Zack Snyder’s ‘Watchmen’ Actor Matthew Goode Isn’t Happy With His Ozymandias Performance All These Years Later: “I Wish I Hadn’t Overthought It”
Even when a movie is no small feat in itself, there is no shortage of people who will line up to pick it apart. Taking Zack Snyder’s first foray into DC material, Watchmen, for instance, the Man of Steel director’s adaptation of the Alan Moore-Dave Gibbons work was pretty faithful, give or take a giant alien squid.
Still, good enough is not always enough (especially for someone like Alan Moore, but that’s another matter), and sometimes the people hardest to please are the actors doing their best to translate something they have to be careful stewards with.
Matthew Goode, who played the nefarious schemer and utopian dreamer Ozymandias, had a hard time watching himself as he saw the flaws of his overthinking in the finished product. That and he doesn’t understand how he got the job, and consequently, has one more reason not to watch his work again.
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“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,” Goode said on an edition of Happy Sad Confused (via Cinema Blend).
For some background, Tom Cruise was considered for the role of Ozymandias, but when he was approached, he became more intrigued by the role of Rorschach, which ultimately went to Jackie Earle Haley.
Goode’s problem with his performance is that he notices when he gives Adrian Veidt varying speech patterns, even if most of us couldn’t care less. “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,’” Goode explained.
However, he admitted, “It was a really great experience.” He added, “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.”
Watchmen, which came out in 2009, was still missing a few elements from the graphic novel, such as the epilogue Tales of the Black Freighter story. Snyder, in a flex of his signature tendency, added an adaptation of that maritime chiller in his Ultimate Cut. Although that isn’t on HBO Max, the 2009 version is along with the 2019 miniseries which served as a sequel to the Moore/Gibbons graphic novel itself.
