It may be hard to believe, but there was a time when people said it was impossible to adapt Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen into a movie. After all, it was the Citizen Kane of superhero comics, a marriage of inventive storytelling, critical commentary and visual ingenuity that took advantage of the medium’s unique artistic possibilities. Not to mention that it would be hellishly expensive to produce and, if faithfully adapted, would be rated R – a doubly tricky proposition in the Hollywood studio system.
But that was then, and this is now. Zack Snyder brought Watchmen to the screen 15 years ago with a well-intentioned but bloated adaptation that was respectful of the material until it wasn’t, changing a single, key plot point that caused the entire story to fall apart. After decades of anticipation, that film came and went, more or less failing to influence superhero cinema the way its source material did the comics. An HBO series set after the events of the original story, executive produced by Damon Lindelof and released in 2019, was widely praised but — to be fair — wasn’t a direct adaptation of Moore and Gibbons’ material, so it had other hurdles to overcome.
The most recent attempt to adapt their work, Watchmen: Chapter 1, is a computer-animated two-part film that faithfully recreates many of the comic’s panels, as well as much of the narration and dialogue. The filmmakers seem to be daring audiences to find fault with Watchmen: Chapter 1, because any problems with such a literal adaptation can only be problems with the comics themselves. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. It’s an admirable and relatively successful retelling of the story, but it has problems with visualization, sidestepping the biggest problems of translating Watchmen to a new medium rather than overcoming them.
Watchmen, for those who haven’t read it or seen the previous film, is set in an alternate version of 1985 where superheroes really did exist, but they were neither “super” nor “heroic.” They all went into vigilantism for their own, mostly suspect, reasons, and they certainly didn’t save the world. The only “hero” with real superpowers, Dr. Manhattan (Michael Cerveris), changed the course of the Vietnam War and kept Nixon in power for nearly two decades. The Earth is now on the brink of apocalypse, and our saviors are largely to blame.
The plot begins when a superhero named The Comedian (Rick D. Wasserman) is thrown out of a window. Rorschach (Titus Welliver), suspecting someone is hunting the old “masks,” reconnects with his former allies to warn them. Nite-Owl (Matthew Rhys) has given up fighting crime and, with it, himself. Ozymandias (Troy Baker) has sold himself out completely and runs a company built on his old superhero brand. Silk Spectre (Katee Sackhoff), who only became a superhero to please her mother, lives with Doctor Manhattan, whose powers have alienated him from their relationship and the entire human experience.
Despite its title, Watchmen: Chapter 1 covers the first half of the miniseries, not the first chapter of the comic. Moore and Gibbons’ work was originally published as a serial, and the film plays out that way, building up to key moments and revelations, then fading out and catching up again. Any faithful adaptation would inevitably feel a little episodic, and any criticism of that approach would, of course, miss the point: It’s the first half of a serial. That’s life.
The problem that Watchmen: Chapter 1 falls victim to is, unfortunately, evident in every shot. The CG animation style used to recreate the artwork captures the lines and framing, but not the atmosphere. The colors are bright, the lighting is crisp, and all the effort that went into making this story relatively realistic has been thrown out the window – like the comedian himself. The story is told, but the telling always feels off. It also doesn’t help that the character animations aren’t always convincing – early scenes show pedestrians walking with all the stiffness of an early Hanna-Barbera cartoon.
The effort to capture specific panels from the comics is honorable to a point, but the biggest problem with adapting Watchmen into a new medium isn’t the imagery or even the story. The problem is that Moore and Gibbons’ work was conceived specifically as a comic, and comics aren’t just storyboards. There’s a chapter where Doctor Manhattan, having exiled himself to Mars, reveals his nonlinear understanding of time. All of his memories coexist with his present, just as they all coexist on the page, with the shared physical space standing in for a shared chronology.
Watchmen: Chapter 1, like Snyder’s adaptation, captures the narrative progression of Dr. Manhattan’s nonlinear memories. But because cinema is set over a finite period of time — as opposed to a finite time span — it emphasizes the “progression” and gives us only the gist of the “nonlinear.” We understand what’s happening, the basic concepts come across, but the mediums have fundamental differences, and Watchmen was designed to maximize the potential of only one of them. When we said the comics couldn’t be adapted to film, we really meant it; getting the gist is not the same as “getting it.”
Despite the inherent problems inherent in any Watchmen adaptation and the serviceable but not entirely convincing visual aesthetic, Chapter 1 does a respectable job of retelling that story. Tim Kelly’s score recreates much of the atmosphere lost in the animation, with moody drones that aptly recall the works of Vangelis. The acting is also mostly excellent, often lending texture and insight to the dialogue. Welliver in particular highlights various aspects of Rorschach, whose growling monologues have a violent but pathetic quality. When he muses, “All the whores and politicians are going to stand up and shout ‘Save us!’ and I’m going to look down and whisper ‘No,'” it doesn’t sound like he’s making a dire prediction—it sounds like he’s describing a pathetic power fantasy. Even real-life superheroes have to pretend they’re more important than they are. That’s why some of them wear costumes in the first place.
Watchmen: Chapter 1 comes from director Brandon Vietti, whose excellent Young Justice TV series is one of the gold standards for animated superhero stories. What he’s taken on is a difficult, possibly thankless task, and the fact that it works at all – let alone works pretty well – is a testament to his talent. But one can’t help but wonder what the point is, other than to make the most straightforward and complete film adaptation possible. If the translation is that accurate, it’s arguably redundant, since the comic already tells the same story in a clearer and more sophisticated way. If it’s meant to achieve a higher goal, I guess we’ll have to wait for Chapter 2 to find out.
Watchmen: Chapter 1 is now available to stream on demand. Physical copies go on sale August 27.
