Joel Silver ripped open some old wounds last week when he paraded Terry Gilliam’s version of Watchmen out for the Internet to pick apart in debate. Now Zack Snyder has hit back at Silver and his claims that Snyder was too much of a “slave” to the source material. From Huffington Post:
Was Watchmen the most “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” project you’ve ever been a part of? Now Joel Silver is criticizing you for being a “slave” to the source material while touting a very different from the source material script that Terry Gilliam was going to film.
Zack Snyder: It’s funny, because the biggest knock against the movie is that we finally changed the ending, right?
Right, you used Dr. Manhattan as the threat to bring the world together as opposed to the alien squid.
Zack Snyder: Right, and if you read the Gilliam ending, it’s completely insane.
Deborah Snyder: The fans would have been thinking that they were smoking crack.
Zack Snyder: Yeah, the fans would have stormed the castle on that one. So, honestly, I made Watchmen for myself. It’s probably my favorite movie that I’ve made. And I love the graphic novel and I really love everything about the movie. I love the style. I just love the movie and it was a labor of love. And I made it because I knew that the studio would have made the movie anyway and they would have made it crazy. So, finally I made it to save it from the Terry Gilliams of this world.
Judging from the responses the previous article mustered, I fully agree with Snyder. I think you would’ve had fans calling for Gilliam’s head and tearing out throats at the box office. The full interview is quite interesting and Snyder goes into detail about some of his other work, so it’s worth it if you are a fan.
I stand by Snyder’s version of Watchmen and I think it has a lot of greatness inside of it. It’s not perfect, but it’s nearly impossible to adapt that story perfectly. At the same time, I still think Gilliam’s is an interesting take. They can all certainly exist in the same world as the original without people trying to determine which one is the very best. I prefer the original above them all, but I’m open to all ideas.
That said, Zack Snyder still made Sucker Punch. That’s really the moment where I start having some issues with his creative vision for things. I don’t think I’ve ever been as disappointed by a movie. Some members of my family still won’t speak to me for talking them into seeing it at the theater. So then I throw in Dawn Of The Dead and everything cools down a bit.
