Whatever your relationship with Zack Snyder’s work may be, it’s hard to dispute that the man banked one of the best 2000s movies with his cinematic adaptation of DC’s Watchmen. While the 2024 movie Rebel Moon: Part 2 - The Scargiver represents a new round of debate over Snyder’s filmography, there’s always room in the conversation for a chat about that storied classic.
And in a new interview where Zack Snyder chats about his entire resume, the helmer behind that landmark comic book movie revealed a pretty bizarre topless scene that almost made its way into the finished product. As he sat down to make an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, the mastermind behind 300 and Sucker Punch actually revealed some wild details about the flashback scenes that fill in the story Rorschach/Walter Kovacs.
Played by Academy Award winner Jackie Earle Haley in his adult years, those younger flashbacks employed Zack’s son, Eli to play the role. Part of the character’s history is a rather harsh scene where Walter’s mother, a prostitute, is interrupted on the job by her son.
In his recollection of the scene, Zack Snyder’s original vision would have required some seriously weird conditions, which he laid out as follows:
I had wanted the mother to be topless in that scene. And they were like, ‘Nah. You can’t have…’ And it’s cool, because his mother was visiting set that day. His mom was there, and she was like, ‘Oh, you’re putting our son in a movie.’ We weren’t together at the time, his mom and I, but we’re really close friends. But she was an actress, and they were like, ‘The only way that the woman can be topless is if it was actually his mom.’ And I was like, ‘Uh!’ I go ‘Denise?’, and she was like ‘No chance!’ … I go, ‘C’mon! It’s for the drama. It’s not like…’ She was like, ‘You are insane.’ I was like, ‘C’mon! That would have been awesome!’
Well if that level of weirdness isn’t fitting to the psychology of Rorschach, I don’t know what is. And to be totally fair, Zack Snyder seemed to take ex-wife Denise Weber’s outright rejection of the moment in stride. Not to mention, the way that he talks about this story isn't with any sort of salacious pride; but rather a passion to get the shot as he envisioned it.
It all turned out for the better though, as the scene certainly didn't suffer for lacking the nudity Snyder was thinking of including. For the curious, here’s how it all turned out in the finished version of Watchmen:
Looking back on the experience, Joe Rogen actually asked Zack Snyder if he could have achieved the moment he’d wanted to capture through CGI. That’s a pretty fair question, especially when considering how Snyder replaced an entire Army of the Dead actor through digital trickery. With that in mind, Zack actually laid out how he would do that scene now with the following level of impressive detail:
At the time, probably [not]. Now I think we could. Now I think we could have. If I had wanted to do it now, I think that’s how you would do it. You’d do it with some sort of chest rig, and they would paint them out, and redo the boobs. That’s a good idea, actually. I’ll go back in.
While Snyder did eventually return to Watchmen to deliver his Director’s Cut and the Ultimate Cut that included the animated short Tales of the Black Freighter, I think it’s safe to assume he wouldn’t actually be pulling a George Lucas on this Rorschach flashback. Despite some fans, like our own Adam Holmes, sharing their reasons why Watchmen animated adaptation is a bad idea, that seems to be where the property is heading.
Watchmen is a story that’s always pushed boundaries, and we’ll supposedly see just how much the two-part animated epic tests those specific waters at some point in the year to come. In the meantime, those of you who want to return to Zack Snyder’s vision of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ subversive masterpiece, the theatrical cut is currently streaming for those with access to a Max subscription.
