this movie had a lot working against it from before it was made. first, it's one of those films that tries to fit an immense body of literature into a celluloid vehicle (the graphic novel of the same name by comics giant alan moore, who also wrote the legendary watchmen , from which i took the name comedian). reading the novel beforehand doesn't help at all with the movie; it only fuels the oh, they should have done this game people like me play while they are watching it, but it would have helped a lot of dissatisfied customers understand what the filmmakers were up against, or up for. what carried through was the surreally dark atmosphere that only comes up on paper in the novel as squiggly lines but which the interaction of text and image there create in the imagination of the reader. the over-the-top melancholia that people seem to complain about may have been the result of their trying to translate tons of bio and historical text into pictures, which are supposed to be able to convey a thousand words each, but which in film are notoriously unable to do. for instance, they show joe merrick, the elephant man, for one bit, while in the book dr gull meets with him and explains how in india a man is believed to be the incarnation of the elephant god ganesha, and when he prospers the land prospers, and when he withers, the land withers, just like king arthur, and later in the book we see the british empire wane as merrick commits suicide. or when gull walks an acquintance around westminster and explains the ancient and masonic significance of the construction, and how certain forms and images were supposed to subtly affect men's minds. that kind of effect doesn't come through as well in smokestacks and eviscerations if the suggestion of it isn't there. there's a lot of feeling and power in this movie despite all of its flaws, and i can't count the number of times people have asked me if i knew when it was coming out on dvd. ultimately it will probably just contribute to moore's frustration at not being understood, and the illusion of the uniqueness of his storytelling ability.