Back when I was really into comics in the late 80s and early 90s, there were two graphic novels (that's the pretentious nerd term for comic book) that were front and centre in the mind of every geek on the planet.
The Dark Knight Returns gave us the darkest, scariest, most serious Batman in a dark, serious, scary and depressing future. It was so big it influenced Hollywood into putting Batman back on the big screen as a "dramatic" rather than "comedic" property. You'd have to be living under a rock for the last 40 years to have missed the changes that have resulted.
The other was Watchmen. Artist Dave Gibbons and writer Alan Moore set out to put a headstone on superhero comic books. Oh, the irony.
The book is a masterpiece. The irony is that it's SUCH a masterpiece that it's intended goal has so totally and magnificently backfired. Instead of writing the final superhero classic and turning comic books away from men in tights and capes, the genre experienced a massive resurgence, largely due to an influx of writers and artists who were influenced by Watchmen.
At the time, my fellow geeks were of the opinion that Watchmen would and could never see a big (or even small) screen release. The massive tome was deemed unfilmable.
Fast-forward twenty years and thanks to a lot of geek influence in cinema and the advent of realistic CGI effects, Zack Snyder brings the unfilmable to theatres everywhere.
Opinions differ, but for my money, Snyder's version is definitive. All the beats are there, the melody is unchanged, the tempo is faster and yes, he changed the ending. I'll risk the wrath of a certain segment of fandom and just say, Snyder's ending is actually better and more logical than the original version, at least in my opinion.
Sure, even I would have loved to see the giant squid fully realized in larger than life CGI, but having the patsy be onscreen almost more than any other character was effective and tidy storytelling.
The movie has dozens of shots that are lifted directly from the graphic novel and it's simply an ode to the story, art and genius of the graphic novel from start to finish.
Snyder put a bow on it and it's tough to imagine a more faithful movie could be extracted from the source material.
Fast-forward again, 15 years this time.
Warner Bros has just digitally released Watchmen - Chapter I. Physical release is due August 27.
This version is animated. Honestly, after watching it, the animation is one of the few things that sets it apart from Snyder's live action version. It's an almost beat for beat animated recreation of what Snyder did and by extension, what Gibbons and Moore did in the first place.
Sure, it's able to effectively juxtapose the story within a story of The Black Freighter with the real time action of the characters. Snyder wasn't able to include the pirate comic book story in the theatrical version since his film was already pushing 3 hours, but he did get it back into the "Ultimate Cut" physical release, so even that accomplishment is a minor one to hold over the Snyder version. They do have a nifty way to also get the fictional "biography" of the first Nite Owl in as well, having the actor read part of it over the closing credits.
Still, while the two part format gives them room to stretch and restore a few cutting room floor beats that didn't make Snyder's version, this version just feels empty. The voice cast is solid, the animation as good as this CG style animation gets and there's a nice "pre-Blade Rnnner" vibe to the streets scenes which I don't recall from the Snyder version, but there's little life and even less real reason to bother going to all the trouble of making this version. That said, you can bet that Watchmen fans will lap up Chapter II (due sometime in 2025) and use the inevitable inclusion of the giant squid ending to point to this version's superiority.
For me, this version is truly pointless. I'll add it to my collection for the sake of my inner obsessive, but it's likely I won't revisit it once I've watched my copy once. It's like someone decided to make a shot for shot animated version of Michael Keaton's Batman or the first Avengers movie. Sure, I'd put those in my collection and watch them once or twice, but what's the point?
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