Watchmen Skulk to the Screen (The New York Times)

By DAVE ITZKOFF

BURBANK, Calif.

WHEN Zack Snyder became the director of the film adaptation of “Watchmen,” the graphic novel about troubled superheroes in a declining age, he knew that he was taking on not only a seminal piece of popular culture but more than 20 years of unfulfilled expectations and competing agendas.

From his encounters with the original comics, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, he was well versed in the creators’ weighty, grown-up ideas about the futility of heroism and knew that they had no enthusiasm for seeing “Watchmen” turned into a movie. He was also aware that many directors before him had been unsuccessful at the same endeavor, and he expected that he would have to fight his studio to make the film he wanted. (He did not anticipate, however, that one year before its release, a rival studio would sue to prevent his movie from reaching theaters.)

But Mr. Snyder said he believed that his greatest challenge would be satisfying the desires of the book’s devoted fans, who, like him, regard it as an exemplary work of postmodern storytelling and who would eviscerate him if he strayed too far from the original comics. And he believed that the only path to satisfying these viewers began by breaking from the source material.

“Watchmen,” which opens on March 6, begins with a scene depicted only in fragments in the comics: a lengthy fight between an unknown assailant and an over-the-hill avenger called the Comedian. This is followed by an unhurried opening credit sequence, largely of Mr. Snyder’s invention, that juxtaposes Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” with a montage of masked do-gooders with names like Dollar Bill and Hooded Justice as they participate in key moments of atomic-age history, like V-J Day and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The scenes that follow will be familiar to readers with a panel-by-panel familiarity with the comic: the surreal dream of a costumed vigilante who is plagued by sexual shortcomings and fears of nuclear war; a man-god created in a scientific accident, strolling the red sands of Mars; the city of New York partly annihilated by a villain’s master plan — all connected by a story about heroes who are corrupted by the darkness they cannot expunge from the world.

The two introductory scenes, Mr. Snyder said, are concessions to audiences who know nothing of “Watchmen,” “so that they will swallow the bitter pill of the next 20 minutes of the movie and listen to a bunch of superheroes rap it out for a while, before anything else happens.”

For more than two and a half years this has been the Gordian knot that Mr. Snyder has been asked to untie: how to preserve enough of the multilayered and reference-rich “Watchmen” graphic novel to satisfy its devotees, while providing enough entry points for a mass audience willing to sit through a $120 million, 160-minute, R-rated movie about contemplative crime fighters who rarely get into fights.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a short movie by any stretch,” Mr. Snyder said. “But it’s the tightest version that I could give them and not feel like I raped it a little bit.”

Almost from the moment that the first issue of “Watchmen” was published in America as a limited series by DC Comics in 1986, Hollywood has tried and failed to film it. The director Terry Gilliam pursued the project in the late 1980s, only to conclude that it could not be condensed into a movie; Darren Aronofsky set it aside in 2004 to make “The Fountain,” and Paul Greengrass had the plug pulled on his version in 2005 over budgetary concerns.

The creators of “Watchmen” might say that they gave up on its movie prospects, “but that almost implies that we actually wanted it to be a movie,” Mr. Gibbons, the illustrator, said. After Fox acquired the film rights in 1986, Mr. Gibbons and Mr. Moore concluded that no studio would want to preserve the spirit of their comics — a suspicion cultivated in their meeting with the producer Joel Silver, who wanted Arnold Schwarzenegger as the stoic, omniscient superhero Dr. Manhattan. “I leave it to your imagination what kind of movie that might have been,” Mr. Gibbons said.

(Mr. Moore, who subsequently grew frustrated with Hollywood’s adaptations of his other works, like “V for Vendetta” and “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” has refused to allow his name to be used in connection with the “Watchmen” movie and has given his share of film revenue to Mr. Gibbons.)

When Mr. Snyder, 42, was approached in 2006 to direct the film, his résumé made many “Watchmen” fans nervous. A director of TV commercials, he was known for flashy and hyperkinetic work. In 2004 he had scored a hit with his remake of the George A. Romero zombie movie “Dawn of the Dead” and was at work on an unheralded action movie called “300,” a violent adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel about the ancient battle of Thermopylae. (Mr. Snyder’s office on the Warner Brothers lot is decorated with a lion-skin rug, a cast of a saber-toothed tiger skull and a candle shaped like a human cranium.)

Before “300” went on to make $456 million worldwide the following year, Warner Brothers, which released “300” and had since acquired the rights to “Watchmen,” was eager to get Mr. Snyder started on this next rock-’em, sock-’em comic-book adaptation. “He’s got a very pop sensibility, which requires an incredible visual style,” said Jeff Robinov, the president of the Warner Brothers Pictures Group.

But Mr. Snyder, who first read “Watchmen” as a college student, knew that it was an arcane, intricate comic in which philosophy is exchanged more often than punches. “There’s no moment where it’s not self-aware,” he said. Even as “Watchmen” adheres to superhero formulas, it is dismantling many traditions of the medium. Mr. Snyder said, “It’s always shining a light on the idea of putting a costume on and going to try to right wrongs and saying, ‘Really, you think that’s cool?’ ”

Warner Brothers did not hesitate to give Mr. Snyder the resources he wanted, largely because of “300.” “They said, ‘O.K., we don’t understand “300,” and it made a lot of money,’ ” Mr. Snyder said.

