Director/Additional Screenplay Material – Brandon Vietti, Co-Director – Vinton Hueck, 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, Animation Supervisor – Dougg Williams, Animation – Studio Mir (CG Supervisor – Geun Tae Park, Animation Supervisor – Dong Gyu Kim), CG Supervisor – Justin Dobies, Art Direction – Jonathan Hoekstra. Production Company – Warner Bros. Animation/Paramount.
Voices
Matthew Rhys (Dan Drieberg/Nite Owl/Sam Hollis), Katee Sackhoff (Laurie Juspeczyk/Silk Spectre/Sandra Hollis), Michael Cerveris (Dr Manhattan), Titus Welliver (Rorschach/Walter Kovacs), Troy Baker (Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias), Rick D. Wasserman (Edward Blake/The Comedian), Adrienne Barbeau (Sally Jupiter), Geoff Pierson (Hollis Mason), Phil LaMarr (Comic-Book Narrator/Bernie/Security Guard), Phil Fondacaro (Tom Ryan/Big Figure), Kari Wahlgren (Sylvia Kovacs)
Plot
After Laurie Juspeczyk moves in to stay with Dan Drieberg, they realise a mutual attraction. Together they rediscover the joy of putting on their old superhero costumes and going out as Silk Spectre and Nite Owl in Archie, Dan’s flying machine, to help people. Dan comes to increasingly believe in Rorschach’s claims that there was a conspiracy behind the killing or sidelining of the Watchmen. In prison, Walter Kovacs, alias Rorschach, has been holding his own against the criminals he put away who now come seeking revenge. The world meanwhile teeters on the brink of all-out nuclear war. Dan and Laurie fly in to break Rorschach out during the midst of a prison riot. Laurie accompanies the increasingly detached Dr Manhattan to his new base on Mars and tries to persuade him to intervene to aid humanity. Meanwhile, Dan and Rorschach trace the connections and find a link to a common source – their old Watchmen companion Adrian Veidt.
Watchmen (1986-7), co-created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, and originally published as a twelve-issue graphic novel by DC Comics, has become regarded as one of the landmark works in the history of the modern comic-book. It is the turning point where superheroes became dark and morally complex. Watchmen has attracted a great deal of interest as a film property. 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 in any of these and other works.
The third screen incarnation of Watchmen came with Watchmen: Chapter I (2024), an entry in the DC Universe Animated Original Movies. I was majorly impressed with Watchmen: Chapter I. Director Brandon Vietti and screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski adapted Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ work right down to replicating panel set-ups, the alternate historical world of the comic-book, the fictional brand names in the background and even including the Tales from the Black Freighter comic-book within the comic-book that Moore gave us. It was the most faithful adaptation of Watchmen conceivable.
The second part of the story is concluded here. My feelings about Watchmen: Chapter II were slightly the lesser of Chapter I – even though I was well familiar with the original story and its previous film adaptations. In trying to analyse why that was the case, part of it was because I realised that I was rating Chapter 1 so highly because I was stunned by my immersion in the world of the comic-book come to life, in seeing all of the incidental detail, the comic-book panels replicated in exacting detail and the characters back histories dealt with in depth. It felt satisfying and the way an adaptation of Watchmen should be.
Nite Owl and Silk Spectre go out on patrol againThe alien mutant monster in New York City
That sense of discovery is not quite there the second time around. Watchmen: Chapter II is less about introducing the setting and characters’ backstories – there are some minor aspects telling a backstory for Rorschach and dealing with Laurie’s father – than in simply concluding the story. If the focus in Watchmen: Chapter I was scene-setting, Watchmen: Chapter II is where the threads laid down throughout culminate and reach a dramatic conclusion.
That said, what we have still works very well. As before, the scenes with Dr Manhattan’s distant and icily aloof remonstrations on the irrelevance of humanity and being able to see events before they happen have the most compulsive and fascinating writing in the show. J. Michael Straczynski gets the scenes with Manhattan taking Laurie on the journey to Mars down perfect. Rorschach is not the abrasive narrative presence he was in the first part and his scenes are largely confined to his fighting for survival in prison.
The film also preserves Moore’s ending perfectly intact – giving us the giant tentacular alien mutation that Adrian Veidt creates (as opposed to the nuclear explosion that Zack Snyder substituted) and the resultant fallout from such. [PLOT SPOILERS] In watching, it made me think just what a remarkable ending it was that Moore created where the team expose what in another story would be classic Super-Villain motivation – faking an alien invasion, killing off superheroes, unleashing a mutant monster – but it perversely ends up being one that actually creates world peace and where the end of the story is the remaining superheroes all agreeing to cover up the truth for the sake of maintaining world stability.
