Zack Snyder’s Watchmen: revisiting the controversial adaptation

Last Updated on November 28, 2022

Dark and dystopic superhero films have come and gone throughout the years–some with more edge, like Logan, and some with a little more humor, like Super. Yet they all owe a little bit to the famous graphic novel which deconstructed the superhero genre in such an impactful way. The story has been interpreted in so many different ways that you can gleam completely opposite messages, depending on your views. And the one that its original creator Alan Moore downright refuses to watch. That’s right, today we’re diving into the dystopic world of Zack Snyder’s Watchmen.

There are few comic book adaptations that had as much trouble getting off the ground as Alan Moore’s Watchmen. The film was in development for many decades, under many different studios, until the cameras finally got rolling. In a lot of ways, it’s a miracle that it even happened. So, for a property that was so revolutionary and beloved, why did they have such trouble?

In this episode of DC Revisited, we examine how Terry Gilliam, Paul Greengrass and others tried to bring the graphic novel to the big screen and how it took the runaway success of 300 for Zack Snyder to get the reins. While a hit, the film was also criticized by fans of the comic for the few departures it made, while the HBO sequel series seemed to be more of a sequel to the comic than the film. Why was the movie so controversial, and how does it hold up today? We’ll dig in with this fresh episode of DC Revisited, written, narrated and edited by Tyler Nichols.