Watchmen fans may not love the film (it's impossible to please everyone), but at least they can be assured Snyder acted in their best interest when he took on the job of directing the film. A long-time fan of Watchmen, Snyder had read the initial Watchmen script with its dramatically different storyline and radically changed ending, and felt that if the film was going to be made anyway, it should be made in such a way as to adhere as faithfully as possible to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' work.
As the movie approaches its March 6, 2006 release, Snyder reflected on the journey of bringing Watchmen to the screen. "When I made Dawn of the Dead one of the biggest fears I had was that people wouldn’t get the movie. I tried to make a movie that was like a cult movie at a studio and tried to make this self-reflexive that sort of understands its genre and sort of a love letter to George Romero – you know all the crazy stuff we did. I thought there is a good chance people were going to see this and go, 'Oh this is a zombie movie. Whatever,' and not care. Or worst of all, not even notice that we cared. Like, 'Oh, it is a B movie,' and write it off. So when we made 300 we were pretty sure that we were making like a boutique-y movie that some fanboys would go to. That it would be a fun Frank Miller romp, and I was surprised by the response of course to that movie," confessed Snyder.
"When we set up to make Watchmen, I think we kind of looked at it the same way that we looked at the other movies in the sense that this is what it is, this is the material. I love the material. I’m not going to f--k it up to try and make a movie that is commercial or cool or what everyone would consider exactly what an audience would like or want. I feel like that is what we did. As far as whether or how mainstream audiences are going to feel about it, I have no idea. I was pretty sure that was how it would be with 300. I thought there was no way a mass audience would go for this movie with these half-naked guys running around in these leather bikinis giving me a history lesson. It is just not going to work. So, I don’t know. I kind of feel the same way about Watchmen in the sense that I hope that as much as possible people get the irony of the movie and get what the movie is trying to do in the sense of the deconstructive aspect of the movie - it is sort of the tearing down of superhero mythology and sort of understanding how it plugs into pop culture right now and how the superhero movie is the movie. It can be satirized in an intelligent way, not like a Meet the Spartans style, but what does it mean? Why do we love these characters? It goes through the whole thing, the violence and the sexuality and all of it going as far it can go in both directions to say that on one hand we are used to violence without consequence. Everyone is fine, no one gets hurt, everyone gets up and PG-13’s it down the street, which I find super irresponsible. Because basically if you made Watchmen PG-13, because the script I was handed originally for Watchmen, the studio was like, 'This is PG-13. It is the war on terror updated to the War on Terror.' like Dr. Manhattan goes to Iraq rather than Vietnam. Adrian gets killed by Dan in the end. Like the owl ship crushes him with a cool tagline and no Manhattan on Mars, no Comedian’s funeral, no Rorschach being interrogated just like a superhero – a real franchisable superhero movie."
"I think in some ways I f--ked that up a little bit, the whole commercial aspect of Watchmen. But on the other hand I think the movie has a better chance the way it is of sort of and it might not create a revolution, but it can. All those guys that go to movies and say, 'What the f--k is this going to be? What is this? Another superhero movie? Come on. I’m tired.' In some ways there are no more superhero bad guy plots left. I mean there are, but it is going to get harder and harder."
Snyder credits another Warner Bros Pictures film of the superhero genre with helping to path the way for mainstream audiences to accept darker superhero films. "I think [The Dark Knight] helped it hugely. I think it is an interesting counterpoint to the movie because it is a serious filmmaker with serious actors and a serious movie with real – to be taken seriously by pop culture and critics and intelligencia. 'What does it mean? Blah, blah, blah.' In some ways it is the pinnacle of what is possible with a superhero movie. So it is kind of interesting that Watchmen sort of comes on the heel of that in the sense that – I think Watchmen blows that up again. It says, 'Now that you’ve taken it seriously and elevated to high, it is time to sort of take it apart again and re-examine now without a smile or a wink what the f--k this mythology is about. Why these are our movies? Why does this movie make a billion dollars all over the world?' You accept that Batman can walk around in a real world and that a bad guys can dress like a Joker."
Page 2: On the Watchmen Cast and the Music of Watchmen
