For the last few weeks I’ve been working on a piece about Zack Snyder’s remarkable 300, a CGI-heavy adaptation of the Frank Miller graphic novel. His next project after that is Watchmen. I had kind of assumed, after the Gilliam version died, that all future Watchmen projects were snares and delusions, but Snyder’s appears to be actually happening.
I’m also allowing myself to hope that it’ll actually be good. Dawn of the Dead was good. (Watch Johnny Cash rock the opening credits here.) 300 is good. And the two movies are good in very different ways. And talking to Snyder, he seems to have a really strong sense of Watchmen — he has interesting things to say about working with big studios to make a movie that is deeply corrosive of the superhero archetype, which is awkward given that studios make lots of $$$ off of said archetype. There are some quotes from him here. Check dude out: “I have to remind them, I go, ‘look, it’s much more Strangelove than Fantastic Four,’ which they don’t like hearing.”
And now, Watchmen casting rodeo! I don’t care as long as Jude Law = Ozymandias. He can catch a bullet, I know he can…
(In other news: German guys are sword-fighting again. Like, really sword-fighting. And chimps are making spears. Truly, these are the end times. )