Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic

Decades of development hell, a nit-picking fan cult, an uncooperative writer, lawsuits, aborted screenplays: It’s been a long road from 1987, when the final issue of Watchmen was bagged and boarded, to today, when the ultimate superhero epic is finally breaking into mainstream consciousness via next week’s Hollywood blockbuster. So while Warner Bros. is within its rights to thoroughly milk the hot property, it’s hard to find justification—beyond the cash register—for Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic.

A minimally animated rendering of the entire original graphic novel (reminiscent of the xerographic 1960s Marvel Super Heroes cartoons), this five-hour-plus version gets some things beautifully right: the flowing patterns of Rorschach’s mask and the swooping hover of the Owlship. Smooth pans and close-ups lead the eye to telling or intriguing details, theoretically a benefit to viewers unfamiliar with comics’ visual grammar.

But the novelty quickly grows stale, and you’re left watching a bizarre reenactment of a work ideally suited to a different medium. Worse, a single male voiceover actor performs all roles, and his women and minorities make ridiculous hash of the story’s grittiest scenarios (an Edith Bunker–esque prostitute completely trivializes a child-abuse scene). More than 20 years ago, Watchmen convinced a niche market of the intellectual legitimacy of the superhero, and now it’s poised to do so on a culture-wide scale. But that’s a tricky task, and half measures won’t do it.

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