To comic book fans, "Watchmen" is the ultimate comic book movie they've been waiting for, but how does that help people who had to be told that "The Dark Knight" was a Batman sequel? Here to help are the stars of the film, who screened the first footage for their most devoted fans at this summer's San Diego Comic Con.
Alan Moore's graphic novel, illustrated by Dave Gibbons, is set in an alternate world inhabited by costumed characters, some super powered, some just masked vigilantes. In this world, our history has been altered by their participation. Nixon remained in office (for five terms!) with Watergate left covered up. With Dr. Manhattan on our side, Vietnam and future Cold War threats were easily thwarted.
Dr. Manhattan was rendered godlike by a nuclear experiment accident. With the power to disintegrate and reconstitute, teleport and exist without time, among other skills, he is a major special effect in the film. Billy Crudup plays the character, but worked in a motion capture suit, leaving visual effects artists to render him in the film.
"[It was] not physically challenging at all," said Crudup. "I was basically in pajamas. There was the occasional fear that I was going to catch on fire, but big deal. These guys were in rubber suits, they had to work out, blah, blah, blah. I was eating donuts ready to be sculpted."
Manhattan's super powers are not just visual treats. They lead him to a philosophical existence. "Essentially he’s somebody who is preoccupied by something that is incomprehensible to people. He no longer has any of the practical needs that make up our entire days, like eating, sleeping, using the bathroom. He is not in the world in a social way. I spent a lot of my times in scenes trying to imagine what sort of problems he would be trying to solve. Right now I’m just listening to the wind in my head."
With a resume filled with sometimes obscure indie dramas, Crudup may be best known to mass audiences as the lead singer in "Almost Famous" or Tom Cruise's superior in "Mission: Impossible III." It's not that he's avoided mainstream movies. "Watchmen" was an easy sell.
"As soon as I read the script I was in it. I have superficial expectations of what is going to happen in any kind of comic book movie, or superhero movie. The genre does a very good job of setting up expectations and fulfilling them. That is what is gratifying about them but at the same time it’s often what is tedious about reading them. The characters themselves go through the same sort of birth, deconstruction, and then rebirth. To read something that was aware of that typical ambition subverted at every chance it got was just fascinating to me. That was all I needed."
If a multi-layered political allegory has a "villain," it would by Ozymandias. He's the one with the megalomaniacal plan. Matthew Goode plays Ozymandias in the film.
"There is only so much you can flesh out without giving too much away," said Goode. "I think that parts the joy of going and watching the film. There is a huge amount of mythology, I was just thinking a lot of things work in reverse in the film. I always thought by the end that Ozymandias was firmly right and someone had to do it, otherwise the world would have ended. It was brilliantly practical really."
Of course, all bad guys think they're doing good. "He’s quite a humanist really. The stuff I brought up was really true. It’s not something that we really tried to fully explain in the movie. It’s not ‘Oh, he’s German and he’s got this thing going on, it’s crazy.’ But it makes it easier for me. I don’t really know how much more to give you than that, unless it’s more specific. My brain is a tangential f*ck mind train."
Going further into shades of gray is The Comedian. A popular vigilante, his private life was not so heroic. He attempted to rape another crime fighter, Sally Jupiter, and shot to death a pregnant woman who claimed to bare his child. Best known for his role as Izzy's hunky patient Denny on "Grey's Anatomy," Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays The Comedian.
"I may lose some of my hardcore fans here which is kind of the reason that I wanted to do it," said Morgan. "I'm known for being the nice guy and the opportunity to play a f*cking devil reincarnated, a soulless bastard as The Comedian really, that opportunity was something that I would've never passed up. Look, if I lose some fans I'll probably make some other ones."
If the movie works as well as the comic, the amazing thing will be that people still sympathize with The Comedian in the end. "Getting into the heads of these characters was kind of an ordeal. The actions of The Comedian are brutal sometimes. This is something that's a little different than I've ever done. I had hard times with it too. There are a couple of things that The Comedian does that I never ever in a million years would've thought it was something that I would even think twice about as an actor, but I could make no excuses for it. So it was a couple of rough days of filming where I was just like, 'This is tough.' Now, the actions of The Comedian, the arc that this character goes through is a substantial arc. His very being is questioned and he questions himself which for me is what attracted me so much to The Comedian. At first glance it's like, 'Oh, you're playing this bastard, just a mean son of a bitch.' But the more I looked into this character, there layers to this guy. How do you read a book about a guy that does the things he does and yet you sympathize with him? How the hell does that happen? I found that fascinating."
