It looks like we now have a new, cinematic beef to follow. Sort of. Last week, producer Joel Silver declared that Zack Snyder‘s take on "Watchmen" was a "slave" to Alan Moore‘s comic, and that his proposed version that had been brewing at 20th Century Fox with Terry Gilliam, would’ve been better (though it would’ve essentially ditched Doctor Manhattan). Well, it hasn’t taken long for Snyder to respond.
The director, along with his wife and producing partner Deborah Snyder, sat down with Huffington Post to talk "300: Rise Of An Empire," but took a moment to share their feelings on Silver-Gilliam-Watchmen-gate. And basically, Snyder asserts that fans wouldn’t have been happy if Gilliam had the reins.
"….if you read the Gilliam ending, it’s completely insane," he said." 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."
And Deborah Snyder agrees with Zack that it was basically a no-win situation. "But it’s interesting because… it’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t. You have people who are mad that the ending was changed and you have other people saying, ‘Oh, it was a slave to the graphic novel.’ You can’t please everybody," she says.
"I feel like ‘Watchmen’ came out at sort of the height of the snarky Internet fanboy — like, when he had his biggest strength," Zack Snyder continues. "And I think if that movie came out now — and this is just my opinion — because now that we’ve had ‘Avengers‘ and comic book culture is well established, I think people would realize that the movie is a satire. You know, the whole movie is a satire. It’s a genre-busting movie. The graphic novel was written to analyze the graphic novel — and comic books and the Cold War and politics and the place that comic books play in the mythology of pop culture. I guess that’s what I’m getting at with the end of ‘Watchmen’ — in the end, the most important thing with the end was that it tells the story of the graphic novel. The morality tale of the graphic novel is still told exactly as it was told in the graphic novel — I used slightly different devices. The Gilliam version, if you look at it, it has nothing to do with the idea that is the end of the graphic novel. And that’s the thing that I would go, ‘Well, then don’t do it.’ It doesn’t make any sense."
So there you have it. Snyder has made his case for his version of "Watchmen," though we think the director claiming it’s a "satire" is a bit much (though yes, that sex scene was hilarious). Thoughts? Is Snyder right that fanboys woudn’t have liked Gilliam’s take either? Let us know below.
