Patrick Wilson Says ‘Watchmen’ Was ‘Ahead of the Curve’: It Was ‘So Dark’ and Allowed ‘The Avengers’ to ‘Go So Light’

Zack Sharf

Patrick Wilson said in an interview on the “Reelblend” podcast that Zack Snyder’s “Watchmen” adaptation helped pave the way for “The Avengers” and the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe to take a much lighter approach to the comic book genre. Snyder’s dark and operatic take on Alan Moore’s graphic novel proved divisive, as the film didn’t even make it past $200 million at the worldwide box office.

Wilson revealed “Watchmen” is “the only movie of mine that I have watched front to back since a premiere,” adding, ‘That movie is awesome.”

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“I just wanted to look at it as an older guy, as a filmmaker,” Wilson added. “I knew Zack was ahead of the curve. It’s weird to say that audiences weren’t ready for it. But you need a movie like that. You need movies to go so dark that then ‘Avengers’ can go so light. I do believe in that…I’d love to do that movie now. It would be so awesome to just do it now.”

Snyder’s “Watchmen” cast also featured Malin Akerman, Jackie Earle Haley, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Carla Gugino. If Snyder got everyone together to make a “Watchmen” adaptation today, he might update his script to include the New York City giant squid attack. Snyder’s boldest change in adapting Moore’s graphic novel for the big screen was replacing the squid attack with a nuclear attack for which Doctor Manhattan is blamed. The director has long stood by the change, but in a 2021 interview with Uproxx he admitted that he “might consider” keeping the squid if he was making “Watchmen” again.

“By the way, I love ‘Watchmen.’ I have no regrets. I love that movie 100 percent,” Snyder said. “It’s exactly what I wanted. And in some ways, I think there’s a great college class that someone could teach on the difference between Doctor Manhattan and the squid. And why we would have chosen Doctor Manhattan and how thematically that works as it relates to the climax of that book. But I would also say, that based on doing the movie that I just did, ‘Justice League,’ I might consider it. Only because I feel like it would have required a slightly longer movie to do the squid, than say, Doctor Manhattan.”

Snyder added, “I think that to have the squid in the movie that I made, the movie would be a little bit longer. We had Manhattan already, so we didn’t have to set him up or anything.”

“Watchmen” is available to stream on Max.

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