Comic-Con: The Watchmen panel shows new footage

Zack Snyder

The first big panel on Friday was Watchmen, hosted by EW’s Jeff Jensen and featuring the entire cast of the movie, the director Zack Snyder (above) and one of the creators of the graphic novel, Dave Gibbons.

After seeing the teaser attached to The Dark Knight, fans in attendance were hoping for something more. Something goooood.

They got it. A trailer set to an instrumental score only, with no dialog, played on the brand new high definition screens in Hall H.

Needless to say, it was very cool. Snyder called it the “non-PG” version, mainly because of the stuff Dr. Manhattan is doing in it. If you recall from the theatrical teaser that there was a brief moment of the big blue guy exploding someone in front of him, while walking through what appeared to be a war zone.

Well, that shot was a bit zoomed in, so you didn’t get the full effect. This new footage had two separate scenes with Manhattan exploding people around him. And it’s not just a “boom” and they disappear in a blast of lights. It’s blood, guts, bones, flesh and all other kinds of anatomy.

The rest of the trailer gave us more shots of all the Watchmen, a big kiss scene with a massive atomic bomb going off in the background, a scene of a tarp being pulled off the Owl ship and all kinds of other goodies.

I doubt that it will make its way online, but if it does, we’ll try to bring it to you.

The quote of the panel went to Billy Crudup who was asked about the harder aspect of playing Dr. Manhattan:

“Mostly how you pretend to be the six-foot-four buffed out master rof matter, while you are five-foot-nine, 40-year old jackass.”

That pretty much brought down the hall if you will. Although that may be a poor choice of words after the accident on Thursday.

The second hilarious moment was when the fans were asking questions and one of them was dressed up in a great Batman costume. When he was done asking, Snyder goes, “Good question…Batman.”

Carla Gugino, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffery Dean Morgan

I also loved some guy standing up to tell Carla Gugino that he loved her in Son-In-Law.

It was interesting to find out that Alan Moore apparently does not share in the enthusiasm of this movie the same way Gibbons does. But Gibbons appeared moved when asked about his graphic novel suddenly appearing as a motion picture.

“This is the stuff of dreams really, to have something step out of your head. What really did it for me was to stand inside the Owl Ship, and to smell The Comedian’s cigars.”

When he was asked about Alan, he cracked a joke before getting serious.

“I see there is an elephant in the room. I mean, really, I wish that Alan could feel the same excitement and joy that I’m feeling. I wish he didn’t had such a bad experience in the past.”

Some of this “bad experience” stuff about Alan can be read over on his fan site.

This movie has suddenly become my most anticipated for 2009. Snyder kept referring to the Watchmen graphic novel as their “Bible” for making the movie, and how the entire cast knew it front to back and would even point out problems they have with dialog that was in the comic but not on the screen.

That kind of dedication to a picture is key and especially making one so daunting as Watchmen. Snyder referred to it as previously being known as the “unfilmable story.”

I hope he’s proven that statement wrong.