Watchmen: Chapter I 4K 2024

It's October, 1985. The world is on the brink of nuclear war. Even such superheroes as the atomic superhuman Dr. Manhattan and the psychopath Comedian, who have helped America many times, are unable to save it. Suddenly, the Comedian is killed, and Rorschach, a mysterious masked vigilante who prefers to work on his own, takes over. He suspects that someone has announced a hunt for colleagues and neatly cleans them up. Now Rorschach must reunite with his ex-comrades to warn of the threat. An ornithologist nicknamed Night Owl has long since hung up his suit on a nail, Ozymandias has gone to run a giant corporation, and a girl nicknamed Silk Specter is having trouble getting along with Dr. Manhattan, who has grown tired of humanity.

For about 40 years, there was a popular belief that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' “Watchmen” was impossible to screen. That's certainly not the case today. While the odious Moore was leaving no stone unturned in the movie industry and blaspheming any endeavors of Hollywood, the “Guardians” universe was successfully expanding on the visual horizon. First, Zack Snyder delivered a stylish, high-budget adaptation - the movie may not have aged so well in 15 years, but its status as a revelation from the world of superheroics is hardly anyone willing to seriously challenge. Then there's the HBO series, produced by Damon Lindelof and getting a pretty good reaction. Now the attempt is up to the animation division of Warner Bros. It looks like they've decided to put a stop to it and bring the iconic story to the screen one last time. Still as complex and immense - so much so that the cartoon had to be neatly split into two parts. This year came out the first, next year will show the second.

It is worth stipulating in advance that for a connoisseur and a devoted fan of “Guardians” the benefit of a fresh adaptation will be questionable. Brandon Vietti's project, in fact, simply revitalizes the panels of the 1986 comic book, repeating exactly the same plot, and scenes, and the style of artist Gibbons. For better or worse, the adaptation looks exactly as you'd expect: a badge covered in blood, the murder of the Comedian, the Rorschach storyline, and then Doctor Manhattan. To be fair, Vietti doesn't forget to throw in his own five cents and, for example, enriches the plot with “The Story of the Black Schooner” - essentially a comic book within a comic book, a short story that runs parallel to the on-screen action. From this exoticism, as we know, Snyder in the movie refused.

On the other hand, “Guardians” feels fine in the world of animation. If they couldn't find a worthy equivalent for Moore's brainchild, the cartoon format meets the challenge admirably. The flexible visual medium includes a colorful play with scenes, voice-overs and counterpoint inserts - for Vietti this is not the first work on splicing comic book and animation, he has already adapted “Batman: Under the Red Hood”, giving a new impetus to a familiar story.

On the plus side, the new “Watchmen” really captures both the pace of the graphic novel and its sepulchral mood: the unhurried pace of noir, the passages through the grim streets of a metropolis over which the sword of Damocles of nuclear war looms. The relentlessly cynical Rorschach, superheroes trapped in misanthropy, written off by time. If Snyder allowed himself a lot of klimpeikerskogo poserstvo, the cartoon Vietti cleaned up from the camp, grotesque and other dubious devices that inadvertently turned the 2009 adaptation into a parody. A comic book come to life is the best way to characterize a new project that has gone for an admittedly risky endeavor. A retelling of what has already passed? Perhaps. A reminder of an old time well forgotten? Let's be honest, the Guardians aren't so forgotten that this expression has a place. And going through the nuclear ashes of Alan Moore's worlds, when the initiative in superheroics has been taken over by the equally witty “The Boys” or “Unbreakable”, doesn't seem like such a useful exercise anymore.