awkwardly inserted in extra characters like Dorian Gray and Tom-effing-Sawyer for no apparent reason, and completely changed the plot, adding in a disposable villain known as The Fantom. Who looked at the source material and said, "Yes, this is brilliant, but we need more characters. How about Tom Sawyer?" That person deserves exile. Somewhere cold, preferably.

Critics hated it, audiences ignored it, Sean Connery cited the turmoil behind the film as his reason for retirement, and Fox was sued for... wait for it... plagiarism. Alan Moore was even named in the suit. Producer Martin Poll and screenwriter Larry Cohen accused the studio of stealing the idea for Extraordinary Gentlemen from a 1993 pitch for a film that would've been called "Cast of Characters." Sadly, the reason why they weren't beaten over their heads with hardcover copies of Moore's book as exhibit A is because the studio behind the film had strayed SO far from League's source material that it made it possible for someone else to sue them for plagiarism. Here's a good rule to live by – if your adapted screenplay is so different from the book you're adapting from that another writer even thinks that you stole their idea, highlight everything in your "My Documents" folder and hit delete.

Naming Moore as a plagiarist really sent him over the edge. He told Rich Johnston at Comic Book Resources, "They seemed to believe that the head of 20th Century Fox called me up and persuaded me to steal this screenplay, turning it into a comic book which they could then adapt back into a movie, to camouflage petty larceny." Moore had to appear and give a ten-hour deposition during which, in Moore's words, he was treated as if he'd "sodomised and murdered a busload of children after giving them heroin." If anyone could send us the likely profanity-riddled transcript of that, we'd pay large sums of cash.

The suit closed the door on any chance that Moore would eventually make nice with Hollywood. He even told Johnston at CBR that he'd "have nothing to do with films anymore. If I owned the sole copyright, like with Voice of the Fire [one of Moore's creator-owned comic ventures], there would not be a film. Anything else, where others owned copyrights, I'd insist on taking my name off future films. All of the money due to me would go to the artists involved. I'd divorce myself from the film process, the film industry and any adaptations." However, the divorce would not be an easy one.

Half-Exorcist, Half-Stoner, All Stupid

Alan Moore may only be loosely related to the Keanu Reeves movie Constantine, but he has mentioned its failure publicly and it's clearly another nail in the coffin of his relationship with Hollywood, so we should include it. Constantine may not be a complete disaster, but it is close and, like the first two Moore disasters, it bears little resemblance to its source material.

Moore created the character of John Constantine as a supporting character in the Swamp Thing series he was authoring back in 1985, and the character became popular enough to warrant his own monthly series in 1988 titled Hellblazer. (The series is still published today.) Allegedly designed to resemble Sting, Constantine was a blond, English, morally ambiguous occult detective who walked the rift between the supernatural and the world we know. And somehow, a Hollywood producer looked at John and said, "Blond, English anti-hero? Get me Neo!"

Writers Kevin Brodbin and Frank Cappello took Hellblazer issues #41-46, a story arc called "Dangerous Habits" authored by Preacher mastermind Garth Ennis, and used that as the source material for the big screen Constantine movie. It's a tremendous arc and a great choice for the movie, but, once again, it's never a case of picking the right source material, it's what you do with it. The producers changed Constantine's look and nationality, the reason for his damnation, his willingness to fight, and even the motives of a major character. Why? It certainly wasn't the disaster of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Constantine made enough money that there are still rumors of a sequel to this day - but it also was only half the movie it could have been.

After LXG and From Hell, Moore could walk away from Constantine early. He told Comic Book Resources, "When Karen Berger rang me up to give me money for the Constantine movie, I asked her to take my name off the film and split the money with the artists. Most of it went to Rick Veitch, who although was the first to draw John Constantine yet wasn't receiving anything from the film.... The rest was split between John Totleben, Steve Bissette, Jamie Delano and John Ridgeway, divided so everyone ended up with the same amount in total."

