It all began when Empire premiered the trailer for Watchmen a little prematurely this morning (whether by accident or by design, who knows). Some sites jumped into the fray by very ethically siphoning the video from Empire’s servers and placing it on their own sites – in some cases without so much as linking to Empire. Lotta scumbags out there. Anyway, the trailer got yanked, presumably by Warner Bros, and then it showed up in HD on Apple. Sorry, Empire, hope you enjoyed the traffic while it lasted.
While all of this was going on, legions of mail carriers began delivering copies of the new Entertainment Weakly to mailboxes and stores across this fine nation. On the cover: Watchmen. Inside: more Watchmen pictures and insider secrets. Very exciting, indeed.
As all this brouhaha was happening, Zack Snyder sat down with MTV to talk about the easter eggs in the trailer. Here’s one for you: in the scene where Ozymandias is taking out the would-be assassin, the killer’s gun briefly points at the camera. The MPAA didn’t like this and asked the director to take it out. His solution: replace the gun with a walkie-talkie. Nice.
Meanwhile, Brad at Rope of Silicon was doing what I predicted people would do: he was preparing a comic panel to trailer frame comparison. You can see the fruits of his labors by clicking here. Faithfulness, thy name is Zack Snyder.
And the internet buzz just keeps building. So far it’s been mostly positive, which is nice. I was worried that the stylishness of the trailer would turn off some of the more boring and loudmouthed fans. One bit of controversy that has sprung up on our message boards has been the question of spoilers for Watchmen – the book is 20 years old and its ending is legendary in comic culture. But what about the rest of the nerd world? Is it fair to be mad when someone spoils a two decade old story? Or should fans who have read the book (or like me, read the individual issues when they came out. Old bastard alert!) be more careful in the coming months as a more mainstream audience tunes into the world of Watchmen? Weigh in on our boards.