MONDO EXTRAS

On Retaining the Spirit of the Ending:
"The ending does not puss out, I will assure you of that. In the War on Terror meeting, there was a different ending for the movie. Basically, the moral checkmate that's [at] the end of the graphic novel -- to me that's the point of the graphic novel. The question about whether or not it was the right thing to do -- and the way all the characters have to react to that -- is really beautifully constructed, so that the question it poses is really the crux of what the graphic novel is, I think. And that's the movie. And I can assure you that, in that first meeting, that was not the 'why' of the movie. The 'why' of it was 'run around and fight in rubber suits and beat the shit out of each other' -- which has also got merit, I will not say it doesn't, but that's not why you make this movie."

On How It Compares to Other Comic-Book Movies:
"Well, that question is related to the graphic novel. The graphic novel lives in a comic book world. Iron Man and Batman are not based on graphic novels per se. Those characters get to go on adventures based on the director or writer coming up with an adventure for them to go on. And maybe there are political and/or creative reasons why they do those things that are completely valid and awesome. But they don't serve a piece of literature like Watchmen does, and so I have an obligation to that material. And the last thing it wants to do is send its characters on an adventure in the sort of classic Hollywood sense. We have been trained by Hollywood to think of what a superhero is and [the graphic novel] tries to deconstruct that. Superheroes are mythology and when you can get at the 'why' of your own mythology, I think that's a cool thing and I think hopefully that's what Watchmen does.

Read what Watchmen co-creator and illustrator Dave Gibbons had to say about Snyder's movie and the comic book's legacy.