Cody
Attempting a live-action adaptation of Watchmen may have been the biggest risk in comic book movie history. This wasn’t just a beloved superhero story. It was a deconstruction of superheroes, widely considered untouchable. Then director Zack Snyder stepped in and decided to bring it to the screen almost panel for panel.
But could a movie truly capture the soul of the story?
What do you do about a virtually unfilmable ending?
And were audiences even ready for a superhero film like this in 2009?
Love it or hate it, Watchmen remains one of the most ambitious (and divisive) comic book movies ever made.
A Comic That Was Considered Untouchable
We’re not breaking any new ground with this statement; it’s something that many have said before, but Watchmen – which was published by DC Comics and crafted by writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons – may be the all-time greatest comic book story.
The twelve-issue series takes place in a world that resembles our own, but with an alternate history that involves costumed superheroes. It started with street-level vigilantes known as the Minutemen, then came the accidental origin of Doctor Manhattan, a god-like being whose existence reshapes global politics. His intervention in the Vietnam War leads to an American victory, allowing Richard Nixon to repeal term limits and remain president into the ‘80s. Despite this, public opinion turns against superheroes, and they’re outlawed in 1977.
The story begins in October of 1985 with the murder of Edward Blake, who used to be the costumed vigilante the Comedian. He also worked for the government and carried out the assassination of JFK. At one point, Moore had been thinking of using established characters from Charlton Comics, which DC had recently purchased. The murdered hero would have been Peacemaker – the guy John Cena plays in movies and TV now. The title: Who Killed the Peacemaker? But DC wanted Moore to create his own characters.
The only active masked hero left, Rorschach, investigates. He reconnects with:
- Doctor Manhattan
- Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias), the world’s smartest man
- Laurie Juspeczyk (Silk Spectre II)
- Daniel Dreiberg (Nite Owl II)
Tensions escalate. Manhattan retreats to Mars, Ozymandias survives an assassination attempt, Rorschach is imprisoned, and the world is on the edge of nuclear war. It’s not clear whether there’s simply a killer of vigilantes at work here, or if the Comedian’s death is part of a larger conspiracy.
Flawed Heroes in a Grimy World
Moore’s heroes are all flawed in some way. Rorschach is unhinged, the Comedian was a brutal monster, and Doctor Manhattan, despite his godhood, is emotionally distant, morally detached, and unsettling in his personal life. The character work involves sexual dysfunction and failed relationships. The human traits of the characters and the fact that this is all happening in a world that we recognize make it feel grounded and grimy, even when there are big superhero moments. Then, it all builds to a haunting moral dilemma.
Watchmen is a genius work of art and should have been considered an untouchable, standalone masterpiece… So, of course, the film rights were snatched up in 1986, in the middle of the series’ run.
The Long Road to the Watchmen Movie
The project was set up at Fox and producer Lawrence Gordon asked Moore to write the screenplay. He declined. So Gordon turned to Sam Hamm, who had just worked on the script for Tim Burton’s Batman. Hamm delivered a script that was reasonably faithful to the source material, for the most part. He added some action, including an opening sequence involving a terrorist situation at the Statue of Liberty, and changed the ending. Terry Gilliam signed on to direct the film and had Charles McKeown polish the script.
Fox let go of Watchmen in 1991. Gilliam followed it over to Warner Bros. They were only willing to put up a budget of 25 million dollars and Gilliam’s vision required 100 million. So he walked away from the project, deciding that the concept was unfilmable. In 2001, Gordon took Watchmen to Universal Pictures, where David Hayter – fresh off doing script work on Bryan Singer’s X-Men – was hired to write and direct. Hayter stayed faithful to the source material but, again, the ending was changed.
There were creative issues at Universal. A move to Revolution Studios was considered, but Revolution fell apart. Watchmen went to Paramount. Michael Bay was in the running to direct. Darren Aronofsky was hired, then left to make The Fountain. Paul Greengrass replaced him. Then Paramount let the project go. Gordon took it back to Warner Bros… and this time, they got it made.
Tim Burton was interested in taking the helm, but another director was chosen: Zack Snyder, who had just impressed the studio with his adaptation of the graphic novel 300.
Zack Snyder’s Faithful Approach
Snyder brought the same approach to Watchmen, which was to stay incredibly faithful to the source material, essentially using the comics as storyboards. Alex Tse rewrote the Hayter script to get it even closer to what Moore had written. They couldn’t include every single moment from the comic. There’s a motion comic that covers the whole run, and it’s about six hours long, even after cutting a lot of dialogue. But they fit in as much as they could. Snyder even planned to make a live-action adaptation of Tales of the Black Freighter on the side. That’s a pirate story that’s being read by a character in Watchmen, and excerpts are included in several issues.But it would have cost 20 million dollars to film it, so it became an animated short directed by Daniel DelPurgatorio and Mike Smith.
