Watchmen:
up, up and have it away I James
Christopher's review I Kevin
Maher's review I Blockbuster
Buzz review I The
most darkly ambitious of graphic novels I Interview
with Dave Gibbons
It's summer 2008 and, in a post-production house in Culver City, Los Angeles,
Deborah Snyder, the producer of Watchmen, gets the phone call that she's
been dreading. “So, Debbie,” begins the allpowerful studio executive on the
other end of the line, “what are we going to do about Dr Manhattan's
privates?” Although Dr Manhattan - a fluorescent blue superhero - is a
central character in her $100 million (£69 million) comic-book blockbuster,
he is also very, very naked, requiring full-frontal nudity in most of his
scenes. Which is, she knows, not very Clark Kent.
“Well,” she says, stalling for time, “They're going to be blue.” Nervous
laughter all round. No really, comes the question again. What are we going
to do? “Listen,” says Snyder, “we're working it out, but I promise you that
they won't be gratuitous and they won't be in your, er, face.”
Blue supergenitals were, however, the least of the worries threatening a movie
that, for some, seemed almost destined never to reach the screen. For the
film, an epic tale of angst-ridden superheroes based on the 1986 comic-book
serial by the British writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons (later
published as a graphic novel), was also at the centre of a protracted
lawsuit brought by 20th Century Fox against Warner Bros. The former claimed
that the latter had violated a longstanding copyright on the Watchmen
project. The suit was bitterly contested, details were leaked online and, as
the movie's post-production rolled onwards, a release date suddenly seemed
unlikely.
Watchmen has, of course, always been a hot property. The story of six
superheroes dealing with their own obsolescence in a world grown inured to
them has an attractive mythic resonance. The characters too are fascinating,
kinky and deeply fractured. They include the psychopathic Rorschach, the
amoral Comedian and the loveless Dr Manhattan (the only one with actual
supernatural powers - the rest are costumed freaks). Add to that a whodunnit
narrative involving the murder of the Comedian, plus an ingenious setting in
an alternate mid-1980s, and you have the makings of a blockbuster.
Thus, from the moment the Watchmen comic book emerged it attracted big-name
interest, Gibbons says. “Very early on I had a meeting with the action
producer Joel Silver (The Matrix, Lethal Weapon), who said that he had plans
to make it with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Dr Manhattan,” he says.
The rights were initially bought in August 1986 by Lawrence Gordon, the
producer of Die Hard, who commissioned the screenwriter Sam Hamm (Batman) to
write the screenplay. Terry Gilliam was brought on board but, says Gibbons,
“after a brief meeting with Alan Moore he decided that it was unfilmable”.
“Reducing the story to a two or two-and-a-half hour film seemed to me to take
away the essence of what Watchmen is about,” Gilliam said at the time,
referring to the novel's many narrative digressions. He had decided that it
would work only as a lengthy TV mini-series.
Over the next 15 years a plethora of A-list directors and stars made repeated
attempts to revive it. “At one point I sat down with one of the other
producers, Lloyd Levin,” says Snyder, who boarded the Watchmen express three
years ago with the director (and her husband), the former commercials
director Zack Snyder. “And I said, ‘OK, so who are all the people who have
been involved with this?' And the list of names that came out was just
crazy.”
Then, in 2005, Paul Greengrass, fresh from directing The Bourne Supremacy, was
hired. “He was just weeks away from production, spending money and close to
shooting in London, at Pinewood,” Snyder says, “when suddenly there was a
regime change at Paramount [the studio backing the movie] and it was put
into turnaround” - all too often, moviespeak for allowed to die. Industry
insiders claim, though, that “regime change” was just a cover: what really
bothered Paramount was the movie's prohibitive price tag.
Snyder's own first contact with Watchmen came a year later, while deep in the
post-production process on her husband's ground-breaking graphic novel
adaptation, 300, a film that would subsequently gross more than $500 million
and was already generating great interest. And though Warner Bros, the
studio now bankrolling Watchmen, was impressed enough by 300 to allow Snyder
access to its funds (the Watchmen budget is, Snyder claims, “much less” than
the rumoured figure of $100 million), there were still fierce battles to
come.
