The trailer for Watchmen Chapters 1 & 2 – the two-part, R-rated animated adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s seminal DC comic book limited series, Watchmen – has finally landed. It looks perfectly fine, but also predictably pointless.
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That’s not a knock on Watchmen Chapters 1 & 2‘s cast and crew. You can tell from the trailer that everyone involved worked hard to faithfully recreate the comics (to a fault, if anything). All the dialogue we hear is lifted directly from Moore’s scripts. The character models, framing, and color palette emulate Gibbons’s artwork and layouts. Indeed, chances are Watchmen Chapters 1 & 2 will be a solid set of superhero flicks when they finally arrive.
But here’s the thing: it’s 2024. We’ve spent 38 years (and counting) watching the Watchmen already. It’s time we all moved on.
Even A Story as Deep as Watchmen Has a Bottom
Admittedly, Watchmen is a famously rich text that rewards multiple readthroughs. Whether it’s noting the symmetry between panel layouts or clocking a key clue to the mask killer’s identity buried in backmatter, you’ll want to thumb through Watchmen more than once. But eventually, the well runs dry and the story and its characters have nothing left to say. Comic book scribe Grant Morrison touched on this in a 2015 interview, while discussing his Watchmen pastiche Pax Americana.
“We all know those moments when we’re sitting with friends, and we’re really enthusiastic about something we all love,” Morrison said. “And we keep wanting to talk about it. We keep wanting to get further and deeper, and there comes a moment where you go, all we’re left with is the pieces here [laughs]. It doesn’t seem very palatable anymore. I think there’s an inescapable thing when you do dissect something down, the dissection is always done from a point of enthusiasm and excitement or a need to engage with something a lot more. What you’re doing in a lot of cases is ending up with something dead in your hands.”
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And that’s the problem with Watchmen Chapters 1 & 2. By aiming to replicate the comics as closely as possible, it’s bound by the same constraints as its source material. There’s no room for additional plot beats or themes for long-time fans to grapple with. It’s just the same old stuff they’ve spent years picking over already. Watchmen Chapters 1 & 2 can’t serve up anything truly new. Which begs the question: why should it even exist?
Heck, it’s not even the first attempt at an ultra-faithful Watchmen adaptation. Zack Snyder’s 2009 live-action version takes that honor (unless you count 2008’s Watchmen: The Motion Comic). True, Snyder tweaked aspects of Moore and Gibbons’ story – and DC devotees still debate the overall impact of these changes today. But giant squid notwithstanding, Watchmen Chapters 1 & 2 is essentially just Snyder’s movie, in animation form. It’s hard to get excited about.
Watchmen Chapter 3 Wouldn’t Be Any Better Than 1 & 2
That’s not to say Warner Bros. should’ve produced an animated Watchmen sequel, instead. Not only have we seen Watchmen follow-ups before, but the results have been mixed, at best. DC’s 2012 Before Watchmen line of prequel comics was wildly uneven. 2017 quasi-sequel (and DC Universe crossover) Doomsday Clock was downright bizarre. 2020 DC Black Label limited series Rorschach was compelling, if unnecessary. And HBO’s Watchmen was good TV, but arguably never felt like a “true” continuation of Moore and Gibbons’s narrative.
Ironically, what ultimately hurt all these projects (even the more successful ones) is one of Watchmen‘s biggest selling points: its standalone nature. Watchmen is designed to have a definite beginning and end. It’s not supposed to have prequels or sequels and wasn’t built to sustain either (especially sequels). So, no matter how clever the creators involved are, whatever they add to the Watchmen canon paradoxically subtracts from it. Like the folks behind Watchmen Chapters 1 & 2, they’re damned if they do something new, and damned if they don’t.
That’s no doubt why the HBO Watchmen series’ showrunner Damon Lindelof opted not to make another season. He presumably understood how lucky he and his team were to get away with stretching Watchmen‘s inflexible mythos as far as they did the first time. Anything further was almost certainly doomed to fail, with a level of inevitability Doctor Manhattan would appreciate. As such, a “Watchmen Chapter 3” animated feature wouldn’t have fared much better.
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Warner Bros. Knows We Won’t Stop Watching the Watchmen
That’s ultimately what it boils down to: the exploits of Rorscharch, Nite-Owl, Silk Spectre, and their fellow Crimebusters (yes, I know “Watchmen” isn’t a team name) aren’t evergreen or unending like those of, say, Superman or Batman. Sure, new readers will always discover Moore and Gibbons’ story, and existing fans will (and absolutely should) revisit it from time to time. But it’s not something we should be focusing all our energy on. Neither should Warner Bros., for that matter. Think of all the other, never-before-adapted DC tales they could’ve turned into an animated movie.
But instead, they went with Watchmen, because they know we’ll watch it – even though it’s high time we stopped.
Watchmen Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 do not yet have release dates.
