It may be hard to believe, but there was a time when people said Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ “Watchmen” would be impossible to film. After all, it was the “Citizen Kane” of superhero comics, a marriage of inventive storytelling, critical commentary and visual ingenuity that capitalized on the unique artistic possibilities of its medium. Not to mention that it would be expensive as hell to make and, if adapted faithfully, rated “R” — a doubly dicy proposition in the Hollywood studio system.
But that was then and this is now. Zack Snyder brought “Watchmen” to the big screen 15 years ago with a well-intentioned but overblown adaptation that was respectful to the material until it wasn’t, altering a single, load-bearing plot point that made the whole story collapse. After decades of anticipation, that movie came and went, more or less failing to make the impact on superhero cinema the way its source material did on comics. An HBO series set after the events of the original tale, executive produced by Damon Lindelof and released in 2019, was widely acclaimed but — to be fair — was not a direct adaptation of Moore and Gibbons’ material, so it had different hurdles to overcome.
The latest attempt to adapt their work, “Watchmen: Chapter 1,” is a CG-animated two-part motion picture, faithfully recreating many of the panels from the comic and much of its narration and dialogue. The filmmakers seem to be daring the audience to find any fault with “Watchmen: Chapter 1,” because any problems with an adaptation this literal could 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 struggles with the visualizations and it sidesteps the biggest problems with translating “Watchmen” to a new medium, instead of overcoming them.
“Watchmen,” for those who have never read it or seen the previous movie, takes place in an alternate version of 1985 where superheroes really existed, but were neither “super” nor “heroic.” They all went into the vigilante business for their own personal, typically suspect reasons, and they most certainly did not save the world. The only “hero” with actual super powers, Doctor Manhattan (Michael Cerveris), altered the course of the Vietnam War, leaving Nixon in power for nearly two decades. Earth is now on the brink of doomsday and it’s mostly our saviors’ fault.
The plot kicks in when a superhero named The Comedian (Rick D. Wasserman) gets thrown out a window. Rorschach (Titus Welliver) suspects someone is hunting down the old “masks,” and reconnects with his former allies to warn them. Nite-Owl (Matthew Rhys) has given up on crime-fighting and, by extension, himself. Ozymandias (Troy Baker) has sold out completely, running a corporation 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” doesn’t cover the first chapter of the comics, it covers the first half of the mini-series. Moore and Gibbons’ work was originally serialized and the movie plays that way, repeatedly building to important moments and revelations and then fading out and picking back up again. Any faithful adaptation was bound to feel a little episodic, and any criticism of that approach would of course be missing the point: It’s the first half of a serialized story. Them’s the breaks.
The problem that “Watchmen: Chapter 1” falls prey to is, unfortunately, 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 of the effort that went into grounding this tale in relative realism has been thrown — like the Comedian himself — out the window. The story is told but the storytelling always feels off. It doesn’t help that character animations aren’t always convincing either — early scenes show pedestrians walking with all the stiffness of an early Hanna-Barbera cartoon.
Efforts to capture specific panels from the comics are noble 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 specifically designed as a comic, and comics aren’t just storyboards. There’s a chapter where Doctor Manhattan, having exiled himself to Mars, reveals his non-linear understanding of time. All of his memories co-exist with his present, just like they all co-exist on the page, the shared physical space standing in for a shared chronology.
“Watchmen: Chapter 1,” like Snyder’s adaptation, captures the narrative progression of Doctor Manhattan’s non-linear memories. But since cinema takes place over a finite amount of time — as opposed to a finite amount of space — it emphasizes the “progression” and only gives us the gist of the “non-linear.” We understand what happens, the basic concepts come across, but the mediums have fundamental dissimilarities and “Watchmen” was designed to maximize the potential of only one of them. When we said the comics couldn’t be filmed, this was what we really meant; getting the gist of it isn’t the same as “getting it.”
Despite the fundamental problems with any “Watchmen” adaptation, and the serviceable but not entirely effective visual aesthetic, “Chapter 1” does a respectable job of retelling this story. The score by Tim Kelly revives much of the atmosphere that the animation lost, with moody drones that fittingly evoke the work of Vangelis. The acting is also largely excellent and frequently brings texture and insight to the dialogue. Welliver in particular highlights different dimensions of Rorschach, whose growling monologues have a violent but pitiful quality to them. When he muses, “All the whores and politicians will up and shout ‘Save us!’ and I’ll look down and whisper, ‘No,’” it doesn’t sound like he’s making a grim 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 put on costumes in the first place.
“Watchmen: Chapter 1” comes from director Brandon Vietti, whose excellent TV series “Young Justice” is one of the gold standards for animated superhero storytelling. What he has undertaken is a difficult, possibly thankless task and the fact that it works at all — let alone rather well — is a testament to his talent. But one can’t help but wonder what the point is, beyond making as straightforward and complete a cinematic adaptation as possible. If it’s this exact in its translation, it’s arguably redundant, since the comic already tells the same story in a more distinct and challenging way. If it was to accomplish any loftier goal, I guess we’ll have to wait for “Chapter 2” to find out.
“Watchmen: Chapter 1” is now streaming on-demand. Physical copies go on sale Aug. 27.
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