Qui wikidiens ipso custodiet?
I recently saw "V for Vendetta" with my friend (and noted journalist, editor and blogger) Chris Taylor. Chris, an erudite geek of the first water, had this to say about the film:

I still think Moore is a bit of a prima donna about his work. On the other hand, once, just once, I'd like to see someone take a graphic novel and use it as a scene-by-scene movie script. Just film the whole thing as it was written, and how it looks. You never know how well it could work -- how many embryonic movies could be sitting meekly on the graphic novel shelves -- until you try.

I've often had this same thought, and though there are arguments to be made that a good film adaptation requires just that - adaptation - it would be very interesting to see someone attempt a wholly literal translation. Although not a shot-for-shot (or rather, shot-for-panel) translation, Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller's Sin City came remarkably close, demonstrating that it is possible to preserve a comic book's graphic style while still creating an enjoyable and cinematic movie. All the more so when that style is so distinctive and bold that it becomes a fundamental part of the story. Style as character, style as context, rather than superficial window-dressing.

It almost goes without saying then that the graphic novel that I would most like to see adapted in a verbatim fashion is Alan Moore's uber-classic "Watchmen". Film rights for it have been kicking around Hollywood for years. For a long time Terry Gilliam was slated to direct, which might have either been genius or disaster. (Sadly, given his recent track record and my deep attachment to "Watchmen" I would suspect disaster as the more likely outcome. Beautiful, baroque, heavily embroidered disaster, but disaster nonetheless.) Next came "Pi" director Darren Aronofsky, but he also dropped out, supposedly due to scheduling conflicts.

Regardless of who eventually directs it I have no doubt that a major Hollywood version of "Watchmen" will someday make its way to the screen. I also have no doubt that the result will be deeply underwhelming, at least for "Watchmen" truefans. Call it a failure of imagination, but I simply cannot see how such a sprawling, complex and textually dense epic could ever be effectively distilled into a two or even three hour movie without losing all of the symbology, subtext and backstory that made it so powerful. Even "Lord of The Rings", although longer, lent itself much more to the Hollywood treatment by being effectively reducible into a classic "good versus evil" adventure. "V for Vendetta" got a similar distillation, and actually came through both recognizable and entertaining, though not as intelligent or provocative as the original. In contrast, the world of "Watchmen" is too morally ambigious, its waters too muddy. It has no clear heroes or villians, and concludes with only the slightest gesture of triumph, a single resolving note amidst a unsettled, dissonant fog.

Ambiguity and complexity are not things that Hollywood handles very well, especially when all they want to do is make another summer blockbuster about costumed comic book heroes.

So if Hollow-Wood isn't up to the task, who is? The fans, possibly.

Imagine a 'net based, publicly created, "open source" film project. Using a simple wiki-style framework, volunteers could download the necessary raw materials (eg. HD greenscreen elements, 3D objects, textures and scenes, audio files) and then upload their resulting versions of each shot (along with any newly created assets). Feedback could be given by all participants, and shots could be further modified either by their creator, or by other artists. Eventually a director (or administrative group) would select the best shots for inclusion in the final film. Of course, all of the other versions of the shots would still remain available, and anyone could produce their own alternative edit from this raw material.

Obviously such an approach would not be without its problems. For example, given that adjacent shots might be completed at different times by different artists of different skill levels and styles, maintaining shot-to-shot consistency could be challenging. (Though some projects might actually benefit from such an anarchic style. Neal Stephenson's "Snowcrash" comes immediately to mind.) But as Wikipedia has demonstrated, the collaborative model can quickly and organically evolve solutions for its own liabilities. Thus, just as Wikipedians tend to "adopt" and oversee certain entries, dedicated Wikimators might choose to take on entire sequences of shots, ensuring at least intrasequence consistency. It is also possible that some of the consequences of collaborative film production turn out to not to be "problems" at all, but simply a new and exciting set of stylistic conventions in the ever-expanding realm of human artistic expression.

Welcome the the era of the WikiFilm!