The big question: What have you got against the squid?!
Zack Snyder: I had a bad calamari experience as a child! Look I've got nothing against the squid. When I sat down with the studio and talked about the film, we had to make a decision about what stuff we included and what stuff we wouldn't. For me Watchmen is all about the characters, whereas if we included the squid, I would have to illustrate it in the story and cut out some of the character. So I wanted more character and less story.
So we came up with something else - no-one knows yet what we've done but we hope it's similar in philosophy to the ending of the graphic novel. I mean the end is all about taking a superhero all the way - you know it's the bad guy who is the one who wants world peace. It's a moral dilemma for all the characters involved.
David Gibons: The tone of the graphic novel - the message, the moral ambiguity - has still been left intact. Also it's not a squid; it's a fifth dimensional phalymapod!
How long will the movie be?
ZS: Our theatrical cut is around two-and-a-half hours. On the DVD there will probably be a three-hour cut, and a version with the 'Black Freighter' stuff [the Pirate comic running simultaneously through the plot of Watchmen] that is around three-and-a-half hours long. We'll also have the 'Under the Hood' mock documentary which we've shot. Which is supposedly shot in 1985 and about a TV show from 1972, and it has interviews with all the Watchmen, and has the comedian telling them to f**k off and so on. It's cool.