Ever since its publication and widespread critical acclaim, DC tried to get Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's iconic graphic novel deconstruction of the superhero genre onto the big screen. That was back in the eighties, so really, Zack Snyder's eventual movie adaptation had been a heck of a long time coming. For many fanboys a film of Watchmen was the Holy Grail of comic book movies - in that it would be amazing if it existed, but it probably never would. There were arguments about whether it would even work as a film, with a lot of commentators at the time suggesting it would work better as a HBO miniseries of something, in order to capture every aspect of the complex, sprawling narrative. Before the slow-mo obsessed director of 300 came on board and finally managed to cracked that most difficult of superheroic nuts the closest Warner Bros got to a Watchmen film was set to be directed by former Monty Python star and nutso filmmaker Terry Gilliam. One of the big controversies around Snyder's version was his change to the ending, which would've been even more radical had Gilliam made the film: Doctor Manhattan would've gone back in time, stopped himself from ever existing, and the whole story would be revealed to have taken place...in a comic book. A bit brain-bending, but maybe Watchmen could've used that.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
