Yesterday I Saw 26 Minutes of Watchmen

Director Zack Snyder is doing a kind of traveling road show, screening clips from Watchmen 'cross the nation. Yesterday that road show traveled to the Warner Brothers screening room in Manhattan. The movie will be out in March, assuming Fox and Warner don't sue each other back to the stone age before then, but I have now seen 26 minutes of it.

First off, Snyder did a kind of breezy chatty intro. In person he seems to enjoy coming off as a bit of a goof -- he's funny and charming, but he gives you no indication that he could ever direct anything with even a trace amount of darkness in it. (And here's some Snyder trivia: as the woman sitting next to me pointed out, he has incredibly tiny feet.) He basically talked about how the studio wanted him to make Watchmen all about the War on Terror, and he said yeah, but wouldn't it be cooler if we just made the movie as much like the comic as possible. Then 300 blew up, and the studio started agreeing with him, and here we are. He also mentioned that his current cut of the movie comes in at 2:42, but he may have to take it down for the theatrical release.

Then they rolled tape. Up until that moment I wasn't sure how I felt about a Watchmen movie. I mean, Watchmen is holy writ. As a colossal fan of Alan Moore -- who has taken his name off the project -- I'm not supposed to like it. But nerd gods forgive me, it was awesome.

(Note: that incredible Watchmen/Peanuts mashup is by Evan Shaner.)

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