Dave Gibbons Talks Watchmen
The legendary graphic artist reflects on his experience with Zack Snyder's film -- which he loves -- and why co-creator Alan Moore doesn't want to talk about it
Too reverential to the source material? Not reverential enough? What happened to the squid, anyway? Zack Snyder's long-awaited adaptation of Watchmen divided both critics and fan-boys upon its theatrical release, while its US domestic gross -- $107.5 million -- was certainly less than the studio might have expected from the director of the enormously successful 300. But with the film now available on DVD and Blu-ray -- and in Snyder's extended director's cut, which integrates footage from The Black Freighter -- Watchmen is set to take on a new life, perhaps even bound for the cult status its source material suggested. And one man who's more than pleased with the film is none other than the graphic novel's creator Dave Gibbons, the artist whose vivid imagery gave life to Alan Moore's revolutionary text. We caught up with him recently to ask him about the director's cut, his reflections on the film, and what Moore really thinks.
Looking back on Watchmen, what are your thoughts -- do you think it succeeded as a film?
Well, I'm basically thrilled with the movie, you know; it's been in the making for years. There have been proposals to make it -- some I was excited about, some I was less excited about. But I think the way that it finally has been made is just great. I honestly can't imagine it being made much better. I couldn't say it's perfect, but then the graphic novel it was based on wasn't perfect. I can't imagine it being a more faithful adaptation: it's got all the detail, all the visual richness, all the emotional richness of the original; the same ambiguity. I do think that on DVD it's going to be an even better experience, because one of the strengths of the graphic novel is that you can stop, refer back, and carry on reading. I think you're going to be able to do that with the DVD as well. On the Blu-ray version you're going to be able to actually look at frames from the graphic novel as you watch the movie -- and I've heard reports of people sitting in movie theatres with the graphic novel open on their knees, so they can do that very thing. Yeah, no -- I'm thrilled with it.
Why do you think the film performed not as well as the studio perhaps expected?
It's very strange, you see, because I think the kind of problem we had with Watchmen, if there was a problem, was that it came hot on the heels of The Dark Knight -- which did incredible business. I don't think it's that Watchmen has done badly, I think it's being compared to a movie that did phenomenally, surprisingly well. I think it took everybody by surprise exactly how well Batman did. I really don't have a perception of Watchmen doing badly and I think, you know, it has been said about Watchmen that it was unfilmable. Actually, one of the producers put it better when he said that it was "unfinanceable". I think the fact that it's a long movie, that it's an R-rated and an adult movie, the fact that there are no big box-office stars in it -- although there are some wonderful actors -- I think all of those things might have mitted against its box-office success. But I think, all things taken into account, that it's done very well. I have every confidence that on DVD and Blu-ray it'll perform well up to expectations.
There's been a lot of talk about Zack Snyder's director's cut. Will we see
I've seen a director's cut, a rough cut of that, because they got me to sit in a recording booth in Los Angeles and do a commentary on it -- so I've seen the whole thing with
That's what the fans want.
Oh, I think the fans want that and I think that's as close to a definitive Watchmen adaptation that you're ever gonna get. That stands at three-and-a-half hours, but if you want the almost word-for-word, line-for-line, picture-for-picture version, you can get the "motion comic", which is an animation of the graphic novel. With adaptations, I suppose there are some fans who will settle for nothing less than every word and every image -- but I don't necessarily think that makes for a good movie. I think you have to accept that you're going into a different medium and you have to make compromises. There are things you can do in movies that you can't do in comics and things you can do in comics that you can't do in movies. But I do think that it's been very intelligently adapted and Zack's even hit on things that I wish we'd hit on in the original comic book.
What's an example?
I knew you were gonna ask that! Well the whole thing for me, visually speaking, has been quite surreal. When I first saw the movie, I'm sitting in a movie theater watching, for real, the movie that I saw in my head when I drew it. When you draw a comic book you kind of run a movie and freeze a frame, you know. But to actually go on the set and to see the characters, to be in the room with the characters -- to smell the cigar smoke -- was incredible. To be inside the Owl ship which, you know, had originated inside my head and it's now outside my head and I'm inside that is such a surreal and bizarre thing. I think the actual realization of all those things... I'm thinking particularly of the opening montage where Zack put elements in there that we hadn't addressed but, to me, just made the whole world come alive and showed in a really immediate and graphic way how the Watchmen world was different to our world. It was the absolute orientation of where we were. That I think was a masterstroke. I think also the fact that it was kept in 1985 was one of the things that's been most crucial in the successful adaptation, because it now has a kind of an historic distance; it has the feeling of a classic kind of fable or a parable rather than something that's trying to be very contemporary or up to date.
You once remarked that you thought the time had passed for Watchmen to become a film. What was it that made you change your mind -- was it Zack?
Well, I think I first spoke to Zack after the premiere of 300, the adaptation of Frank Miller's novel, and I was just bowled over by that, by how faithful it was -- not only to the way the graphic novel looked, but to the spirit of it and what Frank had in mind. And I just got a gut feeling from the beginning that Zack actually understood Watchmen. There was really nothing I saw after that to dissuade me from that point of view. I think the fact that he had just come off the back of a huge success like 300, which made a lot of money for the studio, meant that they were very willing to let him see his vision out. Certainly by the time I arrived on the set there were things that I wasn't happy with in the script that he'd managed to get reversed, and were much closer to what we wanted. In fact, to begin with the whole ending of Watchmen was completely different -- it was much more 'good guy kills bad guy, rides off into sunset with girl'---
Escapes giant squid...
[Laughs] Yeah. The first thing that Zack said to me when I got on the set was, "Dave, Adrian lives". I said "great", because once that happens all the ambiguity is retained, all the moral conundrum stays in place. So I was really pleased about that. I think also the fact that it now stands in relation to superhero movies, possibly as Watchmen the graphic novel stood in relation to comic; in that the general audience is now very familiar with the idea of superheroes, they understand all the conventions, you know -- the secret underground headquarters, the costumes, the crime fighting -- they don't have to have that explained to them, so it's very timely from that point of view. Of course it's also a bizarre coincidence that when the graphic novel came out it was kind of paired with Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns, and now
Next: Gibbons discusses the previous mooted versions -- including Terry Gilliam's -- and Alan Moore's stance on the film.
dj Mark on 07-27-2009 06:35 PM
I finally got around to checking out Watchman on PPV this weekend. I picked up the graphic novel before the movie came out but decided to pass on the movie in theaters because I just wasn't that taken with the book. However, like the book, the movie had some brilliant ideas spread out amidst some less successful ones.
As with the novel, I liked most of Rorshach and Dr. Manhattan's scenes, but found everything else rambling and more than a little dated -- and not simply because it took place in 1985. I can understand why the moral ambiguity and depiction of super heroes was revolutionary for the time, but the sense of political urgency in the Russia/U.S. conflict felt forced.
I was turned off by the gore, the bad Nixon makeup, and that Hallelujah scene. I wish there had been more Ozymandias, but I still think the ending is brilliant (even without the squid).
Bob S. on 07-27-2009 10:42 PM
@dj Mark:
You know, I think Matthew Goode's Ozymandias is one of the things that grates one me the most about the entire movie. I felt like he was totally miscast.
I do agree, though, that it's really hard to transplant the Soviet-US tensions to today - it just doesn't translate well. Snyder's gore also turned me off. It was excessive, didn't add to the story, and felt like it was there for the sake of satisfying the 300 holdover crowd. The Nixon makeup was absolutely horrible.