Watchmen Chapter 1

If I remember correctly, it was in the autumn of 1993 that I got my hands on Watchmen for the first time and read all twelve issues in one evening. I was 16 years old and already knew when I folded the bright yellow volume that I would never look at comics the same way again. For me, Watchmen was the single most compelling piece of literature I'd ever read, and I feel the same way today. Which is more than legitimately bizarre, really. A socially critical, unhinged dive into a kind of anti-superhero message drenched in Moore's patented cynicism still stands today as the most fascinating book I know. Not Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. Not McCarthy's Meridian of Blood and not Strindberg's Miss Julie. Watchmen.

Alan Moore / Dave Gibbon's now iconically immortal, unanimously acclaimed comic book was for all those years considered 'impossible to film' until Zack Snyder's masterful 2009 interpretation, which proved that belief not to be true. For as much as I adore Gibbon's ultra-coloured, slightly odd interpretation of Alan Moore's story, I loved Snyder and cinematographer Larry Fong's stylistically dark, blue-tinted, brutal interpretation which, in my opinion, perfectly captured the pace and tone without mimicking Gibbon's colourful, illuminated illustrations. When Warner Animation decided, with the help of Batman: Animated Series director Brandon Vietti, to interpret Gibbon's drawings (and Moore's story, of course) in a more comic-book-accurate way, they also decided to split the film in two. Chapter 1 is 83 minutes long and the second part (rumoured to be released at the end of November) is apparently 91 minutes long, which of course makes this adaptation closer to three hours long. This, according to Warner, is to let the story 'breathe' and give the characters enough space.

Zack Snyder's Watchmen: Director's Cut is three hours and nine minutes long and I think it perfectly captures what Alan Moore's story is, was and what it wants to convey. In a direct comparison with Warner's new animated, chapterised interpretation, parts of it feel more jumpy and forced, which is a shame, especially at the beginning - of course. The intro, like every other part of this film, is more comic book-accurate and here we get to follow the two detectives investigating the murder of The Comedian and their conversation about the clues found at the murder scene, rather than when Rorschach in Snyder's film is the one who takes us as an audience up to the cordoned-off murder scene while he fires off the iconic monologue in a gravelly voice: "This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!"... and I'll whisper "no."

Watchmen: Chapter 1 is based on a kind of rotoscope-scented form of 3D-to-2D animation technology, which makes it look on the whole more vivid and above all lavish than, say, Invincible or X-Men 97, where the flat 2D look and the minimal use of lighting and shadows form a very flat whole. Warner's animation team have modelled all the characters and all the environments in 3D but covered them with flat, single-colour textures that best capture Gibbons' look, and then lit it all in a way that makes Watchmen: Chapter 1 look like the comic book, only a little more... Atmospheric. The look, the animations themselves and the way light is used to emphasise certain themes and create cool effects, is brilliant. Super gorgeous.

As I mentioned above, it's a bit of a shame that the storytelling here feels a little too compressed, although that's a good thing. Director Brandon Vietti has a good feel and perfect understanding of the source material and it's clear that the ambition was to interpret Moore/Gibbons as reverently as possible, something that is often done very well. The dialogue is straight out of Alan's speech bubbles, the set design is straight out of Gibbons' comic strips and tonally Warner has done a good job of finding that cynical doomsday feeling where imaginative superheroes and the abstract are interwoven with Nixon, the Cold War, the threat from the Soviets and a lot of other real events from the latter half of the 80s. If Warner had allowed 83 minutes here instead of 103, it would have allowed the material to air more and, for example, Rorschach's fantastic observations would have felt more alive, threatening and more in line with those of Snyder's great film, than they do now. Titus Welliver does a good job of trying to mimic the Snyder version's Kovacs but he gets rushed at times and it feels as if he's been instructed in the recording booth to 'hurry up' with his lines. It's a shame.

The rest of the voice actors do a very good job here. I particularly like The Last of Us-Troy Baker as the calm, strong, stoic (but sneaky and super-intelligent) Adrian Veidt and The Americans' Matthew Rhys as Nite Owl. Rick D. Wasserman's interpretation of The Comedian is a bit too monotonously blunt for my taste. There is a lack of nuance here and, above all, there is a lack of personality because his interpretation of Blake is mostly just barking and growling with the 'scariest voice' he could perform.

It is for me a difficult film to rate this. For one thing, there's only half the story on offer, then it's ultimately about Watchmen (of course) which is my bible. There are things that could have worked better in Warner's animated blockbuster, but there are also plenty of merits here that do the world's best comic book justice. Therefore, my rating stays at a weak seven. If you want what I consider to be a better film interpretation of the source material, Zack Snyder's absolutely fantastic Watchmen: Director's Cut is the way to go - still.

"Rorschach's Journal: October 12th, 1985. Tonight, a comedian died in New York."