Having Malin Akerman play Silk Spectre II and Billy Crudup play Dr. Manhattan — these might be seen as some surprising casting decisions.
Well, with Malin — I mean, she's beautiful, she's got tons of personality, she's just out there. But with Billy, who's pretty intense and he's got his own thing happening, to say that he's gonna be in a superhero movie, that's gonna make people think. And having Billy do Manhattan is just . . . right. Like I said, everything is by design. I mean, I love tone — it's all about that for me. And I love a movie that's self-reflexive. Like Robocop, which does that in a really awesome way. Verhoeven's one of my favorite directors, and with Robocop you can say, "Oh, it's a cool movie about a robot policeman who goes and kicks some ass." Or you can think, "Oh my God! It's an anti-technology movie that's all about man losing touch with his soul."
The sex scene between Nite Owl and Silk Spectre II is pretty great — the boots, the zips. And you've got Leonard Cohen doing "Hallelujah" over it.
Well, I originally had a different version of "Hallelujah" on that scene — it was the version by Alison Krauss, and it was really beautiful. Too beautiful, as it turned out, because when I showed it to my buddies, they were like, "Wow, you really mean this, this love scene." So I was like, okay, that didn't work. But with the Leonard Cohen, in that moment, it's a little sadder of a song, it's a little bit more twisted, it's a little more broken, which expresses to me what's going on in that scene, between those two characters.
So far, the most popular characters seem to be Rorschach and the Comedian — two of the most disturbed people in the movie. Why do you think that is?
Because people are dark fucking dudes, that's why!
