Who watches the man making Watchmen? We do. We've been tracking every scrap of news on this project since the passing of the Keene Act. So we were delighted to sit with our friend Zack Snyder, the man at the helm of this great comics-to-film enterprise. Here's how it went down.
UGO: Unlike a lot film directors, you seem to have a greater appreciation for geek culture and the stuff that we like, which is evidenced by your passion and what you've been doing with Watchmen and 300. Are you just a big ol' geek yourself? Because this must be one of the most daunting comic-to-film adaptations.
Zack Snyder: Oh, Watchmen, as a product overall is incredibly daunting and scary. You're thinking about, "Oh, we're going to make this into a movie, right?" But for all of that initial fear, once you get over that initial fear and it becomes about what is probably a piece of cinema, or whatever you want to call it, this thing that we've created which is more directly aimed at geek culture than probably any mainstream movie ever in history, just cause it's so specific. I think, for me, I don't think about it in those terms, but when you step back, you can't help but see the geek in yourself just start to have a boner. That's crazy. I mean, in the sense that you start flipping through those books and you start talking with your guys about we're going to do Rorschach's mask or Dr. Manhattan, that's when you wake up one day and go, "What are we doing? This is crazy. Are we actually going to do this?" So, it's a labor of love on one hand, but, it's like you'd do it for free on the other hand, for sure.
UGO: Now, you've got all these hardcore Watchmen fans who are Alan Moore fanatics or whatever who are thinking, "Oh, this has never been made into a movie." If you had to pick one thing about the movie that you really will change their minds and turn them around, say, "This is why it's going to be great."
ZS: I just think that the thing... I don't know if it's one thing, like one specific thing, because I believe the tone of the movie overall is so very Watchmen-like for me anyway. We've endeavored to really try and keep all the things that you think the studio would say, "Don't do that." and all the things that if you're trying to create a business and you're going to sell a lot of tickets, then to try and get it right down the middle. And Watchmen is not down the middle at all. The book isn't, and so the movie is also strange. It's not very linear in its storytelling. It's not that plot driven, it's very charactery. All the things that a superhero movie shouldn't be, it is. And I think that that immediately let's you know that, not only are you in for a different experience when you go to the movies, but that hardcore Watchmen fans will understand, I think their biggest fear is also, in some way, the book has sold out, that we do a Hollywood makeover on it, and I think that, that, we haven't done at all. I think that that, for me, that's the biggest argument for going to check it out and see whether it's...
UGO: Whether they do or...
ZS: Yeah. But I mean in the sense of, if you can believe that it's R-rated and long and all the things that make the hardcore fans go [snaps finger and affects voice of movie reviewer from In Living Color], "Horrible," it's sending the right signal that way. We'll see. We'll see. Because you can never tell what they'll say, you know. But that's all I can hope for, that they'll go, "You know what, I see the same signals. They're right on the wall. It's that you cared, at least. So now, I'll go and judge it on its own. As a movie."
UGO: Yeah, I read Watchmen when it first came out and I was like, when I heard about the movie being made, finally, I was super-stoked. I was like, who wouldn't want to see this? If you're a fan of the Watchmen, and you think it's some Holy Grail that should never be touched again, you don't have to go see the movie. But for people who are curious to see how it gets transformed. It's like the best thing ever.
ZS: Also, you've got to imagine, for me it's like, the movie's not meant to replace the book, by any means. There's still a lot in the books that isn't covered in the movies. If you see the movie and then decide to go buy the book, you have it right. When you start to read it you go, "Oh my god, it's even richer than...I thought this giant, rich world in the movie was thick. That's nothing. That's like a wafer." But, I guess for me, as a fan of the comic book, in the last two months, another million copies of the book has shipped, my work is done, as far as that's concerned. Even if no one saw the movie, the amount of people who are now becoming exposed to the book, that's what I would hope for.
UGO: Yeah, you go into a Borders or anywhere, you see the smiley face eye and the blood stain, and...
