The biggest panel of the entire San Diego Comic Con this year was "Watchmen", the film version of Alan Moore's classic graphic novel. The entire main cast showed up along with original illustrator Dave Gibbons and director Zac Snyder.
While the release of the very well-received teaser trailer last week admittedly deflated some of the excitement of this panel, an extended and more extreme montage of footage from the film was screened to very excited response. Amongst the shots are a more grisly version of Dr. Manhattan's creation, and the second Silk Spectre and Nite Owl kissing whilst a giant nuclear explosion in the background expands outwards towards them.
There's also an elderly President Richard Nixon, the Comedian in a bathrobe falling to his death, Manhattan disintegrating several Viet Cong soldiers, Nite Owl sitting despondent in his garage, a young Comedian smiling to the first Silk Spectre while dressed in their 50's garb, the second Silk Spectre pulling open the top of her superhero costume, Rorschach finding Comedian's arsenal and more.
The Q&A itself was disappointing - much of the cast was brought out, but the likes of solid actors like Patrick Wilson, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Carla Gugino only got to answer one or two rote questions. Snyder says has created a special opening credits showing the passage of time between the Minutemen (50's, 60's) through to the present day action (1985). He remains adamant that they're incorporating as much of the graphic novel as they can and used it just as much as the screenplay on-set when shooting. In fact some of the supplemental non-graphic material is being incorporated as well and some of the more action-oriented stuff has been cut to make sure all the character elements are kept.
Illustrator Dave Gibbons said his signature (a G in a box) is visible in graffiti on the various New York City sets. The actors admit that aside from the Mars scenes, they didn't shoot much green screen at all though Billy Crudup wandered around on-set covered in 140 glowing blue sensor dots which will be CG'ed over as Dr. Manhattan in the final film. Jeffrey Dean Morgan admitted that the rape scene with Sally Jupiter ended up being one of the more memorable and difficult scenes to film. Matthew Goode talked about his character background and revealed that while the public persona of Ozymandias speaks with a straight American accent, in the private scenes he talks with a slight German tinge.
Wrapping up questions, Snyder confirms the Smashing Pumpkins song used in the trailer won't be in the film or on the soundtrack. He denied a rumor that development materials from previous versions of "Watchmen" from Paul Greengrass and the like will be incorporated in the eventual DVD/Blu-ray but says the idea is cool.
