Watchmen is a 2024 two-part animated superhero film, adapting the Comic Book of the same name by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. The adaptation is directed by Brandon Vietti and written by J. Michael Straczynski, with animation produced by Studio Mir.
The voice cast includes Matthew Rhys as Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl II, Katee Sackhoff as Laurie Juspeczyk/Silk Spectre II, Troy Baker as Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias, Rick D. Wasserman as Edward Blake/The Comedian, Michael Cerveris as Jonathan Osterman/Dr. Manhattan, and Titus Welliver as Walter Kovacs/Rorschach.
Watchmen (2024) contains examples of:
- Actionized Adaptation: The film depicts certain parts of the story with more fighting than in the comic, such as Rorschach fighting more inmates after dousing an attacker with hot oil.
- Adaptational Context Change: Laurie picking up the gun from the detective is shown in the film as a reaction to seeing the alien creature upon reentry to New York.
- Adaptational Jerkass: Rorschach, surprisingly. In Chapter 1, he breaks the entire hand of the man at the bar despite him not knowing anything, whereas in the original comic he merely broke his pinkie and index fingers and stopped once he found out nobody at Happy Harry's knew anything about Blake's death. This goes a step further in Chapter 2, where Rorschach has the gall to blame Hollis Mason's death on Dan's "lazing".
- Adaptation Distillation: Several parts of Chapter 8 are condensed into one where Dan discusses with Hollis (and Laurie, through surveillance) both the conspiracy towards the heroes and the tenement rescue from the previous night, which Hollis warns Dan about, culminating in Dan and Laurie abandoning the townhouse as the police arrive and getting ready to break out Rorschach.
- Adaptation Expansion: The moment that the alien monster arrives to New York is displayed more violently, with the tentacles seen impaling and crushing civilians, while its psychic shockwave is shown fatally affecting many more.
- Animated Adaptation: Of the comic book maxiseries of the same name.
- Cel Shading: The film's art style draws heavily from Dave Gibbons' original artwork, being made this way.
- Compressed Adaptation: Despite its fidelity to the source material, the film is far more compressed than the 2009 film adaptation, which was infamous at the time of its release for its bloated pacing. Dr. Manhattan being persistently questioned by a journalist and teleporting everyone out of the room is retained, for example, but not the scene where he's mobbed by journalists.
- Infodump: The film features one in the opening credits in the form of radio broadcasts concerning people's opinions of the vigilantes.
- Lost in Imitation: The film, especially during its second part, features plot elements which were clearly inspired by the Snyder film:
- Rorschach's style of speech in the film is clearly inspired by the Snyder film adaptation, presumably because it's the most popular adaptation and thus the one which would inform this portrayal.
- The film, much like the Snyder adaptation, downplays the presence of Rorschach's psychiatrist, who is once again reduced to a minor role.
- The film retains Big Figure's other henchman sawing his colleague's arms off, in contrast to the comic where he simply slits his throat. However, in contrast to the live-action film, he uses a handsaw, rather than a chainsaw.
- Dan is there to witness Rorschach's death again this time, whereas in the comic he is not present for the scene. Laurie is also there with him, in contrast to the Snyder live-action film.
- Medium Blending: Especially during the second part. While the film is mostly 3D animation, the film chose to use hand-drawn animation evocative of the company's earlier adult-animated films for the flashback scenes other than Rorschach killing Grice and Comedian unintentionally giving away his true identity to Laurie. Presumably this was done to save on budget.
- Scenery Censor: Dr. Manhattan only gets two shots where his penis is clearly visible. Every other scene goes out of its way to have something obscuring his genitals when he's viewed from the front.
- Truer to the Text: Arguably, at least in terms of costumes, scenery, et cetera, comes closer to the original comic than the Zack Snyder film adaptation to the point of even retaining the twist at the end of the comic. Captain Metropolis is featured and the designs of several other minor characters are far closer to the comic. Other scenes, such as Rorschach breaking a man's fingers and his meeting with Veidt afterwards, are also retained from the original source material.