A for Angry

V for Vendetta is easily the best pre-Watchmen movie based on an Alan Moore book, but you should still check out the source material if you have yet to do so. The brilliant ten-issue series, illustrated by David Lloyd, is part Phantom of the Opera, part George Orwell, and part something completely new. It's one of the most purely enjoyable and influential graphic novels that you will ever read.

Two of the people influenced by V for Vendetta would go on to make a little movie called The Matrix, and so everything seemed to be coming full circle when the Wachowskis were tapped to bring Evey Hammond and V to cinematic life. The Wachowskis wrote the adaptation and their long-time second-unit director, James McTeigue, handled directorial duties. If he hadn't been so badly burned by From Hell and LXG, he probably would have been satisfied, but Moore was, once again, unhappy. Is V for Vendetta a truly faithful adaptation? No. But is it a well-made, intriguing companion piece to the original that Moore should be proud to have his name on? Yes.

Of course, for him to be proud of V for Vendetta, he'd have to get over Joel Silver's involvement. The producer of V for Vendetta made the incredibly bone-headed decision to publically state that Moore, who everyone knew had disassociated himself with films based on his books, had approved of the film. (Do NOT put words in Alan Moore's mouth.) Moore came out and said that he had made it clear that he didn't want anything to do with the films. How was that taken as approval? Silver said at a press conference that Moore "was very excited about what Larry had to say and Larry sent him the script, so we hope to see him before we're in the UK."

Moore blasted back, stating that the suggestion that an "excited" conversation had taken place was a blatant lie. He issued a decree to DC Comics and Warner Brothers asking that they retract the press conference release statements. Unbelievably, they refused.

Moore moved on to Top Shelf Productions and Knockabout Comics and has asked that his name be removed from all comic works that he does not own, including Watchmen and V for Vendetta, in reissues. The way V for Vendetta was handled is one of the reasons that you don't see Alan Moore's name on ANYTHING Watchmen related. The movie adaptation is one thing but even the Motion Picture Comics of Watchmen - that were available on iTunes and that are hitting Blu-Ray and DVD this week - use only the amazing words that Moore wrote, but you'll never see his name on the case or in the credits. It's a true shame.

We Know One Person Not Watching the Watchmen

If you haven't read Watchmen, you are not only missing one of the best graphic novels of all time, but one of the better books of the last quarter-century. (And you Heroes and Lost fans should really take a look and see how much Moore's book influenced your favorite shows.) Many hold Watchmen as the Citizen Kane of comic books. It's influenced countless books, TV shows, and films that have come after it and forever changed the graphic novel form. Rumors of its adaptation have made fans nervous for many years.

Alan Moore has long called the project unfilmable. Studios went to court over its release. And early reviews are wildly mixed. What is Watchmen? It's certainly not your typical superhero movie. You can't sell toys of Rorschach at Burger King. You can't do a TV spin-off with Silk Spectre. Matthew Goode, one of the stars, told me last summer that “it's a three-hour arthouse film.” Which, as anyone who's read the book will tell you, it probably should be. But how will audiences respond? Will it fall in the gap between arthouse audiences and those looking for action? We shall see. Come back Friday for our review. (Yes, unlike the rest of the online world, we're on a release day embargo.)

One person who won't see Watchmen is Mr. Alan Moore. Last January, as he was signing the paperwork to legally have his name not appear on the film, he told Wizard Magazine that he just didn't care. "I’m just simply not interested in it. Dave phoned me up, and it’s always nice to talk to Dave, but he understands that I’m not really interested in Watchmen. So when he phoned, he asked me if I was interested in being kept up to date on it, and I was saying, 'Well, it’s always nice to talk to you, but not really.' I don’t really know much about it. I believe that it’s going ahead. I won’t be watching it, obviously.”

Watchmen will almost undoubtedly be the biggest Alan Moore movie to date but it feels like too much damage has been done to bring this legendary writer back under the wing of the city of angels. Can you really blame him?

- Brian Tallerico