SAN DIEGO � These days, "three hundred" director Zack Snyder is hard at work perfecting the impossible. As you read this, he is undoubtedly in some dark edit laurus nobilis, unshaven and chugging a Starbucks, doing his very best to transform "Watchmen" from an unfilmable laughable book into the future smash superhero movie.
So far, what we've seen of his efforts has been nothing short of beau ideal, from the trailer to the fan-pleasing in-jokes to the decisiveness to consume My Chemical Romance cover a Bob Dylan birdsong for the end credits.
But how does he conduct with the issue of Dr. Manhattan's crotch? What does he do when the hand demands that he curve secondary characters like Hooded Justice? And why won't the godhead of the graphic novel stop trashing Snyder when he hasn't even seen the flick? In a candid chat with MTV, the conductor of the March 2009 flick gave us a rundown of the landmines he's tiptoeing around patch crafting a cinematic event worthy of the "Watchmen" name.
MTV: When "Watchmen" was first published in 1986-87, it was a impact to readers who'd become accustomed to clear-cut, antiseptic superheroes. After all the men-in-tights movies we've seen in the last few years, ar moviegoers likewise ripe for a cinema that tears apart the mythologies of a Batman type, a Superman type and others?
Zack Snyder: Well, that's the hope. The hope is that masses see their icons in this moving-picture show, and they see them deconstructed. That creates a conversation that is transcendent of a superhero picture. It's non just "Oh, that was fun, let's get a beer," merely "That was great! Let's talk about it!" or "What does that mean?"
MTV: "Watchmen" creator Alan Moore recently gave an interview to Entertainment Weekly in which he reinforced his hatred toward any motion picture version of his book. Moore said he "would rather not know" what you do with your movie and that "There are things that we did with 'Watchmen' that could only work in a comic." How do you feel about his comments?
Snyder: I think it's consistent with his stance, and I respect that. Like I say, the point of the movie is not to replace the graphic novel. Look, after the trailer came out, "Watchmen" went to #2 on Amazon and suddenly hundreds of thousands of copies of the graphic novel are selling. That's all I john ask for. If the movie is successful, that's great. But in the end, I want people to say [Moore's] book.
MTV: It's no secret that Nite Owl is based somewhat on Batman. With the success of Christopher Nolan's films, did you try to ramp up such comparisons?
Snyder: Well, Nite Owl's still a graphic symbol who is a rich guy. He decided to become a crime-fighter. He lives in a brownstone. Under his brownstone is an abandoned subway station that he's turned into his Owl Chamber, as he calls it. He's built this ship; he's a wizardry of gadgetry. He has gadgets, and you could call him a gadget-based superhero. He has a grappling gunman, and he throws things, and so he is very Batman-esque in that way. He was based on Batman as advantageously as Blue Beetle.
: You've said in front that the character is like Batman if Batman couldn't have it up.
Snyder: [Laughs.] Yeah, that's just real. You've got to have that scene.
MTV: At Comic-Con, you revealed some very cool new "Watchmen" posters. What was the inspiration slow them?
Snyder: There were some materials that David [Gibbons] had created to advertise the book. We took those and said, "Let's just get some versions of that with Photoshop magic and re-create them almost exactly." [The Sally Jupiter] i we had to make up; that's the only one we didn't have. They were actually intentional to be put in comic book stores to advertise the book. They were drawings that looked exactly like that.
MTV: Another big question, pardon the pun, is Dr. Manhattan's crotch area. He's au naturel in many scenes. So did you CGI things out or enhance them or what?
Snyder: It's an R-rated motion-picture show, right? What you construe in the trailer had to be a minuscule bit squished around so it could get on TV. I think in the final film, you'll see it's true to the graphic novel. He's naked.
MTV: Malin Akerman's Silk Spectre costume also looks beautiful merely seems like it would need some serious technical assistance.
Snyder: It's all latex. It's a very tight latex suit that we had to oil her up to get her into. [Laughs.]
MTV: Was it hard for her to deal with?
Snyder: I cerebrate it was uncomfortable, simply we were like, "It's sexy." And so she was like, "I estimate it's OK." ... She was constantly like, "Ow, it's poking me here!" and I was like, "Well, that's the superhero lifestyle!"
MTV: The footage you've shown gives us a brief peek at some secondary Watchmen like Dollar Bill. But you almost cut out Hooded Justice, correct?
Snyder: Yeah, it was unvoiced [to get them all in]. There was a point where Hooded Justice wasn't in the moving-picture show. But then I was like, "No, we've got to take him in," so we had to scramble and get him in. Hooded Justice is in the movie, and he beats up Blake.
MTV: What's the current campaign time on the flick?
Snyder: Right nowadays, it runs at around two hours and 50 minutes. I'm trying to make it shorter, because it's better if it's shorter, on the face of it. There is an on-line petition that says, "Keep 'Watchmen' at three hours." We'll visit how that ends. Look, I simply don't want to lose any level line, because you know eventually that's what happens. You start to birth to cut characters out, and I just don't want to do that.
MTV: Where do you stand with "Tales of the Black Freighter"?
Snyder: We're wait for some of the animation to come in, and we're just working on the edit. We did come Gerry Butler to do the vox. He's being the voice of the Sea Captain.
MTV: Can you tell us about a moment creating the "Watchmen" movie where you dared to veer away from the comic?
Snyder: Wow. ... I added dialog between Nixon and Kissinger � that kind of stuff was fun to do. It's Nixon and Kissinger, and they're senior than we would commemorate them, because it's 1985.
MTV: Are the Watchmen in these scenes?
Snyder: No, we [cut] to scenes with them. There are scenes where Nixon goes to the War Room, and they're talking about the escalating war with the Russians. It's that course of the story. ... In most cases, it's elaboration.
MTV: You're making a film out of a literary classic, where everybody knows how it ends. Do you see yourself combat the desire to change the conclusion and just throw a curveball at all the die-hard fans?
Snyder: I don't. There's something that happens in the graphic novel at the very, very end with one of the lead story characters and how he resolves things that is not very Hollywood. ... Basically, the graphic novel offers us a moral quandary. That's the crux of the leger: It offers you a moral quandary about what's the right thing to do. It's so coordination compound that the true resolve of what is right is non an light one-line posit [typical] for Hollywood. ... In order to create the conversation at the end of the movie, in order to create the debate about whether it's right or wrong, you need to do it a sealed way. And that's what we well-tried to do. ... For the fans, it's not some what happens at the end. It's about being able to have that conversation later the end.
Check out everything we've got on "Watchmen."
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