Zach Snyders Shows off Watchmen

Last night Warner Brothers invited us to checkout 3 extended clips from the Watchmen with Zach Snyder providing introduction as well as giving us an interview at the end of it all. There is no spoilers in this and really we get into little detail on the clips shown so no worries on having the movie ruined. I am calling this a review but its really not... its more an overview of what we saw as well as some of what Zach Snyder told us while the clips were played. Our detailed interview with Zach will come later in the week.

There is only one big scene that is somewhat a spoiler and that is the opening scene where The Comedian meets a grizzly outcome. The first clip we were shown featured the the of the Comedian Blake and his untimely doom. As an introduction to the first Clip that was shown Zach Snyder gave us some background on Watchmen and what got him involved in the project and how difficult it was for him to do it. He also made an interesting point in that the hit show LOST takes from the Watchmen comic;

LOST often references watchmen to the point where the most obscure things from the graphic novel appear in LOST in a kind of cool way. If you know watchmen and you have watched LOST some of the teeniest little details they put in are from the graphic novel. Its cool that things like that are out their in pop culture. The creators are huge Watchmen fans.

I never thought that I would make this graphic novel into a movie because it was just one of those thing it would be so daunting to just think about watchmen as a piece of literature in terms of a movie. So when it came around and I got this call to make watchmen into a movie thank God a script existed because I think that would have been a really hard place to start at zero and start to figure out how you will structure this thing.

The script I got was the war on terror and was a modern telling of Watchmen so the first thing I did was start to take the script and go back to the graphic novel. I did whatever I could to put back what I thought was important to the graphic novel and things that I loved. Its a really personal project for me making this movie because I just have very specific things I like in the graphic novel tonally and structurally and the way that it comments on pop culture. It is our mythology regardless of what people think about who our heroes are in pop culture. Super Heroes they are our mythology. When you start to look at them and what do they really mean and how far do you take the superhero thing.

If you can guarantee world peace what do you do? How far will you go to make that happen. People had to die to stop world war 2 and millions of people were saved. There is a debate and those are the questions the graphic novel and the movie raise. When i started reading the graphic novel I thought it was a superhero novel and when you finish your brain is all freaked out and I hope its a similar experience for fans. We tried to create something that is self aware in the same way the graphic novel is but also at the same time its still an adventure its still a story. The first thing I am going to show you tonight is the first 10-12 minutes of the movie. IT sets up the world and lets you know where and what is happening.

The second was a segment Zack called Dr. Manhattan on Mars which Zack described as the original story of Dr. Manhattan. The third was a segment involving the superhero characters Dan and Laurie when they spring Rorschach out of prison. The segments really look good even though Zack pointed out that a lot of the visual FX aren't done yet. It would appear that Watchmen is going to deliver the goods as THE comic book movie of the year.. this despite Alan Moore's obvious disdain for the project.

That is really all we can share on what we saw at this point but look back later today as we will have an interview with Zach Snyder to share with you all as well as more details on the footage we saw. It is safe to say that Watchmen has shaped up and is looking quite impressive