It’s a rare thing when a parody is as effective as this one is.
When the first Watchmen trailer originally premiered last year, I don’t think anyone had this in mind. Some creative geek has crafted what is probably the best parody trailer I’ve ever seen, merging WALL·E with Watchmen in a brilliant way. It’s not a trailer mashup in the usual sense, combining scenes from both films; instead, it’s only the audio track from the Watchmen trailer with scenes from WALL·E. However, it’s really well done, almost perfectly mirroring the original work and finding common ground between two films that otherwise have almost nothing in common with each other.
For comparison, here’s the original Watchmen trailer:
And now, for your enjoyment, the WATCHMEN·E trailer:
To see just how similar the two trailers are, I recommend maxing out your browser’s viewing area (hit F11) so you can see both videos at once, mute the audio on the YouTube video, then start both trailers playing (hit the play button on the second trailer first) and sync up them up as closely as possible using the end of the green “Preview” screen as a guide. Enjoy!
As a sidenote, the story behind the Smashing Pumpkins song used in the trailer is pretty interesting. The song is more than ten years old, and was originally written for the soundtrack to what is widely considered the worst big-budget comic book film of all time, Batman & Robin. I’m sure it’s with some intentional irony, then, that Zach Snyder chose this song (somewhat appropriately titled “The Beginning is the End is the Beginning”) to introduce audiences to their first glimpse at his adaptation of what is widely considered to be the best graphic novel of all time. Sure, the song fits the beats of the story very well, but it seems there’s a bit more to it than that, eh? Here’s a more in-depth story about the song, plus Billy Corgan’s reaction to it being used in the Watchmen trailer.
That “parod*e” is great! It changes the meaning of it all for me…
I have and have had the rock version of the Pumpkins songs (End is the Beginning…) for years. It’s one of my favorite rock songs from the 90′s and one of my favorite Pumpkins songs. I love that Snyder used the alternate version (Beginning is the End…) for the Watchmen trailer. Once I heard it I instantly recognized it and the “He’s a genius!” light went on in my head. Reading the lyrics to Beginning is the End…, however, is very interesting and makes a lot of sense coming from Corgan’s brain. Good stuff.