Watchmen: Chapter II

The animated Watchmen movies are the epitome of "let's just get it done". They're doing Alan Moore's Watchmen -- just about.

Nothing is egregiously erroneous here (no needless modifications to the plot; no misunderstandings of the characters vis-a-vis how "cool" we're supposed to think they are; none of Snyder's blunders, basically). It's just that everything is rushed through, the voice actors just sort of read the lines, and the cel-shaded animation, while it sometimes resembles Dave Gibbons' art to a T, is so stiff that it makes me miss the presentation of the Snyder film.

And that's mainly with regard to the characters; the backgrounds are often downright terrible (more noticeably so in this film than I can recall in Chapter I). There are moments where the CGI landscapes and models look more like something from Myst than Watchmen.

The MO of these movies is encapsulated in the scene where Dan "Nite Owl II" Dreiberg learns of the original Nite Owl, Hollis Mason's death at the hands of the knot-top gang; we here expect the scene where he has a moment of weakness and beats up a random knot-top in a way that would've previously seemed more befitting of Rorschach.

But when Rorschach says the line that is meant to lead into that sequence, Dreiberg replies "We don't have time". And so the scene is skipped. If only there was a way to experience this story in a way where, much like in the eyes of the mighty Dr. Manhattan, time is no issue.