ZS: I was in the airport, and they had Harry Potter, and Twilight, and Watchmen in the window, and I was like, "That's crazy. How did those three books get together?"
UGO: In an interview I just did with Dave Gibbons, he said, he was talking about how the original comic book was a commentary on other superhero things. It's really interesting because the characters in the context of the Watchmen, are very fascinating, because, you're like, "Wow, these are middle-aged guys running around in costumes facing some kind of mid-life crises. And the only guy who's dialed in is Rorschach." So, Dave Gibbons was saying then, that the movie is a commentary on superhero movies, contemporary superhero movies. Would you say that that's true?
ZS: I'd say that we tried to go, even though the obvious first blush for a normal consumer is that there's a superhero movie reference in it, as far as what we do with costuming is the main thing. But I think it then goes past that too, back into comic books, cause I wanted it to keep going, but I had to have it do for a cinema audience what it does for a hardened comic book reader. The first time they read it and they're like, "Dude. You know, Nite Owl looks like Blue Beetle and Batman to me. That's crazy that there's a dude who lives in a cave under his house, how can they do that? It seems like copyright infringement. But DC owns Batman, so they can do it." Your normal of view of that is how they take it to some extent, but I think if you're a comic book fan, you can go deeper with it.
UGO: To talk about the Watchmen game specifically. Tell me a little bit about how the game came to be. Were you working on the movie, and then Warner Bros. said, "Hey, let's make a game and make a prequel"? Because I know you're very involved with the game.
ZS: What happened was, when we first said ok -- because we had this problem with 300. We were like, "We're going to make a 300 game." And we're still talking about making a 300 game, to this day, a big, giant three-opera game. A big platform game. But no game came together, for whatever reason. But when we first started making the movie, we were like, "Ok, we should make it into a game." And I said, "Look, I don't want to rush the game, and have a bad game. I just can't do that." And then they were like, "What if we do this 300 video game for PS2 or whatever...
UGO: PSP?
ZS: PSP game. And in that way, it was kind of fun, it was alright. And I go, "Ok, if we can do this 'ok,' then we can do it. And we can do as good as we can do on that in the amount time we have." And they still had problems with the capes in and all that stuff. That was still an issue.
UGO: Capes are tough.
ZS: Capes are tough. Oh, yes. We had a lot of capes in there. So then, the videogame, I had all these big plans for the game, and none of it happened for me at all. So I was really disappointed by that. Then as soon as we said we were going to make Watchmen, I said, "We should get a game going now, like today. Because it's going to take a long time to finish this movie. We can maybe have a decent game." I was thinking that we would have a real game by now. Xbox-awesome-day-and-date-game. Although I was still a little, I knew what I wanted for the game, and then, what everyone was thinking was realistic, which were two kind of different things. And that really led us to the downloadable content, because it felt like, if we didn't go for 16 hours of play. We really were conservative about that, we could deliver more. Like the environments are pretty awesome. Really beautiful.
UGO: I can't believe it's downloadable.
ZS: And what they've done with the fighting is pretty awesome. The characters look good. That part, was, for me, super-important. When they said they could do that, I was like, "Ok, let's do it." And that was really how it started and why it ended up in that kind of downloadable world. It was also something that they said, "We've never really done this on that scale for a movie." And I said, "That's awesome, cool." Because maybe we're starting this other way of marketing videogames, and movies are starting to go that way a little bit.
UGO: Digital distribution, a lot of that.
ZS: Yeah.
UGO: How do you feel about, I don't know the original concept, but since the Watchmen game is episodic, downloadable, and it's also a prequel, it allows the things that were discussed in light in the graphic novel about the good old days, Rorschach and Nite Owl, "Remember when we took down Underboss?" All that. Now people who want to, who are looking forward to get to it, get to actually live those days, even better.