For a start, there was the script, which after 20 years of rewrites had
drifted far from Moore and Gibbons's core story. “I felt they had lost the
Watchmen-ness of it,” says Snyder, describing a tale that had moved from the
original mid-1980s setting and was now, at the studio's behest, being
tailored towards the War on Terror. “It was Zack's intention,” she adds, “to
bring the script back as close to the comic book as possible.”
Thankfully, as the box-office dollars from 300 started rolling in, Snyder was
given more room to manoeuvre. A novice writer, Alex Tse, was hired, and
Watchmen was rebooted. The movie began filming in August 2007 in Vancouver.
It lasted for 103 days on more than 200 sets, with a smart, un-starry cast
that includes Billy Crudup
(Almost Famous) as Dr Manhattan, Patrick Wilson (Little Children) as Nite Owl
and Malin Akerman (27 Dresses) as both men's love interest, Silk Spectre.
The first cut shown to studio executives was three hours long and, faithful to
the graphic novel, filled with head-splitting gore and sexual anxiety - Nite
Owl suffers from erectile dysfunction, while Dr Manhattan instantly clones
himself and pleasures Silk Spectre with four-in-a-bed sex. “They simply
said, ‘Too violent, too sexy, and too long,'” Snyder says. “But we were
like, ‘And the problem is?'”
And then, of course, there was the genitals issue. “It's important for his
character that Dr Manhattan is naked,” Snyder says. “As he detaches himself
from his humanity he just doesn't care any more, especially not about
clothes. But the studio said, ‘Can't we put some briefs on him?'”
In the meantime they had the sensitive area of member size to approach. Though
built around Crudup's physical performance the character was fully
computer-generated, leaving Snyder and co free to choose the actual genital
appearance. “We had a choice of different sizes, going from small to large,
numbered one to 27,” she says. “Too big would have been strange, too small
and Billy would have been mad. It was a delicate decision. We went with
number 22, and let's just say that I think Billy's very happy with it.”
Even so, the battles continued until, she says, “everyone was comfortable with
the running time [2hrs 43mins] and with the fact that it was going to be as
violent and sexy as it needs to be”.
And true, the finished film, with its 18 certificate, doesn't shy away from
split skulls, murders and a brutal attempted rape scene, but that is, says
Snyder, intentional. “It's what separates it from all the other
comic-book movies out there. We show that there is a consequence to
violence, and that it's not just Spider Man crashing into walls.”
Elsewhere the movie, by turns mature, moribund and visually thrilling, is
vastly superior to its comic-book cousin, and asks big, troubling questions
about moral and political authority - among other things it implies that
fascism, in the deeds of the Comedian and the movie's perpetual Nixonian
government, is never far from the surface in Western democracy. “It goes
beyond politics,” Gibbons says, “and addresses perennial human concerns
about who we are and are we going to wipe each other out? But it's not dark
and pessimistic. It's realistic.”
“People are finally saying to me, ‘Oh, congratulations!'” says Snyder, who
explains that, since the 20th Century Fox lawsuit was settled out of court
in January, she is now facing the worldwide release of a movie that has
taken two decades to realise. “I'm proud of the film, but I'm also curious
to see what happens because it's dark, and it asks a lot of the audience.
But that's what makes it exciting.”
Watchmen opens on March 6
Holy spandex! Heroes on the way:
Wolverine
After an often cringe-worthy performance at the Academy Awards, Hugh Jackman
returns to what he does best - growling and waving his claws about as the
X-Men hero Wolverine in this prequel set 20 years before the original movie.
No song and dance required.
Released May 1
Thor
Kenneth Branagh directs big screen adaptation of Marvel comics hero. Plot
details remains sketchy, but Trainspotting's Kevin McKidd may be starring.
Released 2010
Sub-mariner
The 1939 Sub-mariner is the scaly offspring of a sea captain and an ocean
creature, and comes ashore to right wrongs and fight landlubbers. Released
2010
Luke Cage
The actor and rapper Tyrese Gibson is to star as the titanium-skinned 1970s
icon, one of the first African-American comic-book superheroes.
Released 2011
