Hmm… it seems that Zack Snyder’s Watchmen wasn’t so controversial after all. Although the film was great to every extent, it simply felt too modern for audiences who were just starting to fall in love with superhero movies like Iron Man.

Despite being an underrated film, many directors were involved with the project long before Zack Snyder took the reins.

Notable among them was The Bourne Supremacy director Paul Greengrass and his idea of the opening scene of Watchmen was dark dark!

 
Zack Snyder’s Watchmen (2009)

The Gritty Opening Scene of Watchmen Would Have Referenced Superman!

Paul Greengrass’ fame skyrocketed through the roof after he directed the 2004 film The Bourne Supremacy starring Matt Damon in the lead role. Just a year after that, Greengrass was working on the 2009 DC project Watchmen.
A still from Watchmen

Although the partnership was short-lived, Paul Greengrass had already envisioned how the film was going to be.

During the opening scene when Eddie Blake gets thrown out the window, co-writer David Hayter revealed in an interview with the Script Apart Podcast that the opening scene would have referenced Superman in a dark way!

“The two versions were very different. You could see — I loved Paul’s idea that he said, you know, ‘When we open on Eddie Blake, I wanna see him, he’s like Superman, you know, he’s flying and his hair is going and he’s handsome and everything, and then you pull back and you realize BOOM, he’s plummeting off of this building.’”

He further continued,

“So, you know, you sort of subvert everyone’s expectations from the first image.”

There is no doubt that Zack Snyder is one of the finest directors that the world has ever seen. Being deemed as a visionary director, Snyder’s movies are often different than what the world is trained to be. Iconic actor Patrick Wilson believes that Zack Snyder was the one indirectly responsible for the success of the MCU!

Zack Snyder Served The Dark To Protect The Light?

Zack Snyder on the sets of Watchmen
Yes, it does sound a bit bizarre that Zack Snyder was indirectly responsible for the creation of the MCU. But hey, Patrick Wilson (from The Conjuring fame) seems to think that Zack Snyder created a movie that was so much darker than The Avengers that people saw both sides of the spectrum of light and dark!

“I knew Zack [Snyder] was kind of, he was ahead of the curve, you know. It’s weird to say that audiences weren’t ready for it, but you need a movie like that […] You need movies to go so dark that then ‘Avengers’ can go so light. I do believe in that.”

Well, Watchmen received a high rating of 7.6/10 on IMDB and an average score of 65% on Rotten Tomatoes. The film, overall, was hauled as a cult classic and one of Zack Snyder’s most underrated films.