In June of of last year, I posted an article detailing the many challenges facing director Zack Snyder as he geared up to start production on his upcoming adaptation of Alan Moore's seminal graphic novel Watchmen. (The article was optimistically titled Is Watchmen Unfilmable?) Shockingly enough, Snyder and Warner Bros. went ahead with the project anyway. And to their immense credit, it appears that they may have pulled it off.

Last week, Snyder unveiled about 25 minutes of new footage from his highly anticipated film, providing select members of the press with the most-revealing look yet at his vision for a movie that many thought could never be made.

The Footage

Much like Snyder's previous flick, 300, Watchmen's visual aesthetic is very heavily stylized. "There was lots of talk about getting the balance right between stylization and reality," recounted Watchmen production designer Alex McDowell, who appeared along with Snyder and costume designer Michael Wilkinson for a brief Q&A afterward. "On one hand, we wanted to be reverent to the graphic novel and think that these characters could exist in a version of the reality that we all know...but at the same time, there's these amazing, vibrant colors and beautiful, bold silhouettes and flashback details and things that we really wanted to get from the page onto the screen."

Warning -- Spoilers Ahead

All told, Snyder debuted three clips:

Opening Scene/Title Sequence -- The film opens with Edward Blake, aka The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), sitting in his apartment, watching a version of The McLaughlin Group that features Pat Buchanan and Eleanor Clift impersonators discussing the recent Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The show then briefly segues into a clip of an aged President Nixon (Jon Voight) issuing a stern warning to the aggressors, followed by a shot of the "Doomsday Clock" being moved one minute closer to midnight.

Blake chuckles at the sight, and changes the channel to a music video playing Natalie Cole-Nat King Cole duet version of "Unforgettable." Suddenly an intruder breaks into the apartment and charges at him. As "Unforgettable" continues to play in the background, Blake tries in vain to fight off the attacker. It's a decidedly one-sided affair, however, and as the song's last notes play, a bloodied Blake is tossed through the window and down to the street below. Faint sirens can be heard in the background as The Comedian's blood spreads over the sidewalk, his yellow, blood-splattered happy-face pin lying on the ground next to him.

Next, the opening notes of Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'" initiate an extended montage recounting significant moments of the 20th century, re-imagined to fit Watchmen's alternative reality. Included are a number of iconic images from the graphic novel: The first Minutemen meeting; Dollar Bill lying on the ground dead, his cape caught in the door; JFK shaking hands with Dr. Manhattan; the 22nd Amendment being repealed; Nixon elected to another term; and a number of others.

The opening sequence ends with a shot of a Molotov cocktail being tossed through a storefront during the Keene Act riots.

Dr. Manhattan on Mars -- Almost 10 minutes long, this montage replicates the sequence in the graphic novel that occurs just after Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) is confronted by journalists alleging that he may have caused various friends and coworkers to die of cancer. He retreats to Mars and reflects on events in his life: Courting Janey Slater, getting disintegrated in the intrinsic field-test chamber, reassembling in the cafeteria, vaporizing folks in Moloch's underground vice-den, kissing Laurie Juspeczyk, defeating the Viet Cong, and constructing his Martian edifice.

Rather than alter Billy Crudup's voice after his character's transformation, Snyder chose to keep it as is. "My whole thing with Manhattan is that he can do whatever he wants," Snyder explained. "Billy's voice is really calming. It's just my take, but I thought that he would try and put everyone as much at ease as he could, instead of having a robotic voice that I think would feel off-putting."

Springing Rorschach -- Bathed in post-coital bliss after consummating their relationship it on in the Owl Ship ("You'll never see Batman getting it on like that," Snyder joked), Dan Dreiberg (Patrick Wilson) and Laurie Juspeczyk (Malin Akerman) decide to bust Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) out of jail. The ship descends upon a prison engulfed in a huge riot, and Dan and Laurie search the premises for Rorschach, fighting off hordes of angry prisoners along the way. They finally find Rorschach (in full costume -- a departure from the comic), who asks to use the bathroom before leaving. Hiding in the bathroom, of course, is Rorschach's prison nemesis.

