Five best graphic novel movies: turning still-picture stories into moving-story motion pictures

March 3, 3:37 PMMovie ExaminerRyan Pratt

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WatchmenMovie.WarnerBros.com

Unless you too live under a mask, you're aware that the latest graphic novel adapted for theaters hits the big screen this Friday. The film, Watchmen, is a union of two pioneers in the industry: Zack Snyder, the director of 300, and Alan Moore the writer of V for Vendetta. Their creation, Watchmen, will likely open big, with fanboys across the country counting the minutes to the 12:01 AM premiere. But where did this blood-stained smiley-face craze come from?

Watchmen was a twelve-issue comic book series following a group of masked vigilante superheroes in time where the US is at the brink of nuclear war. It was created by writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons, and colorist John Higgins. The series was first published by DC Comics in single issues in 1986 and brought an entirely new audience of comic book readers to newsstands around the world. Today bookstores carry the series bound in longer and more durable collected form, and in 2005 Time Magazine named Watchmen one of the all-time 100 best novels.

But this isn't the first critically acclaimed graphic novel, and far from the first film-adaptation. Hollywood has been turning comic-books and graphic novels into films since the beginning, with movies starring Superman, Batman, and Captain America and more recent adaptations like 30 Days of Night, Constantine, and Hellboy. Some are classics, some blockbuster box-office hits, and some fall short, but all are attempts at turning these still-picture stories into moving-story motion pictures.

Watchmen was said to be the "unfilmable" book. We'll find out soon if it manages to pull off the impossible and lives up to the hype that these five great graphic novel adaptations deserve:

• V For Vendetta (2005) - This film is based on the ten-issue comic-book series, also written by Alan Moore. It’s set in a futuristic UK where a mysterious anarchist named "V" aims to destroy the totalitarian government. While the merit of the film is wildly debated, most agree the book is one of the greatest graphic novels ever created.
• Sin City (2005) - This movie was co-directed by the writer from the series of comics, Frank Miller, who successfully created a frame-by-frame reinterpretation of the Neo noir style of the graphic novel. This was the first film-adaptation to really push the boundaries of the medium.
• 300 (2006) - Frank Miller strikes again. This film, directed by Zack Snyder who also directs Watchmen, revolutionized the way graphic novel based films could look. Snyder created a groundbreaking visual masterpiece, with frames torn from the pages of the beautifully crafted book by Miller.
• X-Men 2: X-Men United (2003) - This X-Men film is based on the Marvel Comics and closely mimics the classic 1982 graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills, about a genocidal scientist who wants to eliminate all mutants. X2 was widely considered the best superhero movie of all time until the following movie hit theaters.
• The Dark Knight (2008) - This dark and complex Batman film is based on the DC Comics superhero and his infamous antagonist, the Joker, who debuted in the comic book series The Long Halloween in 1940. The Dark Knight not only set multiple box-office records, it was also won countless awards, including an Oscar for Heath Ledger's forbidding performance as a dark and deeply disturbed Joker.