ARTICLE TEXT
EMPIRE // AUGUST 2008
WATCHMEN PREVIEW
OUT: March 6, 2009
DIRECTOR: Zack Snyder
STARRING: Patrick Wilson, Malin Akerman, Jackie Earle Haley, Matthew Goode, Billy Crudup, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Carla Gugino
VANCOUVER NOVEMBER 2007. MIDNIGHT. WE'RE OUTDOORS ON A GIANT AND IMPRESSIVELY DETAILED 1970s NEW YORK STREET SET, WHERE a riot is about to start. It's freezing. Of course, the giant fans hurling simulated wind around aren't helping. Empire can't feel its toes.
Yet Zack Snyder doesn't seem to feel the cold at all as he runs around, laughing and joking with his actors between takes. Nor does he seem to feel the immense pressure that comes with bringing Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' dense, layered and thrilling graphic novel to the big screen. In fact, he looks like he doesn't have a care in the world.
"Lemme say this: I never thought I'd be making this movie," says the 42 year old, whose experience on Frank Miller's 300 bagged him the gig after the likes of Terry Gilliam, Darren Aronofsky and Paul Greengrass departed the project during its torturous journey through Development Hell. But he shouldn't really be too surprised. After all, in just two films he's shown an innate knack for effective adaptation (smartly updating Dawn of the Dead and expanding 300 into a box-office giant), and that didn't go unnoticed by Watchmen producer Lloyd Levin when he was scouting around for a replacement for Greengrass.
"Zack's a huge fan of the comic book," says Levin, who's been trying to get Watchmen before cameras for 15 years. "He knows it inside-out. If he achieves the same thing with Watchmen as with Frank Miller's work, then I'm going to be happy - and we're all going to be happy!"
"I think everybody is into the idea of making a thing that's not exactly a corporate, cookie-cutter superhero movie - whatever that is," Snyder continues. "It's certainly not that." Empire then watches Snyder shoot a flashback scene, in which a mob is protesting against costumed vigilantes, two of whom - Patrick Wilson's Nite Owl and Jeffrey Dean Morgan's sociopath, S&M clad The Comedian - are trying to keep the peace. In their own special way, with The Comedian firing tear gas into the crowd and then plunging into the melee. This is definitely not "cookie-cutter".
But what is it? Well, Watchmen is many things. Set in 1985 in a parallel universe where costumed crimefighters have been criminalised, Richard Nixon is still President and the Cold War still rages, it's at heart a murder-mystery as a team of outlawed heroes band togerther to investigate the death of one of their own. It's also a political thriller that deconstructs superheroes while serving up huge swathes of hard-edged action. It's even, in some ways, a metaphysical treatise. "It's been my goal to keep putting the book back into the movie as much as I can," explains Snyer. And if he does that, he should be right on track.