ZS: That's the thing. The paradox is, that for a lot comic book fans, for whatever reason, they sort of view videogames as, some do, not all, but some do, as like, "Oh, it's like a toy of the movie." They see it that way. Like we're creating a toy that they feel like belittles the intellectual property of the movie, and I personally don't see it that way. I think that's content, that's up to you, the game-maker, to make the game test your brain and your brawn at the same time. That's the game. I think that some hardcore fans have criticized me for wanting to make a video game of the movie. I still think that for all the protection we give to the smarts of it, when you get the controller in your hand and you're running Rorschach down an alley, it's just cool. You geek out.
UGO: It is cool. I want a Rorschach action figure. I want a Rorschach book cover. Binder. Pencil Case.
ZS: We're doing all those things. [points to figurines] No, but these were, mech-figures, no the guy who made it for me. There's a website and you can go and he'll make anything.
UGO: The website where you can make action figures with your own face?
ZS: I don't think it's you own face, but he can do anything you can think of. He basically has this certain mold that he can just whip out anything, and so he made me those. Manhattan. I have Ozzy and Nite Owl at home. They're pretty funny. But the real figures are pretty awesome. And we're going to do some cool, I don't know if it's going to be, general John Ant, or Sacho is going to do some super-cool dioramas.
UGO: Are you trying to not buy that sort of stuff? You get older, you try and scale it back?
ZS: No, my Han Solo and my Greedo, with hands up there, which are one of my prized possessions. And you put 'em, right, and they're facing up against each other. It's pretty great. And then I bought that R2-D2 cup. I bought him in a village in Mexico. He's really smart, R2-D2. This really awesome R2-D2 out of wood.
UGO: Do you know how far and wide you'd have to travel to find a wooden R2-D2?
ZS: No, I had to take it. I was like, "How much is this?" And he was like, "Eight dollars." And I was like, "Here. You could say 1,000 dollars."
UGO: That's after you had it in the bag. That's awesome, a wooden R2-D2. You're gonna combo.
ZS: Yeah, I'll bring him down at the end. But, it goes back to we wanted to create some kind of subversive material for the content, in addition to... I think in my original concept for the game was: you're the Comedian, you guide him, you kill JFK. My original idea, I was thinking about was I want to make a game that's super-subversive, instead of Watchmen. You play an assassin who is killing a good guy, basically. And I was like, "Ok, that was crazy." But, you know what I'm saying, that's when we...
UGO: Really mess with people's expectation of what the movie could be.
ZS: Yeah, then make the game comment, in the same way that the book comments on, comic books and society, movies and comic books and society. The game needs to comment on games, in some way, right? What kind of a game...when a game challenges the rules of good guy and bad guy. That adds a lot of levels. In some way, that's a tradition now.
UGO: The anti-hero.
ZS: Yeah, the anti-hero is, for whatever reason in the gaming world, you're allowed to exercise that muscle a little bit, right? Shoot your friend.
UGO: There are no consequences.
ZS: That to me was an interesting thing to start thinking about, and that led, in some ways, to our narrative. I don't know how much of the narrative you know. I felt like that was the whole Woodward and Bernstein thing. You know I felt like all the things that Watchmen is, you have these traditional bad guys, but in some ways, they're linked to what we remember as history or reality, and how all those things would conspire to create the 1985 that is the reality of Watchmen. Woodward and Bernstein never got to write their article, so Nixon never was impeached. We still have him because he also controls the Super League. All those dominos you want to line them up even though it's in the package of rolling down the street. Rorschach going from point to point.
UGO: When I first saw the game at E3, then it was pretty basic. They took some of the gameplay features, but for the most part, it was presented to me as a beat-em-up. I had a little red flag over my head, and I was like, "I wonder how this is going to fit into the context of things." That's probably the most important thing. But once I realized it's 1972, five years before the Keene Act, it's when Nite Owl and Rorschach are a team, before Rorschach really goes over the deep end because of the girl that he was trying to save. It really puts it in context, and I realize, now, that I'm going to go after Underboss or Jimmy the Gimmick or whatever. Now, all of a sudden, it's very cool. How it just transformed because a couple of key elements. What were some of the things you definitely wanted to see in the game?
