After delivering the surprise blockbuster hit, 300, based on the Frank Miller comic of the same name, Zack Snyder was handed the keys to the crown jewel of graphic novels: Alan Moore’s Watchmen. While others had tried and failed to bring an adaptation of the seminal comic book to the big screen, Snyder brought the movie in for a landing.
However, in a taste of things to come, Snyder delivered a massive three-hour long film (with an even longer director’s cut) that received a decisive reaction from audience and critics. There were also slow-motion action scenes, a Zack Snyder signature move, that seemed to suggest the director missed a point of the comics. These characters aren’t supposed to look cool. They’re a refutation of the notion of superheroes. Yet the film was somehow also excessively devoted to the Moore comic despite also creating an alternate ending.
Jump to the present where Snyder’s Watchmen has earned itself a notable champion: Christopher Nolan.
In a new The Hollywood Reporter profile on Snyder, Nolan outed himself as a huge fan of the Rebel Moon director’s first crack at the world of superheroes.
“I’ve always believed Watchmen was ahead of its time,” Nolan said. “The idea of a superhero team, which it so brilliantly subverts, wasn’t yet a thing in movies. It would have been fascinating to see it released post-Avengers.”
Nolan has a point, and one only has to look at the success of The Boys, which swims in very similar waters as Watchmen. Both properties deal with how superheroes would really act in real life, and mostly, they’d be messy humans who are either drunk on power or very, very disturbed.
(Via The Hollywood Reporter)
