Monday, March 9, 2009

What if... what if Zack Snyder is a real-life Ozymandias?

I know this is gonna sound crazy, but stay with me here, as I imagine a wild story. In this story, Zack Snyder is a far bigger comic-book fan than almost anybody knows. It's not just that he has great respect for 300 and Watchmen and their ilk... which is clear regardless of what you think of the movies... he actually loves comic books, in a deep meaningful way. They're his favorite things in the world and it saddens his soul to see them culturally and critically marginalized as they so often are.

And so Zack hatched a master plot years and years ago. While it's so deep and byzantine that its entirety is almost incomprehensible, here are the basics: Zack, in making his name through other adaptive projects like Dawn of the Dead and 300, would get himself in a position to film an adaptation what some would call the "Citizen Kane of graphic novels," Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen. Zack would know well in advance that many, including Moore himself, think Watchmen "unfilmable." And Zack, secretly, would agree. But publicly, Zack would insist that his movie was a 100% faithful adaptation of the story he loved so.

Now here's the twist: Zack Snyder would purposefully make a Watchmen movie that contained many of the ideas of the original novel but he that presented them in a way that was somewhat garbled and unsatisfying to viewers... at the very least, most viewers would be filled with the notion that they were missing something, that there was something more. Whether or not one liked or hated the Watchmen film, they would recognize that in reading the book they would be treated to a deeper, more fleshed-out version of what they'd just seen on the big screen. Do you get me? People of all types, from comic fans to regular moviegoers piqued by the ideas of the film, would rally behind an idea because of Zack's film.

The end result of Zack's plan, of course, would be that people would insist on buying and reading the original Watchmen graphic novel to fill out the film's story. From there, hopefully, they would be persuaded to move on to other comics... like perhaps Swamp Thing, Planetary, Preacher, Transmetropolitan, or Identity Crisis, just to pick a few random names. All of this would bring about a massive surge in the popularity of graphic novels not just among the traditional comic-shop masses but amidst the public as a whole, and Zack Snyder would finally have achieved his dream: to make comic books culturally acceptable and maybe even cool.

Like I said above... I know it sounds crazy, right? It couldn't possibly be true. You're right, of course. But just think about my story one second longer. What do you think would tell my fictional Zack Snyder that perhaps he'd been successful? What would be his television screens heralding an end to nuclear tension, what would cause him to throw up his arms with childish delight and scream "I DID IT!!!" like Watchmen's Ozymandias?

Well, I bet it would look a little something like this:

(this image is not doctored. It is a screen cap from Amazon.com taken at about 5:00 PM eastern today, Monday March 9).

Well, damn it all, Mr. Snyder. The more I think about it the more I don't like your movie. But I am in total awe of what you have accomplished.

I am not kidding when I say that this is probably the best news I personally have seen in weeks.

Now, who feels like reading some other quality graphic novels?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

this seems far fetched, but somehow I would approve of it.

By the by, I enjoyed the movie for the most part. I just didn't want to get in between you and Marc's debate.