Zack Snyder Thinks The Dark Knight's Success Helped His Watchmen Movie

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There are few comic book movies that can compete with Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" in terms of sheer, near-universal reverence. However good you think it is, "The Dark Knight" is somehow better. It was a landmark moment in blockbuster cinema. It also helped usher in a new era for DC on the big screen. Its success even helped the live-action "Watchmen" movie, according to its director Zack Snyder.

In a January 2009 interview with the New York Times ahead of the movie's release, Snyder discussed "Watchmen" but also touched on the success of Nolan's second installment in his eventual "Batman" trilogy starring Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne. Mind you, this was soon after "The Dark Knight" had made $1 billion at the box office, as it was fresh in people's minds. As Snyder sees it, that success and positioning comic book movies as serious cinema opened the door for people to appreciate something like "Watchmen." Here's what he had to say about it:

"I think it's helped a lot. I think it has. It's as serious as, like, brain surgery on a baby – which I think is a good thing, I'm not saying that in a bad way – but you can't have a superhero movie more serious than that. It's like 'The Reader.' I think it does lay crucial mythological groundwork for the appreciation of 'Watchmen.' Maybe I'm too close to it, but that's my feeling."

"Watchmen" is based on the seminal graphic novel from writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons. It takes place in an alternate world where the mere presence of American superheroes changed history. The U.S. won the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon is still president, and the cold war is still raging. When a retired hero is killed, his former teammates must investigate.

"Watchmen" is a very well-regarded piece of literature that helped change the way people looked at comic books. It was a game changer. That made the movie a difficult undertaking.

"When they talk about the graphic novel, about how it's gritty and real," Zack Snyder added. "I always go, 'Yeah, you realize also though that a lot of that book takes place on Mars. And Manhattan is 200 feet tall when he walks through the jungles of Vietnam. And the bad guy-slash-good guy does have an Antarctic lair that looks like possibly like an Egyptian pyramid-ish place.'"

Christopher Nolan later called Snyder's "Watchmen" movie ahead of its time. In that same interview, the "300" director explained that, even though it helped his movie's cause, "The Dark Knight" and "Watchmen" are fundamentally different movies.

"The thing about 'Dark Knight' is its objective is to set Batman into your world, so that you can imagine the moral dilemmas he faces are exactly parallel to moral dilemmas that you would face in this world, today, if you were out there fighting crime dressed like a bat. Where I think in 'Watchmen,' because it creates metaphors and symbolism, it has a little freer of a hand. It's pointing a finger at those exact moments, going, 'Really? Doesn't this also remind you of this? Or doesn't that make you think this?' That's where I think that aesthetically the movies diverge."

"Watchmen" was far from a hit at the box office in its day, but it established a long relationship between Snyder and DC. Snyder would end up working with Nolan, as he produced 2013's "Man of Steel," which kicked off the former DCEU.

You can grab Zack Snyder's "Watchmen" on 4K, Blu-ray, or DVD from Amazon.