  Zack Snyder |
LOS ANGELES -- Zack Snyder is boyishly enthusiastic about Blu-ray in general and Watchmen in particular, repeatedly calling it "cool" and even "awesome."
Snyder, displaying his wares in interviews at Warner Bros. head office in Burbank, Calif., is a convert, trying to convince audiences that Blu-ray is better than standard DVD and far superior to downloads.
In turn, filmmakers must provide superior content than most have done so far.
"If you compare it to downloads, its strength is that it does things that that could never do," Snyder says of Blu-ray. "If you have a TV like this (he points to a high-def widescreen beauty in the Warner Bros. head office) and you have a system that supports it, then you are kind of not using your gear unless you have a piece of material you can play on it that utilizes all the aspects of it."
This would all sound like blah, blah, blah if Snyder was not delivering the goods, both with Watchmen: Director's Cut and 300: The Complete Experience. Each title debuts tomorrow. Watchmen is also making its debut on DVD, in several options. The theatrical cut comes in separate full and widescreen DVDs with no extras, obviously for rentals.
Watchmen: Director's Cut is a two-disc special edition DVD that offers extras to go with Snyder's extended edit, which is 24 minutes, 33 seconds longer than the theatrical cut. The total running time goes from nearly 162 minute to more than 186 minutes. But the Blu-ray still has more bonus materials.
Snyder does walk-on introductions for the Blu-ray's Maximum Movie Mode. You can watch Watchmen and veer off with bonus materials, which include an historical timeline comparing real life with the altered and rewritten reality in Watchmen. Other goodies include storyboards, panel-by-panel comparisons with Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' graphic novel, photo galleries, making-of featurettes and picture-in-picture video streams of cast & crew interviews.
These are selected highlights, Snyder says. He chose to focus on: "Things I like, things we had material on, and things that were just visually interesting."
Snyder, who is simultaneously directing two new movies while also planning a sequel for 300, says he had to limit the number of scenes he focused on for Watchmen. "It would have been exhausting if I had been there the whole time, but the next time we do it that's probably what will happen."
He laughs, perhaps ruefully. But Snyder is certainly generous with the insights, even on Watchmen. For example, he points out a scene in which he inadvertently makes a cameo -- he is crouching at the corner of the screen. He was not supposed to be seen.
"It is a mistake," Snyder admits. "We saw it on the day and said: 'Oh, no one is going to see that!' It's one of those things that, if you see it in a theatre, you'd never see it in a million years. But, at this point, if we're taking the clothes off the movie, we might as well explore every spectre of it."
Snyder even has a challenge for viewers: Find something else, some other mistake, he doesn't know about. "But I'd be shocked if it was something I had not seen. If someone found something new I'd be thrilled. I'd be so totally thrilled."
Snyder is strangely, comfortable about Watchmen. It has been criticized by some, even if lionized by others, but that does not seem to bother the director.
"No, no, no," Snyder says when asked by Sun Media if he is on the defensive and using the DVDs and Blu-ray to protect himself. "I don't feel that at all because I think the movie's cool. If I felt like I had something to hide or I needed to protect the movie ...
"It's grown up. It can take care of itself. It doesn't need me. But I will defend it if someone asks me specifically: 'This part sucked, why?' I'll talk about it." The point is, I'm pretty wide open with the process so I have no issue sharing it."
