Warner Bros. made Zack Snyder cut out smoking in WATCHMEN

Alan Horn, head of the movie studio at Warner Brothers, demanded that the smoking be cut out of the film adaptation of Watchmen to such an extent that Laurie won't be enjoying that weird but neat-looking pipe of hers. According to director Zack Snyder, it was either remove the smoking or "the movie wouldn't have been made, literally." Although the Comedian will still be puffing his cigars because he was deemed "evil" enough.

So let me get this straight: Watchmen is a story that includes a hero who is racist and anti-black (Captain Metropolis), another who speaks favorably of Hitler (Hooded Justice), features a brutal rape scene, shows a little girl murdered then cut to pieces and fed to dogs, has a main character who is struggling with sexual dysfunction, and maybe a dozen other very bad images and concepts...

...and yet showing a grown woman smoking is supposed to be worse than all of these things?

I can't figure that one out at all. Especially since Laurie's smoking, I thought so anyway, is foreshadowing for a certain big reveal about her character later on in the book (and presumably the movie).

This kind of "political correctness" all too often goes way too far. Studio execs like Horn really should take a more hands-off approach with stuff like this, and trust the directors and producers and script writers with how they want to bring their vision to life. I'm not saying forgo all accountability, but this situation really is micro-management to the extreme.

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WATCHMEN coming in 3 crazy flavors of DVD and Blu-ray!

Collider.com is reporting that director Zack Snyder has confirmed that there are three cuts of Watchmen. The first will be the theatrical release that will come out two weeks from tomorrow, and will run for 2 hours 36 minutes.

The theatrical cut will be coming out on DVD probably "around Comic-Con of this year" (mid-July or thereabouts) and at the same time there will also be Snyder's "director's cut" clocking in at 3 hours and 10 minutes!

But that's still not all. Later this fall will be the "ultimate" cut of Watchmen coming to DVD and Blu-ray. That version will incorporate the animated Tales of the Black Freighter footage that is coming out as a separate home release next month. This version will be 3 hours 25 minutes long.

I must say: that is gonna be one strange day two weeks from now when Watchmen comes out. I've been writing about the attempts to make this movie for as long as this blog has been running. The thought had crossed my mind that maybe after writing the Watchmen review that I should just retire The Knight Shift blog. I mean, in its own way... how will I ever top this?

But I'm sure something else will come along :-)

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Zack Snyder will film TALES OF THE BLACK FREIGHTER for the WATCHMEN DVD!

Dear Lord... I'm finally starting to believe that Zack Snyder is going to be the one who actually pulls off a Watchmen movie!

Not that I doubted Snyder himself, per se. 300 is still the best movie that I've seen all year and after how he adapted that to film, I was convinced that he could "probably" do a good job helming Watchmen too. The problem is with Watchmen itself: it's such a dense book, that there's no way to do all that story in 2 or 3 hours.

But now my hopes are soaring for the Watchmen movie: Warner Bros. is letting Zack Snyder shoot Tales of the Black Freighter, to include it on the DVD of Watchmen!

So if you've never read Watchmen, here's the skinny: inside the alternate-1985 universe of Watchmen, superhero comics were only big in the Thirties and Forties, before the real-life superheroes started turning up (well in Watchmen anyway). In place of the superhero comics, pirate comics became all the rage. One part of Watchmen's story involves a young man who hangs out at a newsstand, who is reading a pirate comic book called Tales of the Black Freighter. So we see the story in Tales of the Black Freighter interspersed throughout much of the rest of Watchmen, like this...

It's an extremely violent, gory story. And it would have been insanely difficult to put it in the context of the rest of a Watchmen motion picture. But by putting it as a feature on the DVD... that really is the way to go with this. In doing this, Zack Snyder is showing everyone that without a doubt, he "gets" Watchmen.

Can't wait to see this movie! Heck, I can't wait to buy this DVD! :-)

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