Watchmen: Chapter II, 2024.
Directed by Brandon Vietti.
Starring Kelly Hu, Katee Sackhoff, Adrienne Barbeau, Grey Griffin, Titus Welliver, Matthew Rhys, Troy Baker, Jeffrey Combs, Yuri Lowenthal, Kari Wahlgren, Phil LaMarr, Dwight Schultz, Geoff Pierson, Michael Cerveris, Corey Burton, Jason Spisak, John Marshall Jones, Rick D. Wasserman, Max Koch.
SYNOPSIS:
Warner Bros. Animation’s faithful adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ acclaimed comic book Watchmen concludes with the release of Watchmen: Chapter II. You won’t find every little sub-plot from the graphic novel here, but this is a pretty solid rendition of the story. You get a code for a digital copy and a handful of bonus features too.
Movie adaptations always get scrutinized by fans, even more so when it’s a popular, long-lasting story like Watchmen. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ late 80s comic book series is still my favorite in that medium, and director Brandon Vietti and screenwriter J. Michael Strączynski have succeeded in crafting a faithful adaptation with Watchmen: Chapter II.
Watchmen: Chapter I, which I reviewed earlier this year, ended with the arrest and demasking of the anti-hero Rorschach (Titus Welliver), who has been investigating a series of murders and attempted murders involving retired superheroes. He’s reunited with his old partner Nite Owl (Dan Dreiberg; played by Matthew Rhys), who knows Rorschach is a bit deranged but thinks he may be onto something.
Meanwhile, this world’s version of Superman, Dr. Manhattan (Michael Cerveris), has left Earth for Mars after being linked to a string of cancer victims, while his estranged girlfriend Laurie (Katee Sackhoff) has hooked up with Nite Owl but still wants her ex to return and help fix what has gone wrong.
In the background, billionaire Adrian Veidt (Troy Baker), who went by Ozymandias during his superhero days, continues to play a chess game that he’s managed to conceal from Dr. Manhattan’s ability to see the future. Unlike in Zack Snyder’s 2009 adaptation, Veidt’s final solution to unite mankind is kept intact this time, which makes sense given the ability to portray such an event in animation versus live action.
Tales of the Black Freighter, the comic within the comic, continues in Chapter II as well, acting as a kind of Greek chorus commenting on the main action. It doesn’t work quite as well when adapted to animation, but it still serves its purpose.
Overall, both parts comprise a faithful adaptation that hits the right notes while leaving out little bits along the way. Just like one might condense and/or eliminate certain sub-plots when adapting a novel, Vietti and Strączynski wisely decided to let certain things go. I wasn’t really bothered by that, since I still have a copy of the entire 12-issue limited series if I want to relive the full story.
There’s no Blu-ray included here, which seems to be the new normal for many 4K Ultra HD releases, but you do get a code for a digital copy. Both the disc and the digital copy include a trio of featurettes that do a good job of wrapping up the making of this two-part animated movie. Here’s what you’ll find:
• Dave Gibbons and Watchmen: Endgame (7:16): Alan Moore long ago disassociated himself from Watchmen, leaving artist Dave Gibbons as the sole “based on” credit and, I assume, 100% of the royalties that come with that. He continues where he left off in his Chapter I bonus features interview, and his discussion includes something I didn’t know before: DC gave the pair 12 issues to work with, rather than the six they originally thought they had, leaving both of them to figure out how to expand the story in various ways. As Gibbons points out (and he should be rightly considered co-creator of Watchmen, since he contributed many things to the story, rather than just drawing what Alan Moore told him to draw), the extra content ended up enriching the series, rather than making it feel like some extra stuff had been shoved in for no reason.
• The Art of Adaptation: Building to the Final Act (10:05): Even a pretty faithful adaptation such as this one had to make alterations here and there, and this featurette digs into what was changed. While it would be easy to assume that the comic book provided ready-to-go storyboards for the animated film, the reality was that adapting the story to a new medium meant tweaking certain things along the way.
• Designing Watchmen (22:01): Gibbons and various folks who worked on this adaptation dig into comparisons between the comic book and this movie in terms of the world building, the costume designs, and so forth. You get plenty of comparisons with the original comic book pages and the storyboards created for this film.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