Snyder saw Watchmen as the biggest challenge of his career to date, and felt that if he couldn’t pull this off, he should retire from action and start making romantic comedies. He assembled a terrific cast for the film: Patrick Wilson as Dan Dreiberg, Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach, Billy Crudup as Doctor Manhattan, Malin Åkerman as Laurie Juspeczyk, with Carla Gugino as her mother. Matthew Goode plays Ozymandias, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan is the ill-fated Comedian. Stephen McHattie, Matt Frewer, and Danny Woodburn have notable supporting roles. In several cases, it’s difficult to imagine anyone else playing the characters.
Although the story primarily takes place in New York City, the decision was made to film in Vancouver. Some thought was given to filming exterior New York scenes on existing studio backlots in California… but building a new backlot with blue screen backdrops would allow them to add in CG city-scapes. So, in a fourteen acre lumberyard in British Columbia, the production built three blocks of midtown Manhattan. Thousands of wooden two-by-fours and hundreds of thousands of square feet of foam brick went into this construction, then the crew spent weeks making these fake new buildings look aged and lived-in. A portion of the backlot also stood in for Saigon, while various other locations were existing buildings in British Columbia. The NORAD war room was a set designed to look like the one in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.
Moore is skeptical of adaptations of his work, but the movie was made with the full support of Dave Gibbons. He visited the set and was in awe, getting to see his drawings of New York brought to life. He said he was “overwhelmed by the commitment, the passion, the palpable desire to do this right.” Jeffrey Dean Morgan agreed, “The passion – I’ve never seen any group of people so passionate about a project, ever.”
Comic book movies were on the rise at this time, and Snyder saw Watchmen as a way to give them a kick in the guts. He explained the film in this way: “In my movie, Superman doesn’t care about humanity, Batman can’t get it up, and the bad guy wants world peace.”
Why the Ending Changed
As you might expect, Snyder enhanced the violence, making some of the characters more brutal and deadly than they were on the page. That didn’t sit well with some fans. And yes, he presents some of the action in slow-motion. But the movie stays true to the comic for the most part… Up to a point. Like all previous attempts at adaptation, Snyder’s movie has a different ending than the comic. And now, we have to dig into spoilers and discuss these endings.
In the comic, Ozymandias decides that the way to achieve world peace is to make everyone think we’re in danger of an alien invasion. With the help of writers, artists, and scientists, he conceptualizes and engineers a fake alien: a giant squid-like creature with the cloned and enhanced brain of a psychic. He then teleports it into New York City, where it explodes on arrival and sends out a psychic shockwave that kills half of the city’s population. You can can see why filmmakers were hesitant to put this in a movie. It’s too complicated and weird.
The Hamm and McKeown drafts had the most underwhelming work-around: an assassination committed through time travel. Hayter replaced the alien squid with a satellite that fires concentrated solar radiation. Tse found the most acceptable alternative: instead of an alien threat, Ozymandias makes the world fear Doctor Manhattan. There’s no need to spend time explaining a fake alien when one of your characters can be seen as a terrifying, god-like figure, keeping the world in line with the threat of mass destruction.
Box Office and Reception
Made on a budget in the range of 130 to 150 million dollars, Watchmen filmed from September 2007 to February 2008, heading for a March 2009 release. It had a decent opening weekend of 55 million, but the box office quickly declined from there and it ended up drawing in just 187 million worldwide.
The theatrical cut had a running time of 162 minutes. On home video, a director’s cut boosted the runtime to 186 minutes… and if you want a more complete experience, there’s an ultimate cut that edits in the animated Tales of the Black Freighter, for a total running time of 215 minutes.
Watchmen was not the superhero movie the general audience was looking for in 2009. Critics were split on it; the film has a 65% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Some praised it as unique, stylish, and daring. Others called it a bore, oddly hollow and disjointed, feeling that Snyder was too focused on replicating the comic to give his movie a life of its own. The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan suggested that it might have done better if it had come later in the comic book movie cycle, sometime after The Avengers, as viewers weren’t ready for a subversive superhero movie. Still, moviegoers did give the film a B grade. The positive review by Nick Dent of Time Out Sydney gave a description that made sense to many fans: “As a comic book, Watchmen is an extraordinary thing. As a movie, it’s just another movie.”
Few, if any, felt that the greatest comic book story ever written had translated to the greatest comic book movie ever made. But Snyder’s dedication to the source material was respectable. The drama and the characters might not have been as effective on the screen as they were on the page… but he made it look cool, didn’t he?
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