Damon Lindelof: Watchmen's "American Hero Story" isn't throwing shade at Zack Snyder's movie adaptation of Watchmen

Variety

“I will always take responsibility for when I’m winking or insulting or trolling,” Lindelof tells Variety. “There was no intentionality on my part to make fun of or take a shot at or troll Zack Snyder’s Watchmen movie. I have a tremendous amount of affection for for Zack’s movie and for Zack himself. And I feel like if anything, the challenge of doing ‘Watchmen’ as a straight-up adaptation in the body of a three-hour movie is near impossible, and he did about as good of a job as anyone can.”

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• Watchmen is refreshing in the way it created fully realized women characters who engage with the world like fully realized male characters: "During a pivotal moment in episode four of Watchmen, three characters who are arguably out of central casting for any comic book adaptation — the brooding masked avenger, the jaded yet noble FBI agent, and the eccentric trillionaire genius with mysterious motives — gather to discuss a key development in the case that the masked avenger and the FBI agent are working (separately, of course, though they'd do far more good working together) and that the genius clearly knows more about than they're letting on," says Laura Bogart. "The scene is paradoxically remarkable for its seeming banality: Each of these characters is a woman. Two of them are women of color. One of them is nearly 70 years old — though all three of them are at least 40. The rarity of seeing women — let alone women over 35, and let alone women of color — as co-leads on any series, especially a many-chambered puzzle-box of a superhero thriller, makes Watchmen downright radical. Yet the show never calls attention to its approach to gender, it just allows these women to be exactly who they are — which may be the most radical element of all. These women — Angela Abar, aka Sister Night (Regina King), Laurie Blake (Jean Smart), and Lady Trieu (Hong Chau) — form a triumvirate that will propel showrunner Damon Lindelof's intense, operatic story of trauma and justice, love and vengeance, violence and redemption."
• Yahya Abdul-Mateen II on his "gift of a role": "I think I might’ve been maybe three episodes in when I found out," he says. "I had a meeting with Damon and we sat down on the couch and he basically laid it out for me and told me where I was going to go. And you know, my first reaction was, it was just, I was very, very surprised. I knew that Cal — that there was something mysterious about Cal. But I didn’t think that that will be it. And then that’s when the role really got, it really turned into something that was just really, really an honor to be doing. First working with Regina and HBO and working with Damon. That was one thing. But then to be asked to come in and to play this character. That was just really a gift of a role."
• Abdul-Mateen discusses his big Watchmen reveal
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• Abdul-Mateen, whose Watchmen character's name is Cal, was a member of Cal's track team when he discovered acting
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