In case you hadn’t noticed, comic book movies have changed to an exceptional degree over the last quarter-century-plus. The landscape was basically dead until X-Men and Spider-Man changed the game in the early 2000s, and the storytelling is so abundant now thanks to the co-existing Marvel Cinematic Universe and DC Universe that there are questions of genre fatigue. It’s been a complex journey full of big ups and downs in the last two-and-a-half decades, and two titles that really can’t be ignored in the conversation are Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight and Zack Snyder’s Watchmen – which are actually two films that are inextricably linked.
No, I’m not just referring to the Batman easter egg in the latter’s memorable title sequence that seems to rewrite the Caped Crusader’s origin story. The two blockbusters were released within a year of one another (July 2008 and March 2009), and while they together demonstrated the potential of dark and dramatic storytelling in comic book movies, Snyder credits Nolan’s work for opening the particular door that he ended up walking through. In a 2009 interview with the New York Times, the 300 director was asked about how the success of the Batman Begins sequel “helped” his work, and Snyder explained,
