We caught up with Snyder, the director of the new Watchmen movie, and Gibbons, the artist of the original graphic novel, at Wondercon, where they were promoting the film alongside the cast. They showed about 15 minutes of footage from the film, including a big chunk of the film's beginning, with its hilarious McLaughlin Group sequence (sexy Eleanor Clift!) followed by the Comedian's murder and the credits over the montage of Watchmen's alternate history. And then Rorschach's investigation, and the two Nite Owls meeting up, followed by Rorschach's visit to Nite Owl and then jumping forward to Rorschach in prison.

So when I was sitting next to Dave Gibbons and Zack Snyder, at the press roundtable, I was struggling to come up with a question they hadn't already answered a million times. So I decided to ask them about the relationship between worldbuilding and superhero origins. The superhero origin is the often formulaic story of someone who either discovers superpowers or decides to become a superhero, and then confronts his/her heroic destiny while confronting some greater threat. And watching the first 10 minutes of Watchmen, I was really struck by how much it used the conventions of superhero origin stories to fill in the details of this alternate world - both because the superheroes are instrumental in spawning a different timeline, but also because we see the superheroes coming into themselves as the history unfolds.

Luckily, Gibbons and Snyder understood my somewhat wonky question, and their answers were revealing and interesting. Gibbons said he'd almost forgotten that originally Moore had only had plotted six issues for Watchmen, and then he found out he actually had 12 issues. So he decided, "We have time to do a bit more with the characters." The finished product spends a lot of time focusing on the characters' origins, says Gibbons, and "it's about why would you wear a costume, why would you fight crime." As much as it's about history and politics and society, it's also about where these particular characters come from.

Snyder added that coming to this story afterwards and recreating it for film, you get a "more pure experience" than starting out with a story and then doubling the length by examining more of the backstory.

In the traditional superhero comic, you get the first issue where you meet the superhero and discover how he/she became super, says Gibbons. And then in the second issue, you see the superhero fighting more villains and discover more of why he/she wants to fight evil. Watchmen mixes up both those stories into one seamless whole.

Another difference between Watchmen and the traditional superhero movie, according to Snyder: it's not the typical three-act structure, it's actually more like a four-act structure. Instead of a beginning, middle and end, it has a beginning, a middle, a second beginning, and then the end. In fact, at one point, he and the other creators were briefly talking about splitting it into two movies, and the natural break-points would be either Rorschach getting arrested, or Rorschach getting set free. Or you could break the story when Dr. Manhattan is on Mars, but that's a scary and bewildering place to leave the audience, said Snyder.

Other revelations from the Wondercon Watchmen panel and roundtables:

Ocean's Eleven The studio originally had an idea of doing an Ocean's Eleven type cast, comprised of huge movie stars, but that ended up not happening. Snyder talked to Tom Cruise for a while, but he was busy with Valkyrie, and Snyder was never sure what role Cruise would play.

Rorschach's Audition Tape Jackie Earle Haley was so eager to do the role of Rorschach, he filmed an audition tape in his living room, with a "slightly dodgy Rorschach mask." He did the scene where Rorschach is talking to a psychiatrist and screams, "Give me back my face!" Snyder was blown away and couldn't imagine giving the role to anyone else after that. He showed that tape to a bunch of people, until an embarrassed Haley asked him not to. (And the tape won't be a DVD extra, also because Haley didn't want to include it.) Haley told us in the roundtable that the tape was "cheesy" and that Snyder said he liked it for "the passion," which is a nice way of saying, "Dude, it sucked, but I loved the passion."

The Director's Cut The movie's "director's cut" is three hours and ten minutes, and will hopefully have a theatrically run in July. Stuff that didn't make the cut includes extra violence, more blue nudity, Hollis Mason's death, and some other "bits and bobs." Snyder actually included some extra "blue nudity" in his movie, to give Warners something to trim out of the movie. He had a whole "blue penis" meeting with Warner Bros. where they asked him to include a bit less of Dr. Manhattan's wang. "I don't think anybody's going to feel they were cheated, either of violence or of blue nudity," Snyder said of the theatrical version.

The Original Script The script that the studio gave Snyder, when he first agreed to do the movie, ended with Nite Owl killing Ozymandias by crashing the Owl-ship into him via remote control. Nite Owl even says a cool catch phrase immediately afterwards.

Nite Owl's Formula. To play Nite Owl II, Patrick Wilson gained 20 pounds, and then struggled to keep them on during all the fight training he had to do. He ate tubs of GNC formula that's pure calories, and also tons of ice cream.

As you probably already know, there's no giant squid at the end of Snyder's movie adaptation. But that's not the only thing that's missing. The film leaves out the gut-wrenching images that fill nine pages of the graphic novel, at the start of Chapter 12

In the book, a doomsday clock dripping with the blood of massacred New Yorkers is followed by in-your-face carnage. There are no words, just page after page of silent faces frozen in despair. Bodies are piled on top of bodies, hunched over street corners and splayed outside of windows. If you're familiar with the book, you know that the world, for New Yorkers, has just ended. The visually arresting images push forward the final issue that the entire novel hinges upon: Is it okay to kill millions to save billions? It's violent and necessary... but it's not in the movie.

Apparently these images were deemed too graphic for Snyder's Watchmen. We asked Hayter why the movie doesn't depict the dead bodies in the aftermath of Ozymandias' scheme, while he was doing press for the film:

When did the ending change, and who was responsible for that?

