A little over a week and the Watchmen movie will be out. There are some reviews that have popped online and for some sane reason I’ve decided not to read them. I’ve read the comic (yes I’m calling it a comic and not a graphic novel) and I know how it ends. I know about the big change but I don’t want to ruin seeing the film on the big screen.

I had been pretty happy with all the stuff coming out, thinking the movie would live up to the hype, but last week more footage was released and I forgot all my knowledge of the industry. All we have scene before have been the carefully cut through action stuff, the trailers that are made to sell the movie. Last week scenes started to emerge and the first real grumblings began to take place. I was worried because, probably like most people who are familiar with the comic, I forgot we are talking about a comic book. What I mean by that is film is one style and comics are another style, and the two aren’t as similar as you might think.

I was seeing scenes out of context of the movie and while they were quiet they seemed a bit off to me. It took me a few days to realize, well, yeah they’re supposed to be off because that is the context of the scene they were playing against. I began to realize that the Watchmen mania was hitting the over saturation point for fan folks. I did breathe a sigh of relief when I saw the last two clips from early in the film and the tone and substance was spot on. There were a few reviews out today and I decided not to read them, just so I could have a little over a week of purity before seeing the movie.

I am excited about the film coming to the screen but I do have the trepidations Alan Moore has about any of his projects. In an odd sense, the merchandise for Watchmen has been little, but it has been . . . well it’s been like its own viral advertisement for the film. At first I refused to get any products from Watchmen, but I’m looking across the room staring at the collectable action figures from the movie. I got them, trying to torture myself into an explanation for getting them, because one of the characters actually has the collector figures in the comic. There may be some other things I might pick up, but there have been some bizarre items for sale.

There is a brand of coffee mentioned in the movie, which I don’t believe was in the comic, which a company has for sale. Something that was mentioned as almost a comic afterthought in the comic I saw is being marketed, which just is too ridiculous to think about. Someone somewhere is really selling a Dr. Manhattan condom, which I think from the article I saw glows in the dark.

While not as wildly out there, Entertainment Weekly has a cover story on Watchmen, offering six variant covers and of course for a reasonable price is offering to sell fan folks all six variant copies.

That’s the reason for the cheapness Alan Moore feels, at least from my perspective, for his creations. I remember when V for Vendetta came out and I did love the movie and I overlooked its flaws, but the ending it had made the cautionary tale become a populist creed, using symbols of an administration that wasn’t in power at the time of the comic. Making it about Bush and not about Thatcher, making one character a Rush Limbaugh/Bill O’Reilly parody rather than a breathing, rational person along with a lot of subtle changes didn’t change the message for those who read the comic, but for those who didn’t they got a very different take on the character. His actions were justified in the film while in the comic, because of the reality of the characters he went after, you questioned Vs motives.

The same may happen for Watchmen. People aren’t comic book or soap opera characters. We don’t live in black and white; we shift through shades of grey. No one is purely hero or villain, but Hollywood wants to boil and mash the concepts down to that bland element, all the while trying to get us to fork over money for cheap products. While I might get a few more toys, might pick up a book or two, I’m not buying the coffee and the condom is definitely a no.

Within the next 10 days the world will finally see the film and we’ll know if it is true to form.