Watchmen Director Zack Snyder: Who Watches the Man Making Watchmen?

Watchmen is a sentimental property among fans. It tells a complex story in a variety of ways through flashbacks, supplemental materials, a story within a story, and a unique interpretation of physics. Adapting the comic into film twenty years later poses some interesting questions for director Zack Snyder.

Detail-Laden Story Presents Challenges to Filmmakers

As he states in an interview with MTV News, "When Watchmen came out [between 1986 and 1987], your basic comic book collector had maxed out on comic book heroes. Here comes Watchmen ... and boom! Your brains get blown out of your head."

The comic is set in a futuristic 1985, where Dr. Manhattan’s advanced understanding of the physical world has moved technology decades ahead; we won Vietnam and Richard Nixon is still president. An entire subplot running through the book is a horror-suspense pulp story about murder and revenge set in the eighteenth century. Dr. Manhattan exists in all times, on all planes – past, present, future, on Earth and on Mars and pretty much wherever else he feels like going.

This is all on top of the actual story, which involves many players and lots of history and lots of decisions for a filmmaker to make. Luckily film effects have caught up to Dr. Manhattan’s capabilities, removing a major obstacle for previous productions. So the final question is: What will Zack Snyder do?

Director's Resume is Short, Sweet

Mr. Snyder comes to the project with two films under his belt, the 2004 remake of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and 2006’s epic adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel 300. Both movies were critically and financially successful, proving Snyder capable of handling other peoples’ work.

Dawn of the Dead is a traditional zombie movie that appeals to people outside the horror genre. The key to that recipe – which Snyder stuck with for 300 and Watchmen – is casting a group of lesser known actors whose talent far outweighs their status, and adding enough humor to be clever without turning into farce.

300 is an interesting comic because it’s based on history. It’s a fictionalized account of events, certainly, but the facts are sound. The film adaptation treats the material as it would any historic subject, with serious thought and careful attention to detail. And though the story stays grounded in reality, the visuals stray into the surreal. Snyder chose to maintain the forced perspective framing Miller used in the comic. Casting everything in a sienna haze highlighted by crimson, he vividly reconstructed several of the most arresting images from the book, bringing the material alive in a way few adaptations have done.

Snyder’s dedication to artistry bodes well for Watchmen. Though the artistic style of that graphic novel is much more realistic than 300, it is just as gritty and visceral, which also describes the visual style of Dawn of the Dead. Both films honor their creators while expressing the director’s own creative vision. It seems Snyder’s short resume has prepared him well for the task at hand.

What Will Zack Do?

Very soon into the project Snyder announced the film would remain set in 1985. In the MTV News interview he reassures fans that the likes of Nixon and Kissinger, as well as Dr. Manhattan himself, will be played by living, breathing actors and not CGI manipulations. Snyder also confirms that "Tales of the Black Freighter" is a go, hopefully within the film but possibly as a DVD extra, whichever best serves the film.

And in terms of the science within the fiction, publicity stills reveal a run-of-the-mill yellow taxi cruising past the Gunga Diner. What happened to all that crazy Dr. Manhattan-inspired technology? In an exclusive Q&A with official fansite WatchmenComicMovie.com, Snyder explains the method to his madness: "What I tried to do is save some of those [technological] changes for later in the movie. Part of the reason is because I wanted the movie to be immediately accessible to the audience." Fair enough.

The director's understanding of the story is simple. He tells MTV News, "The bad guy wants world peace, Superman doesn't really give a shit about humanity, and Batman can't get it up." Sounds like the fate of the Watchmen world is in capable hands.