ZS: I guess for me, the biggest thing was back to what I was saying, is that I need, exactly as you say, I want the game and the fighting and all that to be cool, and the environments to be bullet-proof, so that stuff, yes. Hopefully, that's the first thing. But then, beyond that, I just wanted to make sure that the game fit in context to the rest of the tone of everything else we were creating and that it made sense. I felt the same way when we were first looking at it, and I was like, "Yeah, that's cool". And a brawler's cool, and I guess that can be fun, but is that the game? No, that can't be the game. That's just...
UGO: Too light?
ZS: Yeah, too light. So that's when we really started to explore, these storylines and the "Why." Like in the "why" of what Rorschach and Nite Owl were trying to accomplish, and also how they were manipulated, because I also thought that was an interesting part of it. That, in some ways, they thought they were, which is kind of interesting, Watchmen-y thing, where you think you're on the case but you're really being manipulated in some ways. Are you supposed to be a witness? What are you? Those are some of the other questions that I thought were interesting, and made it worthwhile.
UGO: The book itself almost unravels like a murder mystery, slowly but surely, piece by piece, comes in and I wasn't sure how they were going to implement that into the game itself between the motion-comic style cut-scenes and scripting and all that. Everything feels right, so I think, people who are coming around to the concept of the movie, I think I don't know what the percentage of Watchmen fans who are crying out against the existence of the movie, but I'm pretty sure that there are more people, based on the initial feedback from E3 when I wrote up the Watchmen story, they're making it into a game that people are automatically assuming, "sellout." But I think everything's in its right place.
ZS: Right, that's how I feel. Maybe it's cool because it hasn't been done that way, so I think the knee-jerk is to go, "Sellout," and it's not wrong, I think at first, comparatively, to other movie video games. Movies of video games [laughs].
UGO: The movie comes out. The video game follows suit. People are kind of grouping this in with that.
ZS: Not to be mean, but Pirates of Caribbean, or whatever, I mean, let's just be real about it for a second.
UGO: Not a great game.
ZS: No, and it's really a marketing thing. I don't see the game as a marketing tool. I really don't.
UGO: I think it's complementary. The experience.
ZS: Absolutely. You create such a rich universe. Over here a game is going to exist. Over here, a movie is gonna exist. I really don't look at it that way. Also, for me, I've just done this deal with EA, which is all about that, for me. I want to be able to say, "This is a movie. This is a video game. And this is a comic book. All that I created. All long lead. All as good as they can be. None of them compromised for the other." You know what I'm saying. So that if the video game's going to take five years to create, we don't start shooting the movie until two years after we begin work on the video game. Because we want them to happen together.
UGO: And you have that video games take a long time.
ZS: Way longer. I don't want any compromise, from any, so that you can hit day and date with a giant video game that is as big as anything and as beautiful as any game that anyone has ever seen. And maybe have a movie that accompanies it that is also mind-boggling. Because I don't feel like that's also been done yet, really on a conceptual scale that is possible to do.
UGO: It's interesting that you actually take so much care and concern over how a game is done. What movie or game have you seen in the past where you're like, "This should've been a great game, because it was a great movie"?
ZS: You know, this is going to sound weird. I don't really play movie video games, or video games of movies. I just don't feel like they often have a lot to offer. That's why I was so worried about ours. I mean, I tried the Star Wars games. I liked those. I just finished Force Unleashed, and I thought it was pretty fun. Even though its...
UGO: Not strictly based on a movie.
ZS: Yeah, it's based in a universe more than anything, and also I feel that the force powers are crazy. But it's fun. Kinda interview is fun. You pull a Star Destroyer out of the sky. But it is fun. I really like first person shooters. Those are normally what I play. And I play tons of Call of Duty, and all that stuff. I loved Gears of War, and I'm psyched for the new one.