Impressions

In many ways, the new footage delivered on the promise of the clips Snyder debuted at the 2008 Comic-Con. It's clear that he's done as much as possible to please devoted Watchmen fans, while still endeavoring to make Moore's intellectually daunting source material accessible to a wider movie-going audience. The characters in the movie wear more stylish costumes than their comic-book counterparts, and action sequences are shot in a Matrix-like fashion, switching to slow motion at key points in the action.

A few aspects of the footage that stood out for me:

Easter Eggs -- As was the case with the Watchmen graphic novel, there's a ton of information to process in almost every scene. You can tell that Snyder really focused on the comic's little details -- and even added a few of his own: Moloch can be seen levitating an item in the background as Manhattan vaporizes guys in the vice-den; Edward Blake's attacker (presumed to be Adrian Veidt) catches a knife thrown at him; During a ticker-tape parade celebrating the end of World War II, the lesbian vigilante Silhouette (Apollonia Vanova) grabs a random woman and makes out with her; and when JFK is assassinated, the camera pans over to see a young Comedian holding a hunting rifle.

Regarding his decision to implicate The Comedian in the JFK assassination, Snyder argued: "The passage that (states) The Comedian was in Dallas with Nixon the day that Kennedy was killed, they don't say that he pulled the trigger from the grassy knoll, but I felt that that was not a hard jump to make, in my mind."

Montages/Narration -- Snyder makes heavy use of both -- a necessity for cramming as much of Moore's dense narrative as possible into a two-hour-and-43-minute running time. But how many 10-minute montages will audiences be able to stand? Even the best montages can grow tiresome if they drag on for more than a few minutes. (Point of comparison: the Rocky-Drago training montage in Rocky IV is barely four minutes in length.)

The Blue Penis -- When Snyder first declared that he would stay true to the comic's portrayal of Dr. Manhattan, a character who spends much of the story completely nude, Watchmen fans were heartened by the notion. But seeing a naked blue guy in the pages of a comic book is one thing; viewing him in high-definition on a giant movie screen is something else entirely. It might prove difficult for even the most disciplined viewers to avoid being somewhat distracted by the sight of a blue penis (which appears somewhat larger than his appendage in the comic -- not that there's anything wrong with that) in a number of key scenes.

Fight Sequences -- This is the area where Snyder was afforded his greatest chance to put his own stamp on the film, and I suspect his approach might stir controversy among some hardcore Watchmen fans. Moore's original comic is pretty thin on action, so Snyder chose to stretch out the few fight scenes he had:

"It's pretty dense intellectual material," he remarked. "Everyone needs a break now and then, just for a little butt-kicking. And plus, I'm a bit of an action geek. I can't help myself...that sequence at the beginning of the movie with Blake and Adrian in the book is like five shots. But they're all pretty hardcore. So I thought it would be cool to get people into the movie right away. By the end of the title sequence, hopefully they're like, 'Ok, what the f--k is this?'

"Alan [Moore] in some ways tortures us in the book for wanting to see some action," Snyder continued. "Which is cool -- I always loved that about the book, and I kind of do the same thing. On the other hand, like I said, I'm an action geek and I feel like that's the way to seduce people into it. There is that kind of trade-off, and I think that's real."

Personally, I like what Snyder did with Edward Blake's fight scene, but wasn't as thrilled with the prison sequence, in which Nite Owl and Silk Spectre II employ a series of sophisticated Kung Fu moves to fight off dozens of prisoners without suffering a scratch -- despite having been retired for a number of years.

Aside from the abundance of blue penises and Kung Fu shenanigans, I was happy with the new Watchmen footage, and I look forward to evaluating it in the context of the full-length film. Too bad it doesn't come out until March 6, 2009. In the meantime, the next Watchmen trailer is due to unpsool this November, in front of showings of the James Bond flick Quantum of Solace.