When I saw Watchmen last year, I thought it was amazing. Absolutely groundbreakingly fantastic cinema piece. And then I tell it to my friends who read the comics and they go, "No it's shit compared to the graphic novel."
And I'm like really? The movie was pretty fucking awesome. So I get around to reading the comic and after a few chapters I stop, I just can't read it. I's so long, the narratives are incredibly contrived, I'm just one of those people who enjoy watching narratives instead of reading them. Then I get introduced to this, Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic, and I now see what my friends were talking about. It's amazing.
Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic is basically the entire Watchmen saga, being taken straight out of the comic books, line for line, frame for frame, animated, scored and voiced over and put into a two-disc special feature of 6 hour awesomeness. The plot of the Motion Comic is the bare skeleton of the Watchmen movie which we all saw, but includes deeper character development and side stories.
Now, the comics were written during the 80's capturing a world in the turbulent 1960's where masked vigilantes exist and how they effect the time line of history in the real world. The mythology that Alan Moore created in his graphic novel is just so... advanced for it's time. Cleverly balancing superhero mythology with real world history and war. Watchmen was and is a bold social statement against establishment, corruption and violence.
The DVD costs RM39.90 at any Speedy outlet, and Imma tell you, it's one of the most value for money buys I've made in my entire DVD collection. It's main feature is 6 hours long, telling the complete story of Watchmen in ways the film could never do in it's conventional running time. It has two extra short films which are Under The Hood and Tales of the Black Freighter, both of which make brief appearances in the original graphic novel. And to top it all off, an in depth documentary of Watchmen and the making of the film.
As for the works in the motion comic itself, I felt that this feature did more justice to Watchmen compared to the blockbuster film. It had more feeling, story and the dark tone of Watchmen Alan Moore intended it to have whilst the film was a highly stylized version choosing to highlight the action and slow motion sequences more than the story.
In fact I think this format of Watchmen works even better than the graphic novel itself, making it more accessible to reading impaired retards like myself. Especially when the story splits into the events of Watchmen, Tales of the Black Freighter and the Pyramid Deliveries narrative. While it could become confusing reading three stories happening in the same frame of a comic book, having it play out like a movie in the motion comic was nothing short of genius.
My one complaint about the motion comic is that it only has one voice actor. And he does the voices for every single character in the book. Even the fucking females! Silk Spectre II sounded like a fucking guy in this. Major erection killer. But I gotta say, the voice actor, Tom Stechschulte is one talented guy. He can do Nixon, New Yorker, Indian, Chinese, Rorschach, Dr. Manhattan, Latino even African American.
Run out and buy this people. It would be the single most geekiest, awesomest experience of your life.
RATING: 9/10