UGO: Cliffy B will be happy to hear that. I had dinner with them the other day.
ZS: Yeah?
UGO: Do you have like one of those text mail things? You'd better send him one [laughs]
ZS: I do. My son and I, our Xboxes are linked in the house. So, he has a big TV in his room. I have my big, giant plasma in the living room, and we play together a lot. It's fun. We don't go online that much, but we fight each other, and it's just a good time. Those are good, like Call of Duty. I'm trying to get my daughters to play Call of Duty, cause we want some more people to play. But they're not into it.
UGO: You've got to make sure that they get the red-dot sight.
ZS: They were good though. I had played them, they were pretty good. They're just not as into it. I just got these two new 360s, the Watchmen 360s and they're all tricked out with the... And our main one is my 300 signed by Frank. It's got "300 Frank Miller." And then I got Dave to sign my Watchmen one.
UGO: That is so cool. Let me ask you two quick questions. What do you think about the motion comics that are coming out on iTunes? The first one looks beautiful.
ZS: I think it's awesome. I think it was a really cool idea, and Dave has been so involved with it to make sure that, I mean, you should here his notes. They're awesome. You know, he does everything in audio, so you sync 'em up and you let it go. And you can watch the motion comic, and you can hear him go, "Umm, that newspaper that blows by, I feel like it's a little too wrinkly." So it's not like he...
UGO: The director's commentary.
ZS: Totally. And it's not like him just going, "Yeah, that's cool!" I mean, he just, "We never meant that, and this," and so it's very... I think when you watch the motion comic, I think the thing that you get from it as a fan, that I don't think fans even realize, a lot of things get accentuated in the motion comic. Like a focus rack or a foreground element, or whatever the things are, that Dave, now in overseeing that, has had a pretty strong hand in bringing to your attention things that you might not have seen when you read the graphic novels. It's a kind of a treat for fans. I think it's, first of all, a treat for fans who never read it. Because it's an easy, it just washes over you in a mesmerizing way. If you have read it, it's a really cool refresher because you'll actually notice things that you might not have noticed before.
UGO: Which actually ties into my final question which is, with 300, and from what I heard about how you're approaching Watchmen, in staying true to the source material, you follow the sequence of the comics pretty faithful. Obviously with Watchmen, you're going to have to take some liberties. There are a lot of panels. Can you give us an example of something you absolutely had to change for the movie, and something you had to make sure that it stayed true...
ZS: I think that in the movie, the thing that we had to change was, the Adrian scenes have become a lot denser. Because there's not a lot of Adrian scenes in the movie and you've got to get a lot of info from it. They're graphic novels. So we would combine things and ideas from all the Adrian scenes, like in his office, or the scene where he's talking the assassination attempt. Like that, we combined it with another scene where he's talking to these...
UGO: So that you get a bunch of them into one shot, as opposed to ...
ZS: And that'd be like two ideas, exactly. That was one thing that we had to change a little bit, but some of the stuff we kept really blow-by-blow from the graphic novel. Like when Dan Rorschach, in the first meeting in the kitchen and then down into the...
UGO: Into the dining area.
ZS: That's almost like shot-by-shot.
UGO: Do you ever feel confined by any of that.
ZS: You know, I really don't. Cause I work from storyboards myself, I draw everything, so it's not like I didn't redraw every frame in the movie. So it's not like I... Cause I'm so comfortable with that style of... I mean even though they're like, "Oh yeah, they're comic books. You just shoot it." And I'm like, "I drew 2,000 frames for Watchmen." It's a lot of work. In some ways it's easier to just rip a frame, rip a scene, rather than it is to try and say, "Ok, I've gotta have this happen, then I want to get to this panel, then I gotta have this other weird thing happen then get back to that panel." And it becomes like this crazy...
UGO: Like a mess. You don't want to be tied down to that.
ZS: Totally. No, it's good.
