Watchmen: The Black Freighter

[Thelogan]

Just got finished watching this and figured I'd share.

 

The Black Freighter is done well. As an adaptation it's spot on, hand drawn animation looks quite nice. My main issue with it is that, with the changes in the movie's ending (spoiler?), it doesn't directly have a whole hell of a lot to do with the movie directly. Yeah, you can take it as an allegory to Ozymandias' ambitions, but most of its relevance to the book relies on its integration into the book.

and the fact that the writer is working on the spaghetti-squid monster on Veidt's island

 

Hopefully when it's edited into the movie via the director's cut they'll maintain some of the sudden Black Freighter narration transitions that made it so neat.

 

Under The Hood I found even more entertaining. It's a misleading title, I was expecting a documentary version of the Hollis Mason tell all. Instead I got a pretty spiffy bit of fan service. It takes the form of an episode of The Culpepper Minute, a news magazine type show, from 1975. It's a series of interviews with Hollis Mason, Sally Jupiter and her ex-husband/manager, Wally Weaver, Big Figure and Edward Jacobi. Coincidentally, Culpepper also gets the perspective of a couple of "Man on the street" types; Bernard the news stall vendor and the guy who runs the bar that Rorschach frequently breaks fingers at (I forget his name), and some professional insights from psychiatrist William Long, who a decade later would be working at a prison and have a very famous patient.

 

Neither are that long (26 mins and 38 mins respectively), but I say that they're well worth seeing for any fan (though it's a bit pricey for a little over an hour of content. Rental maybe?). Available next Tuesday. Check it out.