The difference between 'Watchmen' and a normal comic book is this: With 'Batman's Gotham City,' you are transported to another world where that superhero makes sense; 'Watchmen' comes at it in a different way, it almost superimposes its heroes on your world, which then changes how you view your world through its prism.

My aesthetic is probably closer to a 15-year-old's than my dad's, but I get his conviction.

With Dawn I was afraid people would just think it's a B-movie and I didn't know what I was doing. That's really what I was afraid of. Like the subtlety of the movie they would miss. If the movie succeeds, it's that people understand the subtlety. That they're able to see past the conventions of what they think a movie is and go a teeny bit deeper and let it be both.

Who Honors those we love for the very life we live? Who sends monsters to kill us...and at the same time sings that we'll never die? Who teaches us what's real...and how to laugh at lies? Who decides why we live and what we'll die to defend? Who chains us...and who holds the key that can set us free? It's you. You have all the weapons you need. Now fight!

Of course it would depend on the project, but I don't think I could ever separate myself from my aesthetic.

I've ended up as a filmmaker who really loves the movie part of movies. That time in my life was a big influence on the kind of movies that I ended up making. I always think I'm going to make a movie that's gritty and real, but then I make a movie that's like an opera. I fight it at first and then that's just the way it is.

don't mean to sound weird but I get so immersed in the source material when I'm working on a movie that I kind of lose the line between what I thought of and what was in the book.