I first wrote about Watchmen for the Mercury back in ye olden days of 2004, back when our nation’s president, Abraham Lincoln, encouraged us all to wear onions on our belts, and my mighty and loyal pet apatosaurus, Pat, gently carried me about on her majestic purple shoulders. It was a magical time, and things were a lot better than they are now in the stupid-ass present.
ANYWAY, 10 or 15 years after I first read it, Watchmen is still one of my very favorite books (it says so on my Goodreads!), but after blogging about the movie, reviewing the movie, interviewing artist Dave Gibbons, reviewing the DVD tie-in, and talking about it with everyone who’s seen it, I’m willing to give Watchmen a break for a while. That is, right after I do one last blog post on two books that were released about the film: Watchmen: The Art of the Film and Watchmen: The Film Companion.
The Art of the Film collects a bunch of the film’s impressive concept art and examines how the film was put together, while The Film Companion is a way lighter attempt to convey a fly-on-the-wall perspective on the production of the epic superhero flick. After the jump, some quick thoughts about—and some more images from—both of these books.
*This is probably a lie. Also, I stole this title.
Lamely, The Film Companion is a pretty fluffy, pretty insignificant paperback that reads like an extended magazine feature. Writer Peter Aperlo (who wrote both of these books) gets in a few interesting details—like that Rorschach actor Jackie Earle Haley “ended up actively campaigning for the role by submitting a video of himself as the masked vigilante,” and that an entire three blocks of midtown Manhattan were meticulously constructed in “a lumberyard in Barnaby, B.C.”—but by and large, this feels like an cash-in excuse to run a lot of pretty publicity stills. Towards the end, though, there’s some cool stuff about how they made the character of Dr. Manhattan work onscreen. I like his goofy suit that’s covered with blue LEDs! I tried to make one of those out of a Lite-Brite once, and I still have weird electrical burn scars in a few places.
The better news for fans of the movie, the comic, and both, though, is that the hardcover Art of the Film is loaded with amazing images—even if the Aperlo’s largely unnecessary text (which, halfway through, I just started skimming) only contains a few insights. (The most telling of these are statements from director Zack Snyder, like, “I always say treat Watchmen like an illuminated text, like it was written 2,000 years ago,” or Snyder’s admission that along with the original comic, Taxi Driver was a big influence on the look of the film.)
I’m a sucker for production art—especially the really far-out stuff that never makes it to the screen in any way, shape, or form—and Snyder really got some great artists together in the early stages of Watchmen. One of the things Snyder did early in pre-production was bring on comic book artists like John Cassaday and David Finch to help create the film’s costumes. I really like Finch’s art, here: Below are his images for what Silk Spectre and Ozymandias could have looked like, followed by some Nite Owl sketches.
(Digression! Though there’s a ton of concept art—covering everything from sets to costumes to props to characters—it’s really weird that, for the most part, the artists aren’t credited. While the big name comic book creators get shout-outs, plenty of images—like the one that kicked off this post—aren’t attributed to anyone, aside from a vague thank-you in the back of both books to “all of the incredible artists, designers, photographers, actors, technicians, and countless others who through their wealth of talent and tireless dedication helped to bring this film to life.” Regardless of the reason the artists’ names were omitted, it’s disappointing to not know who’s behind much of this striking artwork.)
Another cool bonus here is seeing original Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons’ artistic adaptation of the film’s ending, which differs significantly from the one he drew for the book. “These new ‘pages’ were drawn at Zack Snyder’s request during pre-production,” Aperlo writes, “to ensure that the film’s re-imagined ending nevertheless drew from an authentic source.”
The Art of the Film also includes a ton of images of the film’s props and bits of set dressing, which is pretty great—Snyder’s so O.C.D., and Watchmen is so insanely crammed with detail, that it’s easy to miss a lot of the smaller visual stuff in the background. Take, for example, the below image: Blink and you’ll miss it in the film (you can briefly see it on the Comedian’s wall), so you’d have no idea that it’s a gorgeous, Vargas-style pinup poster of Sally Jupiter, painted by Fables cover artist James Jean. The Art of the Film is crammed with stuff like this, these bits of ephemera from the production, and, paired alongside Snyder’s storyboards, it’s this stuff that really shows off the film’s craftsmanship. This might be the best way to appreciate some of Watchmen‘s accomplishments, actually: Even when I’m not entirely impressed by his filmmaking decisions, I’m consistently blown away by Snyder’s attention to detail and stunning imagery—two things this book does a really solid job of representing.
“Give me five bees for a quarter”, we’d say.