Is Watchmen an impossible comic to adapt? Warner and Paramount seem to have found a way
You may like Zack Snyder’s Watchmen movie more or less, Christopher Nolan liked it, but there is one thing that has to be granted to the filmmaker: many tried to take the work of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons from paper to the big screen before than him and they failed in the attempt. Is it a comic that is impossible to adapt? Warner and Paramount seem to have found a way: instead of making a single superhero movie, the comic Watchmen It will be divided into two large digitally animated chapters.
Warner Bros. Animation and DC have offered the first look at Watchmen Chapters 1 & 2replicating the vignettes drawn by Gibbons frame by frame through a visual style that at times is reminiscent of what was seen in the series What If…! from Marvel, but knows how to focus on the design and tone of the graphic novel. Faithful enough to most likely achieve approval from an Alan Moore who doesn’t win for disappointment? Judge the result yourself.
To put ourselves in context, Watchmen portrays a decadent world in which the arrival of the definitive and practically omnipotent superhero, Dr. Manhattan, redefined the course of history and reconsidered the role of watchers. However, a shadowy threat has begun to worry those who, after years fighting crime, today live away from the public eye and who refuse to leave their mask in a drawer: someone has killed the Comedian and this is just the principle.
The project to create new films Watchmen It comes from afar, for the record. Dave Gibbons himself got involved with the idea of offering the most faithful adaptation and with the intention of being the definitive leap of his own work to the feature film format back in 2017, although the announcement and the first samples of it will not be offered until Comic-Con San Diego July 2023.
As for Alan Moore, the British writer and magician made it clear that he did not want to know anything about any of his adaptations by Warner for years and even insisted to those responsible for the latest series and sequel to Watchmen, released on HBO in 2019 , to leave him alone.
Something that has its logic: he has always expressed his enormous dissatisfaction with the treatment that his work has had both in the films based on his graphic novels that have worked at the box office and those that were a disaster at the box office, explicitly requesting that it be withdrawn. your name from the credits. To be fair, we don’t expect to see them in these new animated productions either.
We do not know if this new Watchmen like it, it will be the definitive adaptation or it will end up being a new disappointment for Moore, but at least we are clear about one thing: the premiere of this double animated event will be very soon: we know that the first film that will be released as Watchmen Chapter One and it can be seen starting August 13, 2024 in rental and Blu-ray format (it is not clear if it will debut on Max and other platforms), while we will have to wait until 2025 to see the second part.
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