I changed it. Because it was just me, and I didn't have Zack Snyder. [When I was working on the script] the pressures were being put on me. "Six main characters. Can you cut it down to one? Can you cut all the flashbacks? We don't like all this history." And I'm like it's...[laughs in disbelief] What I would always say is, "Yeah, I can write that movie, but it's going to be a different movie, and you're going to have to pay me again." And they didn't want to do that.

I did understand the ending of the book, [but] there are a few issues that apply to the pressures of filmmaking. I'm always cognizant of the fact that when you're dealing with the studio and you're asking them to put up 100-plus million dollars, that that's a big thing. You can't just say, "I'm an artist and whatever." You're never going to work, and that's not a smart way to make movies.

The ending of the book shows just piles of corpses, bloody corpses in the middle of Times Square, people hanging out of windows just slaughtered on a massive scale. To do that in a comic book, and release it in 1985, is different from doing it real life, in a movie, and seeing all of these people brutally massacred in the middle of Times Square post 2001. That's a legitimate concern, and one that I shared.

If you're doing the movie for $40 million, fine - bloody bodies everywhere. And that's fine, and it's a niche film, and only the hardcore fans would go see it. But if you're doing it on this big of a scale, I just don't think that's... I understood their reticence to putting those images on screen.

So the studio had reservations about the ending, because of September 11 and because people wouldn't be ready for it. But weren't you worried about changing the ending, as someone who loved the graphic novel?

Well no, because what I did, the way I sort of convinced myself - And I don't really know what it looks like, because I've only seen a rough cut of the film, without all the FX in the end - But what I did was say, "What if they were all blown into the Hiroshima shadows, which are already set up in the book?" Then you can see the death on a grand scale, you see all the particles floating in the air, but it's not so ugly. It's almost beautiful in its way. This destruction that is done in an artistic way, and it's also fed by the themes of the book and set up in there.

I would have liked to have seen the squid. I would have loved to have seen it exactly the way it was in the book - but I also felt the same pain everyone else did living here when [September 11] occurred. My primary years working on it were also 2000 to 2005 [and 9/11 was a lot fresher in people's minds right afterwards]. So it wasn't just the studios. That was something I did for the studios with out having to be pushed on it."

How did artist Dave Gibbons, the gifted artist behind the graphic novel, feel about those images disappearing from the movie? We asked him:

You drew these panels that were full of carnage and bloody streets, and they're not in the movie. How did you feel as an artist, about not being able to see the actual destruction?

It relates to the whole question about violence in the whole thing. I think the consequences of violence should be shown graphically, just to show that violence is unpleasant. It isn't just [that] you get a little spot of blood, and then you put a band aid on it and you're all better. You know I haven't seen the final cut of the end of the movie, the version that I saw the ending wasn't finished so I don't know precisely what we do see but my remembrance of it was, I did get a sense of this wholesale destruction.

I suppose you also have to say that in a way, post 9/11, it's a very tender area anyway. So I think that might modify how you would treat it, if you were going to do it.

All in all, using 9/11 as an excuse to change the ending of the movie doesn't sit right with me - especially since the film already shows a little girl in a dog's mouth and plenty of gore earlier in the film. Why spend so much time remaining true to the book, only to drop the ball in the final act? I sympathize with film-makers who have to work with the studios, but they could have tried harder to meet them halfway. Perhaps it didn't have to be as graphic as the novel, but there must have been some way the filmmakers could have demonstrated the lives that had been taken. The loss of those images creates more confusion, and dilutes the seriousness of the movie's grand finale.

According to the official fan site for the show, Red Dwarf.co.uk, the show's return will be spearheaded by co-creator Doug Naylor, for broadcast on UK cable channel Dave. There will, as the Sun claimed, be four 30-minute episodes in total, but only one of them will be a clip show, and even that won't be done entirely straight, as cast member Robert Llewellyn hinted:

[The plan for the clip show] is so exciting I've been asked not to say anything about that because other people will steal the idea - and it is a great idea, quite challenging for us as performers.

The site broke down the four episodes as follows:

Show One - The Making Of The Specials
A highly entertaining look at what goes on behind the scenes on a Red Dwarf production.
Show Two - Red Dwarf Special: Part One
The cast get back into character, and costume, a decade on...
Show Three - Red Dwarf Special: Part Two
The adventure continues...
Show Four - A Clip Show With a Serious Difference
The cast do it their way. Red Dwarf as you have never, ever seen it before!

Production on the specials begins soon, with the shows being aimed for a 21st anniversary broadcast sometime next year.

New Red Dwarf Specials Confirmed [Red Dwarf.co.uk]

According to The Sun,

Bosses at digital channel Dave have ordered four 30-minute shows for next year, which will take viewers on a trip down memory lane. They will see the stars pull on their old costumes for some original sketches and also feature some of Red Dwarf’s best bits.

I think I join with almost every fan of the original show in being disturbed by the use of the words "original sketches." Red Dwarf was many things - amongst them inventive, purile, and the show that introduced me to the real meaning of the insult "smeg head" - but it was never really a sketch show, and the idea of mixing new sketches with the "best bits" of the original series sounds... well, like four episodes of filler. The Guardian's Daniel Martin shares my concern:

It sounds a lot like those special episodes of 80s US sitcoms where they'd run out of budget and the characters would be forced to sit round a table and reminisce about the events of the series.

Well, that or special features for an upcoming DVD re-release of the original series. Are the rumors of a reunion really going to turn out to be nothing more than a glorified commentary track?

Red Dwarf in TV Comeback [The Sun]