Zack Snyder made comic book movies before he ever started working on DCEU movies like Man of Steel and Justice League. However, in his most significant comic book adaptation during that era of his career, he omitted one thing from the comic book story that many fans felt should have been included in his movie. While Snyder felt that the incident from the comic would never work on the big screen, an HBO superhero masterpiece has proven that it would not only work but also remain a fan favorite moment. It also comes as no surprise that the HBO series that did it remains one of the best in DC Comics history.
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In 2009, Zack Snyder directed his DC adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ seminal graphic novel, Watchmen. Similar to Robert Rodriguez directing Sin City in an almost shot-for-panel reconstruction using a green screen, Snyder followed suit. However, while critics praised Rodriguez for bringing Frank Miller’s noir to life, Snyder was accused of misunderstanding the entire themes and storyline from Moore and Gibbons’ story. Watchmen fans also complained about him changing the ending of the series.
Watchmen on HBO Brings Back the Squid Attack From the Comics
Zack Snyder chose not to include the alien squid attack from the Watchmen comic book series. Both the comic and Snyder’s movie showed Ozymandias’s plan of an attack that would kill millions in order to force world peace, as warring countries would unite against a common enemy, even if it were one that was not real. In the comics, it was a giant psychic squid attack. In the movie, it was Doctor Manhattan who took the blame for causing nuclear explosions to create the common enemy.
Snyder stood by his decision to change the attack from the squid to Doctor Manhattan. However, some fans feel that a hero who has always represented the United States was a weird choice for convincing world powers to work with the United States against the attack. That said, the HBO Watchmen sequel series was a follow-up to the book and not Snyder’s movie, and this was evident because it revealed Ozymandias used the psychic squid attack and not Doctor Manhattan to pull off his plan.
The Watchmen episode, “Little Fear of Lightning,” showed the attack in a flashback scene concerning Wade Tillman (Detective Looking Glass). As of that time, Wade was the only main character in the HBO series who was within the range of the squid’s psychic blast when Ozymandias destroyed New York City in 1985. He was part of a Christian group that traveled from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to New Jersey to convince people to repent before the possibilities of a nuclear apocalypse. He happened to be in a hall of mirrors when the squid incident occurred, and when he walked out, he saw all the dead bodies in the streets.
Watchmen’s HBO Series Understood the Comic Book Story
Zack Snyder’s Watchmen movie was good, despite its changes to the source material. However, it was a very different story from the one that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons told in their comics. On the other hand, the HBO Watchmen series really approached the themes better, and re-adding the psychic squid attack was only part of it. Ozymandias’s plan was traumatizing to everyone, and it forced the world’s governments to band together to fight this new fictional enemy.
Having Doctor Manhattan pull off the nuclear attacks was a little more realistic. However, it wasn’t as horrifying as a psychic squid attack killing approximately three million people and psychologically destroying the survivors. Plus, a squid was not connected to any country, unlike Doctor Manhattan, who had fought for the United States since the Vietnam War. Seeing how the psychic squid messed up Wade as severely as it did showed how Ozymandias’s plan worked.
However, while the HBO Watchmen series showed how Ozymandias had a great plan to unite the world, the people on this planet are too full of hate and bigotry for it to last. Setting the series in the city where one of the most horrific massacres in United States history occurred was a great decision, and that played into the themes that Moore and Gibbons focused on when they published Watchmen so many years ago. Doctor Manhattan setting off nuclear attacks was an interesting decision by Zack Snyder, but the HBO series did the right thing when it brought back the psychic squid and had it disrupt the system instead.
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