Zack Snyder’s “Watchmen,” as it turns out, could have featured one of the biggest movie stars of all time — Tom Cruise. The actor behind “Mission: Impossible” and “Top Gun,” among many, many other hits, was said to be in the running for a role in the film dating back to several years before it even came out, which Snyder later personally confirmed. But now, the filmmaker has added a pretty interesting layer to the whole thing: Cruise would have starred in the movie, but he wanted to take on the role of Rorschach, which isn’t exactly what Snyder had in mind.
Speaking to Josh Horowitz on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast as part of the promotional tour for his new movie “Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver” (which hits Netflix this weekend), Snyder touched on Cruise’s potential casting in “Watchmen” all those years ago. The director explained that he had wanted Cruise to play Ozymandias. Cruise, however, had his eyes on a different role. Here’s what Snyder had to say about it:
“I wanted Tom Cruise for Ozymandias. Tom wanted to play Rorschach. He wanted to play Rorschach, which I mean, obviously he could have done. But yeah, we had Jackie [Earle Haley] already, and Jackie is like, unbelievable. But I certainly would have considered Tom, in retrospect if I hadn’t had Jackie.”
Indeed, Jackie Earle Haley, who was by no means a big name at that point in his career (with all due respect), ended up playing the pivotal role of Rorschach in the film. While Haley was undoubtedly a lot cheaper, Warner Bros. probably would have loved to get Cruise in “Watchmen” to help boost the film’s profile. On the other hand, the studio would’ve certainly been far from psyched about him being under a mask for the majority of the runtime.
It’s a fascinating bit of alternate history to consider. In the end, Matthew Goode played the role of Ozymandias. Again, Goode was not yet a big name and this was one of his first significant roles in a major tentpole. Cruise would have been by far the biggest movie star in the cast. It’s easy to see why Snyder, at that time, envisioned him as the all-powerful, super-confident Ozymandias. But it’s also not difficult to see why Cruise would see Rorschach as the meatier role.
“He was interested,” Snyder explained to CHUD in 2007 when asked about Cruise’s near-involvement. “I did talk to him about it for a while.” The director also confirmed at the time that yes, it would have been for Ozymandias. This Rorschach news is fascinating though. Would Cruise, Snyder, and Warner Bros. have worked things out if they hadn’t already found Haley? Would “Watchmen” have been a theatrical hit rather than a bomb with that kind of star power? There is so much to consider.
This also isn’t the only time that Cruise flirted with a major superhero movie role in the late 2000s. The Oscar nominee was also famously courted for the lead in 2008’s “Iron Man,” which he passed on. Robert Downey Jr. ended up with the part and the rest is box office history. To this day, Cruise still hasn’t appeared in a superhero movie. That being the case, it’s pretty fascinating that he circled two very big ones right around the same time and, beyond that, never ended up taking part in what became the biggest genre in Hollywood for a decade and a half.