Zack Snyder has always surprised the audience with his gritty take on superheroes. Thanks to this, he has built himself a fan following that is still waiting for the director to return to the DC Universe. Among the films directed by Zack Snyder for the superhero world is the 2009 movie, Watchmen, based on the semi-graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.
However, before Zack Snyder was put in charge to bring the members of The Watchmen to life, Terry Gilliam was peacefully seated in the director’s chair. That is until he called the film “unfilmable” and walked off. After a bit more trial and error, Zack Snyder was finally on board and he managed to pull it off. After the release, Zack Snyder opened up about the original ending of Watchmen which would have sent the fans into a frenzy!
Zack Snyder Talks about the Original Ending of Watchmen
After the film’s release, Joel Silver, who was working with Terry Gilliam on Watchmen, took a dig at Zack Snyder’s version of the film calling it a “slave to the material.” When Snyder was asked to respond to Silver’s taunts, he stated that the original ending was “completely insane” which would have caused the fans to riot.
Talking to HuffPost, Snyder stated,
“It’s funny, because the biggest knock against the movie is that we finally changed the ending, right? If you read the Gilliam ending, it’s completely insane…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 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.”
In Gilliam’s version of Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan travels back in time to stop himself from existing. Of course, Snyder didn’t think this would fly well with the audience and decided to stick to the source material.
Zack Snyder Calls the Original Script Irresponsible
Talking to MTV News, the Man of Steel director stated that when he was handed the script for Watchmen, he was told that the movie is going to be PG-13. Of course, by the time Snyder was done with it, the movie walked away with an R rating. The script supposedly took a friendlier approach to the comic book in order to make it more “franchise-able.” Snyder stated,
“The script I was first handled for Watchmen, the studio was like, ‘ It’s going to be PG-13, it’s going to be updated [from 1985 and the Cold War] to the War on Terror, Dr. Manhattan goes to Iraq instead of Vietnam, no Manhattan on Mars, no Comedian’s death, no Rorschach being interrogated – just a superhero movie. Just a real franchise-able superhero movie.”
He continued that it was irresponsible for the studios to want to make a superhero film where there were absolutely zero consequences, despite the violence.
“To say that, you know, we are used to violence without consequences, it’s fine, nobody gets hurt, everyone gets back up, it’s PG-13. I find that’s really irresponsible.”
Despite underperforming at the box office with $186 million on a budget of $130-138 million and receiving mixed reviews, Watchmen still continues to be a topic of discussion amongst fans. It looks like Snyder knew the risk he was taking with the movie!
You can stream Watchmen on Max.
Source: HuffPost
