Review: Watchmen Chapter One as an animated adaptation leaves us with the media

Comics have been around for many decades. Some take them seriously as literary material, and for others, they are just simple entertainment. The truth is that behind this, there is a lot of work to do.

Hollywood from the beginning saw in this ninth art an opportunity to bring adaptations of these characters to the big and small screen, to make them more real with completely new and different stories to represent their adventures.

In this medium it has stood out for having great writers and cartoonists, over the years this has been evolving and changing, they have adapted to each era reflecting in some cases the social and global problems that we have had, it is undeniable that one of the artists who has stood out in the medium is Alan Moore, outside of any controversy that may cause his contribution to the medium has been invaluable.

One of the most representative contributions during 1986 and 1987 was giving a radical turn to the superhero genre. Watchmen marked a before and after. Moore used this story as a means to reflect contemporary anxieties, deconstructing and satirizing the concept by making political comments that bothered more than one.

Watchmen as a comic explores the multiverse and its variants early on. This is an alternative story in which superheroes emerged between the 1940s and 1960s and their activity in society changed history so that the United States as a country and world power won the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal was never exposed. Such power of these beings was abused and reached a very critical point in which the consequences could be devastating.

There have been several reissues in the form of trade paperbacks, single issues, an animated film based on these characters, a movie, and a live-action series along with their respective sequels that have not been as good or recognized as their original.

In 2024, the story is presented again in animated form by Warner Animation in 2 parts that explore in detail what has happened in each of its dialogues and vignettes. It is now the turn of director Brandon Vietti and writer J. Michael Straczynski to take us to this dystopian world where unexpectedly anything can happen.

What is Watchmen Chapter One about?

Watchmen Chapter One faithfully tells the story of the first 6 issues of the original 12-issue miniseries published by DC Comics between 1986 and 1987. A complex alternate world history set in 1985, the government-sponsored murder of the Comedian (Rick D. Wasserman) draws his outlawed colleagues out of retirement and into a mystery that threatens to upend their personal lives and the world they inhabit. If the right solution is not found, all of humanity is in danger.

This fundamental story returns now in a 2-part animated film in animated form, 1986 Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore created one of the most innovative and shocking stories of that time, Watchmen in its 12 issues radically changed the panorama in comic book narration for generations to come and served as a starting point to develop this medium as something more serious and profound, with elements that addressed political issues, the superheroic irony of whether these beings deserved to have that place before everything and everyone, set in an alternative 1985 with the world on the brink of World War III, a more complex and mysterious conspiracy than we could all believe is slowly developing, reflecting the Cold War and the nuclear conflict that can put the entire planet at risk.

Following this in 2008, a motion comic was presented with an impeccable production directed by Jake Strider Hughes, in 2009 a live-action film directed by Zack Snyder, and a sequel in 2019 as a television series, its story has been adapted again into an animated format and the question we ask ourselves now is: was this film necessary? The answer may be controversial and polarizing for some it will be a yes, for others it will be a no and for others, it will be an I don’t care.

Retelling this story is extremely risky, we are in a time where the lack of creativity of the studios in presenting new things is evident and this may or may not be a comfort zone in which once again they go for the easy way of telling us something that already had and still has its success, one of the aspects to highlight about the original material has always been the relevance of its story, what Watchmen Chapter One intends is to divide this story into 2 parts, first the 6 issues and in the next part the other 6 that concludes with everything.

Retelling the same story from another perspective can be shocking and boring, but what enriches this work is its perspective and its animation, the cast of voices and the music, the fact that the important subplots are explored in more depth and detail, that of the boy reading a comic and Rorschach’s diary, which are fundamental to complement the main story, what Warner Animation has done is not risk anything and is based on something that already exists but now with a more mature detail.

The film itself does not risk much, neither in politics nor in its graphic violence, nor its sexual situations, it seems that it is for adults who are not very mature and who understand the important issues less, they are guilty of being purists in an era in which a whole generation dedicated more to the fast and the simple can result in a nostalgic work only for fans and connoisseurs, some of comics and others of animation.