If any of the die hard comic book fans doubt Morgan's full commitment to The Comedian, he assures you that he constantly returns to the source material. "I've read this thing 25 times and every time I read it I discover something new. There's something else in there. I'll probably read it another 25 times before this movie comes out. You guys are smart. Everyone that's interviewed us has read this thing and they know it inside and out and it's intimidating. The fan base for 'Watchmen' is an intimidating group of people who are very knowledgeable. We've got to know our stuff. We needed to know it then and we have to continue to know it. That's the funniest thing. I was rereading the book last night because I was like, 'I have to revisit this thing right now.'"
Sally Jupiter's alter ego is the Silk Spectre. She was another costumed crime fighter, who ultimately gave birth to a daughter, Laurie, who carried on the Silk Spectre name. Carla Gugino plays Sally in the film, and Malin Akerman plays Laurie.
"Carla and I, we actually got to spend a bit of time before shooting the film so we were able to hash out the dynamic between mother/daughter," said Akerman. "It was a very odd conversation at first. 'You're going to be my mother now' but we actually found a common streamline. We actually both have mothers that have some sort of aspect of Silk Spectre number one. I mean, every relationship, you can find something to associate with so I think it was a really sort of lovely relationship before we even started shooting. So then it became more real as far as the dynamics of those characters."
Add parental issues to the list of "Watchmen"'s social allegories. "I think we all know with relationship with parents, not just mothers and daughters," said Gugino. "You're always trying to redefine your own self and say, 'I'm nothing like them' and then generally get to a place where you're sort of like, 'Oh, I'm kind of more like them than I thought.' So there are all of those dynamics. I think what's so interesting about this too is it is very human. It is a very universal piece sort of disguised in graphic novel form."
Fans will still get to see the hot babes in revealing costumes. Maybe the metaphor of different generations will sink in subconsciously. ""Sally Jupiter has made her own costume which is sort of this 1940s pinup, Vargas sort of [outfit]," Gugino explained. "Then she so wants her daughter to continue her dream which isn't necessarily her daughter's dream. She has the modern latex kind of version of it but it's still sort of like but you can't have something too different."
Speaking of costumes, the aptly named Rorschach sports the most mysterious one. His mask is an inkblot, like the famous psychological tests. Following his career comeback with an Oscar nomination for "Little Children," Jackie Earle Haley plays Rorschach.
"My agent called and said, 'Hey, man, I have some bad news for you and some good news. What would you like to hear first?'" Haley recalled. "I said, 'Give me the bad news.' He goes, 'You're not going to be doing the Clint Eastwood movie because you're going to be doing the "Watchmen".' It's just an incredible role, an incredible property. The source material is absolutely amazing."
Haley will be introducing some audiences to Rorschach for the first time, but he is acutely aware of those who already know very well who his character is. "The only thing about it, again, is that everyone has such an idea in their heads about what this guy and what he sounds like and all of that. So I had a very strong sense of responsibility and accountability, but you have to go in there and work with your director and get after it and make decisions and give it your best. That's what we did and so hopefully it'll be what people envisioned this guy to be."
As a fan himself, Haley can vouch for his costars' success at immersing themselves in their roles. "Before we started shooting, we were walking around the halls of the production office and I'd only seen [Jeffrey Dean Morgan] maybe once or twice at the most, but we'd kind of met. I kept walking past all these people, but there was this older producer guy who I hadn't met yet. I was kind of busy and so I didn't walk up to him and kept walking by. I must've passed him three or four times and he finally looked over at me and said, 'Jackie.' I looked over and I didn't recognize Jeffrey. I recognized The Comedian. He was in the old guy make-up.
For the longest time I really got used to the fact that he kind of looked that way because for the next month or so he was always in the old guy outfit. Even out in the daylight I would be standing this close talking and it just looked so real and it felt like he really kind of embodied this 63-year-old. It was so believable just standing there talking to him. Somewhere along the line he started playing the younger character and then I got to know Jeffrey as he really exists."
"Watchmen " opens March 6, 2009.
Your Talkback on this Story