Those resources meant that he was able to spend more than 100 days shooting in Vancouver, to cast more for acting chops than for box-office magnetism (Patrick Wilson as the impotent Nite Owl, Jackie Earle Haley as the unstable Rorschach, Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan) and have some 200 sets constructed for the movie.

But with those assets, Mr. Snyder said, came a stream of requests from the studio to change small but crucial details: Did the film have to interrupt its story with long asides about the origins of Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan? Was it essential that Dr. Manhattan be naked for so much of the film? And could the movie be any shorter?

Mr. Snyder’s answer in each case was to remain faithful to the graphic novel and its creators. “Their ideas do stand the test, as far as I’m concerned,” he said.

(Mr. Robinov said he did not recall specific disputes about the content of “Watchmen” but acknowledged that the film’s R rating, which could keep out younger ticket buyers, was a concern. The movie, he said, “pushes comfort in certain areas.”)

Then, days before shooting was completed last February, the “Watchmen” curse seemed to strike again. Fox, which had advised Warner Brothers that it still owned a portion of the rights to “Watchmen,” filed a suit and threatened an injunction to block the film’s release. A year of legal wrangling followed. It ended last month, when Warner agreed to give Fox up to 8.5 percent of the gross receipts of the film, or any sequels or spinoffs.

Now, with the release of “Watchmen” imminent, the anticipation and tension among fans is at its peak. Unlike, say, the Batman or Superman franchises, whose titular heroes can be reinvented every 10 or 15 years, “Watchmen” has only one story to tell. If Mr. Snyder bungles it, no director will have a second chance at it.

Even Mr. Snyder’s friends in the entertainment industry say he faces widespread skepticism from the book’s passionate loyalists. “I think fans are going to see ‘Watchmen’ in the spirit of ‘What did he leave out?’ as opposed to ‘What did he put in?’ ” said Damon Lindelof, a creator and executive producer of “Lost” and one of a few people to whom Mr. Snyder has shown “Watchmen.”

The challenges of selling the film to moviegoers who have no familiarity with the graphic novel would seem to be even greater, as the comics tales have no clear central protagonist and no characters with worldwide recognition. Yet Warner Brothers has tried to create early buzz for the movie among the uninitiated, using a campaign built largely around sleek, moody trailers. DC Comics said that it has published an additional 900,000 copies of the graphic novel since the first “Watchmen” trailer was released last summer.

And, as Mr. Snyder pointed out, comic-book movies have become such transcendent pop-culture events that even mainstream moviegoers who don’t read comics know that they are supposed to watch these films. A viewer who has seen half of the superhero blockbusters that Mr. Snyder called “the ‘Man’ movies” — “Superman,” “Spider-Man,” “X-Men,” “Iron Man” and others — has enough context to understand “Watchmen” and the cinematic clichés it plays with, he said.

In particular he said his position was strengthened by the success of the Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight,” the brooding Batman sequel that has grossed about $1 billion worldwide since Warner Brothers released it in July. “It’s as serious as, like, brain surgery on a baby,” Mr. Snyder said of “The Dark Knight,” adding that he meant this as a compliment.

While that Batman movie aspired to an aesthetic of realism, Mr. Snyder said that “Watchmen,” with its heroes who can grow hundreds of feet tall and villains who maintain hidden Antarctic lairs, had a freer hand to be more fanciful. And unlike most of the “Man” movies whose endings — good prevails over evil — are never in doubt, Mr. Snyder said, “We don’t really adhere to that concept.”

But he also angered fans when he revealed that he had changed the ending of “Watchmen.” Though the film does adhere to the essence of the story’s last chapter, in which its heroes ignore the murderous acts of their nemesis for the good of humanity, Mr. Snyder altered crucial details.

To preserve the original ending of “Watchmen,” “you’d be talking about taking 30 minutes of other stuff out of the movie,” he said. “And right now I’m on the edge with just how much Rorschach I have, and how much Nite Owl, and how much Dr. Manhattan.”

Throughout the making of “Watchmen” Mr. Snyder has gone to unusual lengths to signal that he reveres the graphic novel as much as the fans do. He commissioned Mr. Gibbons and the comic’s original colorist, John Higgins, to create a poster for the movie, as well as the storyboards for his film’s amended ending. And he has appropriated much of the visuals and dialogue straight from the comics, down to Rorschach’s mumbled catchphrase, “hurm.”

Mr. Snyder said he hopes the film might shift the balance of power between movie studios and comic-book creators. To this day, he said, Warner Brothers still wants Mr. Miller and him to create a sequel to “300” — even though that film ends with the sacrifice of its hero and his army.

“The attitude toward comic books, they show their hand a little bit,” Mr. Snyder said. “They would never say that about a real novelist, but they would about a comic book. ‘They just crank those out, right? It’s like no big deal.’ ” In the end, he said, “all I would hope is that this movie gives geek culture a little bit of cred.”