Ever since the first round of publicity photos came out, Zach Snyder has gone out of his way to show that his Watchmen adaptation will be slavishly faithful to the legendary comics. The teaser trailer and recent press shots feature scenes that seem to be taken directly from Dave Gibbons’ artwork.
This trend continues in the latest round of posters, which, with a slight changes here and there, are exact duplicates of the house ads DC ran for the Watchmen series back in 1986. Let do a little comparing and contrasting, shall we (all images from Blog @ Newsarama)
The Comedian:
The Film poster:
The Comic ad:
The bondage mask is gone, and the Comedian is now looking at us, but the scene is essentially the same right down to the placement of whisky bottles and bullet box.
Ozymandias:
The Film poster:
The Comic Ad:
Another near duplication. One or two TV sets might be off, and the chair is different, but the tone and the pose is exactly the same.
Rorschach:
The Film poster:
The Comic ad:
This one is almost like they took Dave Gibbons original artwork and computerized it. Awesome.
Dr. Manhattan:
The Film poster:
The Comic ad:
There has been a simplification of the machinery, probably because that much detail wouldn’t translate to a photograph, but essentially the same. I would like to see if this poster will be running in theaters. They don’t often like bare asses on posters in cineplexes.
Nite-Owl:
The Film poster:
The Comic ad:
Sure, the suit is different. But even the pose is the same. And the criticisms that the movie Nite-Owl might be too thin is dampened in this comparison. The comic version is not that far off from the movie version.
Silk Spectre;
The Film poster:
The Comic ad:
Like with the Comedian, changes were made so we could see more of the actor’s face (darn Hollywood and theior silly rules!).
Sally Jupiter:
The Film poster:
As far as I can tell, there was no house ad featuring Sally Jupiter. I guess since Carla Gugino is a bigger than average name, she gets a poster in spite of that fact. This makes me curious to see if Sally Jupiter’s role will be expanded for the film. She was basically a pivotal supporting character in the miniseries, but not one I’d think deserves this much attention.
Well, there you have it. These are the posters that have the comic fan’s heart all a twitter. Now, you can see why.
