Crew
Director – Brandon Vietti, Screenplay – J. Michael Straczynski, Based on the Graphic Novel Watchmen (1986 -7) Created by Dave Gibbons and [Uncredited] Alan Moore, Producers – Jim Krieg, Cindy Rago & Brandon Vietti, Music – Tim Kelly, Visual Effects Supervisor, CG Supervisor – Justin Dobies, Animation – Studio Mir (CG Supervisor – Geun Tae Park, Animation Supervisors – Dong Gyu Kim & Kyunghoon Park), Art Direction – Jonathan Hoekstra. Production Company – Warner Bros. Animation/Paramount.
Voices
Titus Welliver (Rorschach/Walter Kovacs), Matthew Rhys (Dan Drieberg/Nite Owl), Katee Sackhoff (Laurie Juspeczyk/Silk Spectre), Michael Cerveris (Dr Manhattan/Jonathan Osterman/Father), Troy Baker (Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias/Benny Anger), Rick D. Wasserman (Edward Blake/The Comedian), Jeffrey Combs (Edgar Jacobi/Moloch), Adrienne Barbeau (Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectre), Phil LaMarr (Comic-Book Narrator/Bernie/Security Guard), Kari Wahlgren (Janey Slater), Corey Burton (Captain Metropolis/Nelson Gardner), Yuri Lowenthal (Wally Weaver), Kelly Hu (Vietnamese Woman), Max Koch (Detective Joe Bourquin/Bernard/President Nixon), Geoff Pierson (Hollis Mason/Nite Owl), Dwight Schultz (Detective Steve Fine/Happy Harry)
Plot
It is 1985. Edward Blake is thrown through his apartment window to his death by an unknown intrude. This is secretly investigated by the masked vigilante known as Rorschach who knows that Blake operated as the superhero known as The Comedian. Rorschach goes to visit each of the other members of The Watchmen, the former superhero team who have been disbanded following the passing of the Keene Act in 1977, warning them that someone is targeting ‘masks’. At the same time, Jonathan Osterman, the scientist who was trapped in a particle accelerator and transformed into a god-like being known as Dr Manhattan and became one of the Watchmen, comes under criticism during a tv interview where he is accused of causing cancer to those who were close to him. Feeling rejected, Dr Manhattan leaves Earth and relocates to Mars. Left without a home, his girlfriend Laurie Juspeczyk, who operated as the second Silk Spectre, seeks the help of Dan Drieberg, who operated as Nite Owl, who offers her somewhere to stay.
Watchmen, co-created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, was published as a twelve-issue graphic novel by DC Comics between 1986 and 1987. It soon became a word-of-mouth hit and grew into an undisputed cult classic – there have even been academic studies and theses written about it. Watchmen came as part of a revision that the superhero comic-book underwent in the mid-1980s that also included Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns (1986), which between them deconstructed the traditional image of the comic-book superhero and give it greater moral and psychological complexity. The comic-book was first adapted to the screen with Zack Snyder’s Watchmen (2009) and then remade as the nine-episode tv series Watchmen (2019). Alan Moore has repudiated any adaptation of his material and refuses screen credit of any of these and other works.
Watchmen: Chapter I was the first of a two-part adaptation conducted as part of the DC Universe Animated Original Movies and was followed four months later by Watchmen: Chapter II (2024). The adaptation comes from J. Michael Straczynski, a cult name as creator/writer of the science-fiction tv series Babylon 5 (1993-8), co-creator of The Wachowskis’ tv series Sense8 (2015-8), who was nominated for a host of awards for his script for Clint Eastwood’s Changeling (2008) and contributed to the scripts for Ninja Assassin (2009), Thor (2011), Underworld: Awakening (2012) and World War Z (2013). As usual, Alan Moore has chosen no credit but Dave Gibbons has signed on as a Consulting Producer.
The previous filmed versions of Watchmen all had problems – Zack Snyder was extremely faithful in many respects, especially to the visual look, although ended up cutting and trimming some aspects of the story to fit it all into a 163-minute film, while the HBO mini-series varied so widely from the source material that I found myself not even able to continue watching.
