Watchmen is the new super-marketed comic-book themed filmed by visionary director Zack Synder (300) and is based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons in 1986. Billy Crudup plays Dr. Manhattan who is a superhero with genuine powers who appears to the audience as a glowing blue man. Matthew Goode is the retired superhero Ozymandias with a villainous attitude. Snyder, Crudup and Goode share what they initially thoughts were of the script and how the film offers a serious, more thoughtful side, different from any other super hero film.

Q: Can you tell us about your Dr. Manhattan costume?

Crudup: I am naked, often. I was not naked, that I recall, during the filming, however I wore pretty elaborate pajamas that were studded with 1,200 blue LEDs so that Manhattan would glow blue. There were motion-capture symbols on them, and I had about 140 dots on my face. All of those things corresponded to points on the computer and so my performance was to basically manipulate that puppet.

Q: How hard was that?

Crudup: Very hard. I didn’t realize how much. I took for granted that when you play a character you have their coat, their watch, and their glasses. Those are all things that are quite useful as it turns out. When you’re bereft of all of them, and when, in fact, you have all of the artifacts that you can’t recognize around you, you are taken in a completely different direction. Your imagination becomes your only real resource. I realized my imagination was a little rusty and took awhile to get it going again.

Q: How did you first interpret the script?

Goode: Originally I was curious why Zack wanted me to do it. And then when reading it, I thought, ‘oh no is this going to be one of those roles where already people don’t want me to be doing it.’

Crudup: What do you mean one of those roles? Do you get that all the time?

Goode: Happens all the time to me.

Crudup: What was interesting to me was [that] I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand how that character existed, and I didn’t understand how you could play that character. There was no apparent motivation that was recognizable to me. The things that motivated him were not familiar to me. I was very curious about how you would go about playing a character whose understanding of time, which is one of our most useful constraints in acting because basically what you have is the beginning, the middle and the end of any scene. The way you play a scene again and again and again is you always start from the beginning, and you pretend that you don’t know the middle or you don’t know the end. Well, this character knows the middle and the end of every scene he is going to play, and yet still somehow is surprised by it and emotionally invested in it someway. So to try and find a way to play that as an actor was a puzzle; I thought it was very interesting.

Goode: By the end of the movie I hope to have people go, 'well actually was he?' [I want people to not think of him] as villainous and not be two dimensions and not be Machiavellian. And I think that a lot of people out there will think that he was a little bit of a shit villain, but actually he is someone who is the most intelligent person and was planning this for such a long time. I don’t think he would be. It is not a big performance by any means. The whole of Watchmen is a character study on what is sociopathic behavior? And what’s morally right and wrong. It very complicated, I think that’s what drew me to it in the first place. [I wanted Zack to] make me understand and help me get through it because I was not sure I should get involved in this.

Q: What was it like working with Zack Snyder?

Crudup: He would have to be very open to taking the two of us. We are frickin chatty-Kathy’s and very confused, clearly. I think he was engaged in it. One of the reasons the material was interesting to him was the same reason it’s confusing and interesting to us. We want to solve these problems. He was never dogmatic with me at all. It was all part of a process that was a really exciting and exhilarating experience because sometimes you feel a little bit afraid if the director isn’t’ dictatorial and showing you the path. You want someone to say this is what's happening. For him to be able to do that, which he did steadfastly and at the same time carried on these kinds of conversations with us to help us solve the minutia of the character motivations. And how do we render subtly and stuff like that. It takes a special kind of person, and I think Zack is that.

Goode: With me, the first thing I shot in the first two weeks was the second half, and then since it’s a long process to make into the film, I had three weeks off or something like that. And it was only during that break that we came up with the idea and brought it to Zack. It seems so obvious, I know he is not originally from Germany, but can we go down that route? I think it would be really interesting to do since you don’t know actually who the hell he (Ozymandias) is. And the only thing that came out of Zack’s mouth was awesome. He was straight into it. And I think, 'thank God,' because I would have been very bemused if I hadn’t had that.

Q: Can you comment on the violence within the movie?

Snyder: Yea, I could intellectualize the violence because there is comic-book violence, which is the exact violence I wanted to avoid. I wanted there to be consequences like an R-rated movie from the start. It’s a movie that is supposed to illustrate the consequence of a superhero’s action. For instance, you are used to superhero movies where a lot of guys get beat up and smashed to the ground or fall off a building, but they all dust themselves off, and they are fine because the violence is super-irresponsible. And you could argue that ‘oh you’ve made a movie where you can see people getting their arms smashed and everything.’ And the point for me was that it’s all about the consequence of the violence. In a real scenario, even though in some ways it’s satirical to show someone getting shot or their arm broken or stabbed, that’s the real result of violence. Not a comic book version of it. And I felt like it was important that the movie not feel like it was made for kids. I have only ever made R-rated movies, and I feel like the subject in the movies we have made has been meant for adults. Sure, kids have seen them, but I try to set a parameter for myself. Now it is up to the individuals, parents or whatever to decide whether or not they want their kids to go. What I am saying is that there is material in this movie that is not suitable for kids. My son was in 300 and still hasn’t seen this movie.

Q: What do you expect a comic book movie to do?

Snyder: When Dave [Gibbons] and Allen [Moore] wrote the book, if you really have only read comic books that are traditional and you come across this sequence, it really changes everything you thought about what a comic book’s purpose was. What was it supposed to express? Is it supposed to be fun? Is it supposed to be making me feel like this, because I feel bad? I think that is the point of the sequence in the movie. For me the tone of the movie is as important as the move itself. And in this sequence where you arrive in this super nostalgic place where everything was supposed to be great and there are these old superheroes that have no problems, and then you discover in some ways, they are as jacked up as anyone.

Q: Can you talk about Manhattan’s nakedness throughout the film?

Snyder: I didn’t know how I was going to do a modern Manhattan who wasn’t naked. I did do my best. If you see the Director’s Cut it is a lot more hardcore as far as the nudity goes. There are a lot of shots with Manhattan walking, which gets pretty crazy. I felt like again it goes with the whole character. Manhattan now has lost, he doesn’t care to be clothed because he doesn’t care what we think, what humanity would think of him walking around naked. And so, it just felt like the way it should be. I tried to make it not in-your-face all the time, but on the other hand, I certainly didn’t want to sugar coat it or pretend it wasn’t going to happen. I just felt like I would have sold out if I put some pants on him.

Q: Can the average fan watch two hours and forty-one minutes of dense material?

Snyder: I don’t know, that’s a good question. We finished watching the movie and [producer Lloyd Levin] looked at me when we were looking at the final sound mix and said, ‘I wonder if people are ready to deal with dealing with real things in a super hero movie.’ Can you make a movie, a super hero movie that talks about problems, actual problems. That’s the question of the movie.

Q: Doesn’t Dark Knight touch on more serious themes?

Snyder: Dark Knight seems to do it, I guess. Because it’s a serious film, and it doesn’t hold a mirror up to itself. You can ride the cinematic part of it, and you don’t have to think about Batman too much. In some ways Batman is the least important character. It’s a fantastic film, but Batman, in some ways, is the most cumbersome part of the Dark Knight movie because everyone else is amazing, and Batman is out of place in that world. Like you’re a superhero; what are you doing in this serious movie? Watchmen shines a light on that particular idea of having a guy in costume trying to stop a bank robbery or whatever he is doing. It’s saying, really are you going to accept that as it is? If Superman was real, wouldn’t he be telling world leaders 'if you guys don’t behave, I am going to kill you.' Would he be getting a cat out of a tree, really? It just doesn’t make sense to me. It’s those ideas that I think Watchmen is trying to approach.