Everyone has an angel, a guardian who watches over us. We can’t know what form they’ll take. One day old man, next day little girl. But don’t let appearances fool you, they can be as fierce as any dragon. Yet they are not here to fight are battles, but to whisper from a hearth. Reminding that it’s us… it’s everyone of us who holds the power of the worlds we create.
When Reality is a prison, Your mind can set you free.
Once you land on who you think the character is and what his conflicts are, you have to let that lead you. You have to throw all that other stuff away and not be worried about this epic responsibility, or it will just crush and paralyze you.
I’d say the purest experience for the movie is not to have read the book because I think when you’ve read the book you’re just ticking off boxes. I think that after you see the movie, reading the book is a cool thing. I always say the movie’s not meant to replace the book. That’s ridiculous. I’m a huge fan of the book.
I understand the rules of Superman – not necessarily better than anyone else – but better than a normal filmmaker would. After doing ‘Watchmen’ and digging that deep into the why of superheroes, when Superman is presented to you, I felt like I was in a unique position to say ‘I get this guy. I know what this is.
I think I just have a natural operatic aesthetic. I can’t help it.
Reality’s its own thing. And I’m not really into reality that much. I’m into this cinematic stylized reality that can comment on reality. It’s like the most beautiful parts of reality and the saddest parts, but it’s none of this middle ground.
Yeah, I mean, I think I’m obsessed with tone in the movies. Tone has always been the main thing that I go after with a movie.
It’s difficult to find a movie that feels true to itself. You feel the hand of Hollywood, the moviemaking by committee, on everything.
I’ve always been influenced by the human form. I’m a big fan of that Shakespeare quote. I tend to leave out the bad part of the paragon of animals quote, because I have this sort of Ayn Rand aesthetic. It was always one of those quotes that inspired me.
There was this interesting quote: try and live your life without fear and desire. It’s this concept that’s like when you look at a painting in a museum and you are held in aesthetic arrest. So the I, the ego, is stripped, is gone. The observer and thing become one. That’s where fear and desire come in because you don’t want to own it, possess it, desire it, and it’s not moving you to fear. It’s like you’re in this harmonious state with the object.
Who Honors those we love for the very life we live? Who sends monsters to kill us…and at the same time sings that we’ll never die? Who teaches us what’s real…and how to laugh at lies? Who decides why we live and what we’ll die to defend? Who chains us…and who holds the key that can set us free? It’s you. You have all the weapons you need. Now fight!
So you know when you were work on Man of Steel, in 10 years somebody is going to do the music for Man of Steel, and a different director is going to be doing Man of Steel. That’s the reality. So all you can do is to give it not only your best, but your vision on what this character is, when you become one with that character.
You can’t teach anyone. You can’t tell anyone. That’s the thing you have to sit down and experience in order for it to mean anything. You can’t intellectualize it. It’s like why movies are cool. It’s a combination of pictures and design and acting and music can create an experience that is outside of the experience that you can actually have in reality, which gets to my motion picture philosophy. People are like, ‘aren’t you trying to make the movies as real as you can?’
The eyes get lost in 3-D. With 3-D, your eyes are looking for the plane of focus, right? And the problem is, when you do quick cuts, your eyes can’t find it.
The difference between ‘Watchmen’ and a normal comic book is this: With ‘Batman’s Gotham City,’ you are transported to another world where that superhero makes sense; ‘Watchmen’ comes at it in a different way, it almost superimposes its heroes on your world, which then changes how you view your world through its prism.
It’s more like Christmas, you know, when you get a shot in that looks great and it’s exactly what you want. It’s a great feeling, and there’s nothing like it.
Look, if you have a problem with distilling the Battle of Thermopylae down to freedom versus tyranny, you need to read Herodotus because he’s the one. It’s his fault, not modern culture’s fault. He did it.’ [Victor Davis Hanson] references a lot of things like that because he feels like the spirit of the book and of the movie [“300″] are very close to the Spartan aesthetic. That’s really kind of what he feels.”
My aesthetic is probably closer to a 15-year-old’s than my dad’s, but I get his conviction.
Anytime I’ve ever been involved in a non-linear story, you see it in a linear manner first, just to make sure it makes sense, and then you chop it up and move it around.
The truth is the music is really an incredible personal part of the movie. When I was drawing the storyboards for Watchmen, I had just gone to my iPod and was grabbing music. It took me about two weeks to really put my playlist together. But once I had it, I kinda just put my headsets on and drew for five months. But that music’s the music that’s in the movie.
I mean, like, I can go in a room and say, look, ‘Watchmen’ should be at least 15 minutes longer than ‘Batman.’ I mean, that’s, like, any geek will tell you that.
I imagine the film [“300”] as if I was a Spartan and I had never seen an immortal or a Persian, or an elephant or a rhino for that matter.
He’s this amazing ambassador for all superheroes. What we’ve made as a film not only examines that but is also an amazing adventure story. It’s been an honor to work on. As a comic book fan, Superman is like the Rosetta Stone of all superheroes.
The challenge with ‘Watchmen’ is making sure that the ideas that were in the book got into the movie. That was my biggest stretch. I wanted people to watch the movie and get it. It’s one of those things where, over time, it has happened more.
