Jeffrey Dean Morgan has reflected upon Zack Snyder’s adaptation of the much-loved Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons comic book Watchmen, saying the CGI doesn’t hold up today, nearly 20 years after the film was shot — but he’s proud of his memorable fight scene with Ozymandias.

Watchmen divided fans and critics alike upon its 2009 release, with some arguing Snyder’s film was all style over substance, and key changes, such as to the ending, missed the mark. Others, however, enjoyed the film and it retains a loyal following even now.

While most agree Watchmen mostly holds up, it is perhaps the CGI-heavy Doctor Manhattan who lets the side down with the dreaded uncanny valley look set against live-action actors. Speaking on the latest episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Morgan began by reflecting on the faithfulness of Snyder’s adaptation for the most part. “We never looked at a script ever,” he said. “It’s his [Snyder’s] dog-eared version of Watchmen, the graphic novel. And I’d turn to the page and go, ‘I’ve got to do that.’ I wanted to stand like that. And also, we had Dave Gibbons there who drew the comic book, and I didn’t want to f**k with him either. And we all felt that way.”

Snyder changed the ending from a giant telepathic alien squid destroying New York to Adrian Veidt / Ozymandias framing Billy Crudup’s Doctor Manhattan as a malicious, global threat by staging catastrophic energy attacks to trick the United States and the Soviet Union into uniting against a common enemy and averting World War III.

Morgan suggested the original ending of Watchmen wasn’t really feasible to adapt, given the constraints of special effects technology in 2007 — something the creative team behind the movie knew would be a talking point. And, perhaps with a nod to Doctor Manhattan’s big screen version, Morgan said Watchmen’s CGI doesn’t look great now, nearly 20 years after the movie was shot.

“The ending’s a little bit different, and we kind of knew that going in,” Morgan said. “A giant octopus was going to be tough to do, especially then in 2007 when we shot it. I watched part of the film recently with my son and I was kind of laughing at the CGI of it all then. It just doesn’t match up to what we see now, even what kids are doing on YouTube. It’s crazy!”

Ultimately, though, Morgan had fun making Watchmen, and he sounds proud of the movie’s opening credits, which set up the story by telling the rise and fall of the 1940s superhero group The Minutemen including Morgan’s character, The Comedian, and the eye-catching opening fight scene, which sees Ozymandias murder an older version of The Comedian.

“That opening sequence and going into the fight with Ozymandias and the death of The Comedian… those were the first things we shot,” Morgan said. “That fight I remember took eight days. I came from the world of television really at that point, and so eight days is a full episode. That was the old version of The Comedian, so I had all the prosthetics on. I would go into work at two in the morning to start the makeup process. The rest of the cast came in at eight.

“That first week I remember I was working 20 hour days. I was like, ‘Oh s**t I’m not going to make it through this film. You know, I got another five months to go. And Zack after that realized and he was like, ‘All right, we’re going to have to shoot you and then give you a day off, and shoot you,’ and that’s kind of what we did the rest of the film.

“But god, that was so much fun.”

Watchmen has always been a divisive film. In 2023, Patrick Wilson, who played Nite Owl II, praised Snyder for being “ahead of the curve” with his “dark” take on the superhero genre, suggesting Watchmen helped to pave the way for the MCU’s Avengers movies.

“Watchmen is the only movie of mine that I have watched front to back since a premiere. That movie is awesome,” Wilson said. “I just wanted to look at it as an older guy, as a filmmaker. I knew Zack was ahead of the curve. 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.”

Similarly, The Odyssey director Christopher Nolan has praised Watchmen, saying in 2023: “I’ve always believed Watchmen was ahead of its time. The idea of a superhero team, which it so brilliantly subverts, wasn’t yet a thing in movies. It would have been fascinating to see it released post-Avengers.”

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.