Is the book better???

It's an age old debate. Is the book always better than the movie? I would say that in most cases, yes it is. There are rare exceptions to this (His Girl Friday vs. The Front Page being only one), and there are even cases where the existence of both adds to the complexity or entertainment value of the story (Fight Club, The Bourne series). Now that Hollywood is stuck in an era where every other movie is a comic book adaptation this adds a new complexity to the problem. In most cases the movies exist simultaneously with the book just as another story line adds to the myth of the character.

Now an adaptation of one of my favourite books, Watchmen, is coming to the big screen in a week and the outlook is...underwhelming. Don't get me wrong, the trailers look amazing and I think that Zack Snyder took the art of the comic to another level of brilliance, but that is only half of the reason that Watchmen is brilliant. Alan Moore's writing, and his writing alone, earned a spot on Time's top 100 novels list. The complexity of the characters and the cohesiveness of the plot is uterly amazing in the comic. There is no way that the movie, at least in it's theatrical version will be able to match the impact of Dr. Manhattan's recount of his life or the not make the characters, themselves serious characterizations of existing DC heros, cheesey and overplaid (something that Snyder's directing has struggled with).

Overall I think that it will be an enjoyable experience of seeing a very direct adaption of one of my favourite novels, but I also don't think that it will be successful enough for it to be warranted as a classic or even revolutionary.