When Zack Snyder scored a surprise box office smash with his adaptation of Frank Miller and Lynn Varley’s limited comic book series “300,” every studio in town wanted him in their directors stable. This hit also came on the heels of his well-reviewed remake of George A. Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead,” and while I’m not a fan of that film, I couldn’t deny the craft. Snyder, who’d cut his teeth on commercials and music videos, was a visionary. And when he brilliantly captured the brutal, ab-shredded aesthetic of Miller and Varley’s “300,” I was excited to see what he could do with a project that had a little more going on in its noggin.
Snyder must’ve felt the same way, because, for his third feature, he decided to climb the filmmaking Everest of adapting Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ wildly subversive superhero epic “Watchmen.” The limited series comic book (not a graphic novel per Moore) was considered holy writ by a legion of fans, so they kept a close eye on which directors circled the project. There was enthusiasm for Terry Gilliam, Darren Aronofsky, and Tim Burton, cautious optimism for Paul Greengrass (because the material wasn’t in his wheelhouse), and incandescent outrage over Michael Bay.
In 2008, the conventional wisdom held that Snyder was a damn near perfect hire, if only because he’d faithfully adapted “300.” He had the visual acumen to bring this dystopian world to life, but was he up to the rigorously intellectual demands of the storytelling? Reviews were positive with reservations at the time, but the movie’s biggest fan 16 years later might be Christopher Nolan, who told The Hollywood Reporter in 2023 that “Watchmen” was “ahead of its time.” But why is one of our brainiest filmmakers so taken with Snyder’s box office disappointment (which is currently streaming for free on Tubi)?
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Nolan thinks Watchmen should’ve been released after The Avengers
Jackie Earle Haley does some investigating as Rorschach in Watchmen – Warner Bros
While promoting “Oppenheimer” in 2023, Nolan (who produced and has a story by credit on “Man of Steel”) found time to shout out Snyder’s take on the less-than-heroic/fascistic exploits of a costumed crime-fighting squad. As he put it:
“The idea of a superteam, which it so brilliantly subverts, wasn’t yet a thing in movies. It would’ve been fascinating to see it released post-‘Avengers.'”
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With such glowing praise from one of our greatest living filmmakers, you’d think Snyder would be open to a re-release. You would be wrong. “I kind of like that people missed it when it came out,” he once told Letterboxd, “Because I just think that it’s a movie that was so personal to me when I made it. I spent a lot of my credit that I got from ‘300’ on that movie, and I was happy to do it.” He then added, “I think I would leave it, and just let it be. For those that know, know.”
I know fans of the comic who dislike or outright hate Snyder’s “Watchmen,” which is puzzling to me because he didn’t make any critical changes to the story. There are so many fantastic moments in “Watchmen.” It’s fashionable to ridicule the film’s use of Leonard Cohen’s original recording of “Hallelujah” to score a sex scene between two of its superheroes, but I think it’s a cleverly cheeky touch; that song has been used and abused for ages in movies and commercials, but none of them deployed the OG version. This is meant to be funny.
So, take Nolan’s advice and give Snyder’s “Watchmen” another go (especially while it’s still on Tubi). It just might click for you this time.
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