Who’s listening for href="http://www.film.com/movies/watchmen/18926518">Watchmen?
We are. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m extraordinarily
worried about Watchmen, the upcoming comic book adaptation
from the director of href="http://www.film.com/movies/dawnofthedead/6133704">Dawn of
the Dead and 300,
Zack Snyder. While possessing an incredible visual sense, both of
Snyder’s previous films have been adaptations of existing work. And
neither has been faithful to its original source. So here he is
directing what is widely regarded as the single greatest comic book
story ever told –- the story of an alternate history in which masked
vigilantism becomes a trend and the United States gets the world’s only
super-powered hero. Right in the midst of the cold war. The result
changes everything.

The year is 1985. The Constitution of the United States has been
amended and Richard Nixon is still the President. And masked men
illegally haunt the night. I don’t think there’s any doubt that Snyder
is going to get the look right. Lord only knows if he’s going to get
the story right. But the thought swimming around in my head this week
is: what is Watchmen going to sound like? Is Snyder going to
have a score written? Being that the film is a period film, will he use
music from the era? Or will he do something even cooler than that?

A score would probably be the safest bet. Get a high-end composer to
work up something dark, brooding and magnificently enormous. Watchmen
is a BIG story, with larger-than-life characters. It needs a BIG sound.
And unlike many comic book characters, these heroes and villains are
incredibly complicated. Dr. Manhattan is powerful, well intentioned,
but no longer entirely rational in the human sense. Rorschach, while
criminally insane, is doing his best to protect the innocent.
Characters like these require complicated themes that really evoke
their conflicted natures, which of course could prove to be a
delightful challenge to a great composer.

Or Snyder could use period music, pulling some classic music from
the 1980s, especially the music referenced in the comic book by the
likes of Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan and John Cale.

But what I’d really love to see is an experiment, something strange
like hiring some of the greatest bands of the ’80s, like The Police or
Elvis Costello or Journey or Genesis or Stevie Wonder, with maybe a
little help from Quincy Jones for incidental music, and having them
write ALTERNATE music for this ALTERNATE earth. I mean, what would
music sound like in a world where a 50-ft tall man waded through the
jungles of Vietnam and won it for us? What would it sound like in an
America where we’d had the same conservative right-wing president for
the better part of two decades? Rock has always been the voice of the
disestablishment types. What would music sound like in a universe like
this? That’s what I want to know. I mean, if Snyder is going to take us
to another world, why not take us all the way there?

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C. Robert Cargill – - – Email
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