>>944951
Thanks to Snyder movie was as faithful to the comic as it was. He threw out older scripts and supposedly fought with producers to keep as much stuff from the comic in as possible. Some of the bullshit included in previous drafts:
>putting Watchmen in modern times
>making movie a criticism of the Bush era U.S.
>changing message to be pro-enviornment and discarding politics and moral issues completely
>adding time travel to Ozzy's plan
>removing the Minutemen from the story
>Black Freighter completely being ignored
>Removing team's backstory, and turning it into a generic cape film
>Giving the film a futuristic aesthetic
>Silk Spectre having superpowers
>Most of the team having superpowers
>Everyone getting cancer from Dr. Manhattan
>Shitty casting choice, like Schwartzenegger as Dr. Manhattan, Simon Pegg as Rorschach, etc.
Watchmen got off easy with Snyder. Every other considered concept I have seen was absolute shit, regardless of the pedigree of people involved. For example, Terry Gilliam wanted to downplay superhero aspects even further and focus on the effects that Dr. Manhattan had on society when he appeared. Ozzy's final plan would include time travel to prevent Dr. Manhattan from ever being created. Gillam's film would end with Watchmen story being turned from reality into a hit comic, and heroes becoming a times-square impersonators of "The Watchmen."
Bad parts of the Snyder's film are mostly leftovers from the Hayter's script. He was the one who came up with using explosions instead of the Squid and removing some of the bitterness from the original ending. At least Snyder managed to get money to make Black Freighter animation and kept out most bad ideas that studio wanted to include.
Here is an article describing some of the previous concepts:
http://archive.is/ibVh6
I can't find other article. It had concept art, links to the scrips, treatments, excerpts, and rumors.