At long last, Watchmen: Chapter II (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) will confirm whether an a/v adaptation of the celebrated Don’t Call It A Comic Book (Call It A Graphic Novel) will have the guts to follow through with writer/creator Alan Moore’s nutty-ass vision and drop a gigantic brainsquid on top of New York City. Watchmen: Chapter I (which recently hit streaming via Max) established the dense story’s alt-’80s setting and morally fraught characters, then left us hanging with no means of seeing how it concludes – although it was so deferent to the source material, none of this should come as a surprise for fans of this highly influential saga about retired superheroes living in the ever-darkening shadow of the Cold War.
The Gist: Let’s ketchup: World War III is brewing. Russia and the U.S. are pointing nukes at each other more aggressively by the hour. Rorschach (Titus Welliver), he of the morphing-inkblot mask, has been framed for the murders of his former associate The Comedian (Rick D. Wasserman) and ex-supervillain Moloch, and tossed in prison. Separated from her all-knowing, all-seeing, all-blue and always-balls-out-nude husband Dr. Manhattan (Michael Cerveris) – incredibly separated, because he lives on Mars now in his quasi-Fortress of Solitude so he may ponder the universe all by his lonesome – Silk Spectre (Katee Sackhoff) is staying with Nite Owl (Matthew Rhys). And Ozymandias (Troy Baker), the richest and (probably self-proclaimed?) smartest man in the world, is off being incredibly rich and smart in his own quasi-Fortress of Solitude in Antarctica. Meanwhile, that dude by the newsstand keeps on reading the story within this story, The Black Fortress, a grim pulp saga of a man who rescues himself from a deserted island by making a raft out of dead bodies, and a dead shark after said shark tried to eat the bodies while it was still alive, as sharks do. Things are tense.
Rorschach finds himself in the clink with a bunch of scumbutts he busted, but he can very much hold his own: “You don’t understand. I’m not locked up in here with you – you’re locked up in here with me!” he warns the guys who want to shiv him in the spleen. Appropriately, Rorschach sits down for a psych exam and is given ink blots to interpret, which the doctor here should’ve realized would be, you know, unsettling. For him. The doctor, I mean.
Meanwhile, Silk Spectre and Nite Owl kindle a little romance that doesn’t “take off” until they pull on their old costumes and take his ship for a spin and rescue some civilians from a burning apartment building. Which is illegal, you know. Superheroics were banned a while back. But it gets the juices flowing, and that’s when the romance does “take off.” And by “take off” I mean “Nite Owl gets over his erectile dysfunction.” It may have something to do with Silk Spectre’s slinky costume, or the fact that he’s back in the saddle again as a do-gooder, or both. Can’t look past either thing, methinks.
Silkie and Owlie’s next plan? Spring Rorschach. He’s their best bet at solving the Comedian’s murder; the bottom of it must be gotten to. Their attempt summons Dr. Manhattan to suddenly appear out of nowhere since he can do anything, and he whisks Silk Spectre off to Mars so she can bare her soul and he can reply with big-picture observations like “Life is a highly overrated phenomenon.” Not the warmest dude, Dr. Manhattan. Finally subscribing to Rorschach’s not-as-far-fetched-as-he-though conspiracy theories, Nite Owl and Rorschach track down Ozymandias, believing he has something to do with not just the murders, but the global conflict that’s about to turn the planet to rubble. You apparently can’t be the world’s smartest man without knowing this stuff, you know.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Watchmen director Brandon Vietti is a DC/Warner Bros. lifer who also helmed similarly heavy-hitting animated comic-book adaptations Batman: Under the Red Hood and Batman: A Death in the Family.
Performance Worth Watching Hearing: Playing Dr. Manhattan, Cerveris certainly does drone on, which is wholly appropriate for the character.
Memorable Dialogue: Silk Spectre hits the nail on the narrative head when Dr. Manhattan blips into a scene: “This is so deus ex machina,” she quips.
Sex and Skin: Sidebutt/sideboob, fullbutt/fullboob, and of course, Dr. Manhattan’s all-knowing, all-seeing, omnipresent wang ‘n’ berries.
Our Take: Second verse, same as the first. Translation: Watchmen: Chapter II is very good, a concise Cliff Notes version of the book that manages to churn up the story’s ever-potent themes about the burdens of power, identity and purpose, and the foolish, all-too-human need to wield logic in the face of chaos. Moore’s balance of hope and pessimism pokes through the film’s keenly formulated action and exposition – the story asserts that intelligence is madness, and Moore explores the human condition profoundly by contrasting the tiny dramas of interpersonal relationships with the Grand Guignol nature of a cold, hard, uncaring universe. Watchmen is simultaneously bleak and beautiful.
Is it a sin for Vietti to play it safe and essentially transcribe the style and tone of the book directly to the video medium? Not particularly. That’s the M.O. of DC’s direct-to-VOD studio, which spins its more popular and/or creatively lucrative properties into (mostly) 2-D animated films, so this Watchmen meets that expectation. It doesn’t build upon or add to the original story in any way whatsoever, avoiding the creative liberties that Zack Snyder took with the 2006 film, or that Damon Lindelof did with the 2019 series, which functioned as a sequel (which, notably, had the chutzpah to envision a post-brainsquid reality). This Watchmen two-parter is dutiful and satisfying, even as it doesn’t really justify its existence; you could read (or re-read, which is always rewarding) Moore’s work and have a remarkably similar experience.
Our Call: Watchmen: Chapter II is worth a watch for fans and unfamiliars alike – the former will satisfy their curiosity for an adaptation, and the latter will hopefully be inspired to pick up Moore’s brilliant work. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Read the full article here