We can question several things about this last point. Although the animation is good and impeccable, at times it doesn’t seem to be as spectacular as we expected for a material of this quality. From a visual perspective, its animated work is very lacking in this first part, which leads us to an inevitable comparison with Marvel Animation in its series What If…? Although they have similarities in their strokes and backgrounds, what they present here is a pseudo-mature work for adults and it doesn’t turn out to be a good decision. The fact that both look alike is undeniable, the use and abuse of its CGI have obvious flaws in the symmetry of its characters, its color palette, and the backgrounds, and even with this against it, it manages to capture the emotions and development of each character more effectively.

Its CGI at times helps to understand this world by giving it a more elegant dark appearance that approaches the realistic in its environment and surroundings, the vehicles in the background are timeless and remain between something classic and modern justifying it with the fact that it is a different world than ours, the symmetry of its characters as human figures look rigid in some action sequences, its highest point is that they tried to emulate the colors that appear in its original material pretending that this is a comic that complies with the rule of animation.

On this point, the studio has not understood that its creator Alan Moore, and its writer Dave Gibbons have insisted together and separately that their story in a 12-issue comic series has been impossible to take to another medium due to the complexity of its atmosphere that was created and designed to be presented in a format of Nite Owl, Nite Owl II, Silk Spectre, Silk Spectre II, Rorschach, Ozymandias, Comedian, and Dr. Manhattan as well-established and concrete characters achieve their narrative objective, their adaptations have failed when not respecting this rule and making freer versions that break the scheme and the essence of what it is.

For example, the film directed by Snyder was not perfect. It does not faithfully adapt its story and much less respect the established rules by imposing its own rules of cinema. If the production design does a great job in its framing, costumes, and cast, in terms of story it falls far short of what was expected. Possibly one of the most difficult parts of adapting Watchmen to other media is the way of telling its story, as is the case of Tales of the Black Freighter, which acts as a moderator of the main plot and simply does not exist in this film.

This subplot is presented here in a not-so-successful way and refers to a few moments in which a few panels are shown leaving its narrative unfinished, the action is summarized in something too fast for the length of the film and its screen time that tries to cover a lot by telling everything and assuming that the viewers who have not read the original material understand what is happening and this hinders its main story and leaves us hanging, this is the reflection of poor planning and execution of what they have.

This first part, in general, is a very dry and simple adaptation of the comic with an animation that could have given more, its opening scene has a different approach to the comic but captures its essence, two detectives investigating the death of a Comedian and try too hard to try and only try to recreate what its vignettes have been, another of its flaws is the duration, it’s 84 minutes of duration are not enough to properly develop what it has, it goes very quickly from one sequence to another which makes the story too rushed which as viewers does not allow us to appreciate the greatness of what this could have been.

Although the dialogue is a very important and essential point when telling this story, it is the voice talent that fails to live up to expectations and does what it can with what they have. Here, no one stands out with a bad performance that could have been much better if director Brandon Vietti knew and understood his source material and managed to convey the emotion of its essence and its message. Nothing justifies a bad job in a work that is complete and rounded in itself, that also does not need sequels or to be told anything more about what happens in this world. Some things should stay as they are, but we are facing a very uncreative and unoriginal industry.

The voice cast includes Kelly Hu, Katee Sackhoff, Adrienne Barbeau, Gray 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 and Max Koch.

The music composed by Tim Kelly is an element that manages to frame this work very well, which does not emulate or try to imitate what Lennie Moore has done in the Motion Comic, Tyler Bates in the film, and what Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross did for the television series, composers with completely different styles who have a common harmony and who have given their personality to their works.

This still does not have a conclusion and remains pending like the second part, this story will continue…

Watchmen Chapter One is now available in a home format and on the Prime Video streaming platform.