Animated Watchmen Trailer Brings the Comic to Life
The Minutemen are leaping off the comic page again, and this time, they’re a bit more animated. At today’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival (the same one that saw the debut of footage from The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim), DC Animation released a brief teaser for the animated Watchmen movie. This will be a two-part film, with Part 1 being released on Blu-ray and DVD on August 13, 2024, and Part 2 coming sometime in 2025. Nothing else is known, not even the voice cast, though this will likely be a strict adaptation of the comic book by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. You can see the Watchmen teaser below:
I’m fine with an animated Watchmen movie, though I don’t think it’s necessary. The live-action film was great and a very close adaptation, despite changing some elements of the comic – most famously, the giant squid-like creature in the end. And I’ll say something controversial: personally, I prefer the movie to the comic. There are things I think the comic did better, but overall, I like the movie more because it’s more interested in the characters and their humanity than the comic was, and there are certain things I think were executed better in the movie. (The HBO sequel series, on the other hand, is an abomination.) But regardless, the animated version could be fun, and I’ll definitely check it out when it arrives. I’m curious to find out who’s voicing the characters; I don’t know how they’re going to do any better than Jackie Earle Haley’s Rorschach, although I think there’s an opportunity to convey the awesome power of Doctor Manhattan in a way that Billy Crudup couldn’t. I have to say, though, that based on this teaser, the animation doesn’t look too hot to me; it seems kind of stiff and jerky, more concerned with static images than movement. Hopefully, that’s just a trailer thing, and the movie will look better.
