Sixteen years after its original release, director Zack Snyder's Watchmen can be reflected upon as an impressive work. It was long thought that properly adapting Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' legendary comic was impossible, and there are some controversial choices made by the production, but it's a loving and faithful work that is unquestionably visually stunning. All that being said, the film does have its critics, and one of them is star Matthew Goode – who thinks the movie on the whole is great, but he second guesses his own casting as Adrian Alexander Veidt a.k.a. Ozymandias.
The actor recently did a nice career retrospective as a guest on an episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, and when he discusses Watchmen, he is still a bit awed that he was part of the film. Zack Snyder had originally wanted Tom Cruise for the part of Ozymandias (the Mission: Impossible star actually wanted to take on the role of Rorschach), but he eventually cast Goode, and the Dept Q actor isn't quite sure why:
I honestly couldn’t believe they had given me this job. I think [Zack Snyder] had seen The Lookout or something. Goodness knows why he made the jump. Tom Cruise would have been amazing in that film, but it would have cost them an arm and a leg.
More than just seeing himself as a more inexpensive option for the production of the massive blockbuster (which ended up being a box office disappointment), Matthew Goode also has a few critiques of his own performance that he can't quite let go. Looking back at his take on the character, he thinks that he probably was trying to do too much with the complex role, and he has certain regrets regarding his accent choices.
If you've ever seen Watchmen and questioned why Ozymandias speaks one way in one scene and a different way in the next, Goode is aware, and he is apologetic.
I wish I hadn’t overthought it. I mean, I wish I hadn’t tried to give him a kind of German accent when he’s, you know, full American in public and then a kind of soft-ish German-American accent. I could have just made it easier on myself, because then people go, 'He couldn’t hold his accent.’ You’re like, ‘Uh, okay, that’s like, I understand why you might think that.’ It was a really great experience.
Matthew Goode is critical about his own work in Watchmen, but he does have a great appreciation for the work as a whole... even though he admits that he hasn't actually seen the film in a while. He's apparently not an actor who spends his time looking back at his old movies – but he expects that it holds up:
I think it stands the test of time. I don’t really know. Something goes out in the world, I don’t spend a huge amount of time checking up on it, you know what I mean? It’s just sort of out there. I haven’t seen it since we went to the premiere. I thought it was very faithful visually to the comic.
It is indeed a very faithful adaptation, and if you haven't seen Watchmen in a minute, it's a work worth revisiting (though the sequel series that aired on HBO a few years ago is definitely its superior – albeit very different). If you find yourself in the mood to check it out, the film is presently available to stream with a HBO Max subscription.
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