On the other hand, Watchmen: Chapter I sets out to be the most comprehensive and faithful adaptation of Watchmen we have had to date, Like Snyder, director Brandon Vietti uses the actual panel frames of the graphic novel as shot set-ups. The background of the frame is constantly filled with place and brand names like Gunga Diner and Nostalgia that closely emulate the look of the strip.
J. Michael Straczynski adapts Alan Moore’s dialogue often verbatim. We get a good deal of the background of the characters – the back history of the Minute Men and The Crimebusters that was sidelined by Snyder, while more detail is lavished on the backstories of the various characters. We even get an adaptation of Tales from the Black Freighter, the pirate comic-book that Moore had interspersed throughout the Watchmen comic (the theory being that nobody would read superhero comics in this alternate universe and so they turned to pirate adventures instead).
This is especially notable in one of the most visually memorable sequences from Watchmen – the so-called ‘Dr Manhattan Reminisces’ sequence – where we flash through Dr Manhattan’s life in the time he drops a photo on Mars. The flips back and forward through time, the subtleties of synchronicity that map between each scene, and the haunting sense that everything is predetermined is stunning writing. And yet all of it is taken directly from Alan Moore.
Straczynski also nails perfectly the sense of the period when Watchmen was originally written and how it was very much intended as a snapshot of hot button political issues of the day – the atrocity of the Vietnam War (which the show gets perfectly in showing The Comedian’s walking through wantonly massacring and a particularly brutal scene where he shoots his pregnant Vietnamese girlfriend), the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, President Nixon, the Vietnam Protest movement and the Afghan War (somewhat)
This brings me to one other standout aspect of Watchmen: Chapter I – the voice casting. Various of the characters throughout – Rorschach, Nite Owl and Dr Manhattan – narrate their own viewpoints and journal entries. The voicing in each case has never been more perfectly chosen. Titus Welliver nails Rorschach with a harsh, years-of-smoking-three-packs-a-day-verging-on-throat-cancer gruffness that seems only reserved for film noir voiceovers. Just as good is Michael Cerveris’s voicing of Dr Manhattan, which gets perfectly the icy detachment of a being so godlike it floats above any human doings any longer.
The other DC Universe Animated Original Movies include:- Superman: Doomsday (2007), Batman: Gotham Knight (2008), Justice League: The New Frontier (2008), Green Lantern: First Flight (2009), Superman/Batman: Public Enemies (2009), Wonder Woman (2009), Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010), Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths (2010), Superman & Batman: Apocalypse (2010), All-Star Superman (2011), Batman: Year One (2011), Green Lantern: Emerald Knights (2011), Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part I (2012), Justice League: Doom (2012), Superman vs. The Elite (2012), Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part II (2013), Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox (2013), Superman Unbound (2013), Batman: Assault on Arkham (2014), Justice League: War (2014), Son of Batman (2014), Batman vs. Robin (2015), Justice League: Gods and Monsters (2015), Justice League: Throne of Atlantis (2015), Batman: Bad Blood (2016), Batman: The Killing Joke (2016), Justice League vs Teen Titans (2016), Batman and Harley Quinn (2017), Justice League Dark (2017), Teen Titans: The Judas Contract (2017), Batman: Gotham By Gaslight (2018), The Death of Superman (2018), Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay (2018), Batman: Hush (2019), Justice League vs The Fatal Five (2019), Reign of the Supermen (2019), Wonder Woman: Bloodlines (2019), Justice League Dark: Apokolips War (2020), Superman: Man of Tomorrow (2020), Superman: Red Son (2020), Batman: Soul of the Dragon (2021), Batman: The Long Halloween Part One (2021), Batman: The Long Halloween Part Two (2021), Injustice (2021), Justice Society: World War II (2021), Batman and Superman: Battle of the Super Sons (2022), Catwoman: Hunted (2022), Green Lantern: Beware My Power (2022), Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham (2023), Justice League: Warworld (2023), Legion of Super-Heroes (2023), Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part One (2024), Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part Two (2024) and Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part Three (2024).
(Winner in this site’s Top 10 Films of 2024 list. Winner for Best Adapted Screenplay at this site’s Best of 2024 Awards).
Trailer here