Are You Watching the Watchmen?
We’re officially counting down to the premier of the Watchmen film, due to arrive in theaters on Friday, March 6th. We’ve been so excited to see this film after watching and re-watching the previews, helplessly falling victim to the hype. We admit it. We loved the groundbreaking graphic novel and like most Watchmen fans, we thought the story to be completely impervious to a Hollywood treatment. In fact, we wished it would never happen. The densely layered Watchmen story seems only to be able to exist in the graphic novel genre, and turning it into a movie is almost sacrilege.
The free Watchmen iPhone app (now available in the App Store) serves as a studio marketing vehicle, no doubt, but it also offers enough goodies to let fans fill the gap while awaiting the movie’s opening. The app has links to the terrific video journals that take you behind the scenes during the making of the film. You’ll also get links to the official movie trailers, game previews, downloadable wallpapers and posters, and even teasers for the Watchmen Motion Comics series also available in the iTunes store. It’s been more than enough to get us completely psyched up to see the movie, but after reading the March issue of Wired magazine featuring an interview with Watchmen director, Zach Snyder, we’re now a little concerned about Hollywood’s treatment of Watchmen.
If you haven’t already watched the Behind the Scenes Video Journals, we recommend you do that soon. Snyder’s attention to detail in this movie demonstrates his respect and appreciation for the source material. Each scene is filled with so much visual texture that hardcore Watchmen fans will be picking through every frame of the movie looking for references to other parts of the story. It ensures that the movie will enjoy years of life in DVD format, or maybe even beyond that if Snyder pulls off the impossible; turning the unfilmable into a masterpiece. But we have our doubts about that.
In his interview with Wired, Snyder reveals details about himself and the film making process that seem to prove that he was the right choice to direct this movie. Snyder was already a huge fan of the graphic novel. He also stood up to studio execs who wanted him to remove two key scenes, the Comedian’s funeral and Dr. Manhattan’s brilliant pontification of time as he sits on Mars. Snyder said he wouldn’t make the movie if those scenes were cut. You go, Zach!
Later in the interview Snyder said he shot a 3-hour theatrical version of Watchmen, but had to whittle it down to 2 and half hours. This would be Zach Snyder’s Watchmen, not Alan Moore’s (author of the graphic novel). This news took the wind out of our sails. What scene can they possibly cut from the story? And why try to pack the entirety of Watchmen into a single film in the first place? Surely there’s enough material to create an entire trilogy.
Then Snyder drops the big bomb. Hollywood, it turns out, did the unthinkable. They changed the ending of the Watchmen. In a single moment, this little tidbit all but eliminated our excitement that the hype machine had worked so hard to create. Now we have to wait until Friday to see if Snyder pulls off the unimaginable; take an epic story long thought to be unadaptable for the big screen, pack it into a scant 180 minutes, and make a film worthy of its source material.
The fan in us is hopelessly optimistic that the film is great, but we’ll settle for just good. And if the Watchmen ends up sucking it, then we’ll be looking forward to the film adaptation of Y! The Last Man, another great graphic novel supposedly coming to the big screen in 2010. Until then, we’ll continue to cozy up with the Watchmen iPhone app and hope for the best.
- Watchmen iPhone App – Free [app store]
- Watchmen Motion Comics
– $19.99 [itunes]
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