With Watchmen being released everywhere at midnight tonight—and my review of the movie being posted here also at midnight tonight—I felt it important to observe one element from the review before it is released.
And if you are wondering, yes, I really enjoyed Watchmen. As a fan of cinema and as a fan of the graphic novel.
One of the terrible things that occurs when a graphic novel is adapted to the screen is a loss of certain story elements that simply can’t fit in with the movie medium. This happened to Watchmen when director Zach Snyder could not interweave the sub-textual story Tales of the Black Freighter from the graphic novel into the movie. Watchmen is a series of stories within a story, and fans will undoubtedly be sad that Black Freighter was not included.
But not to worry. Snyder and company created Tales of the Black Freighter anyway, voiced by Gerard Butler, and made it its own DVD release. Here is the trailer for it:
From a fan point of view, I am happy Snyder did this. From a storytelling point of view, I really hate it because it is one big tease. The reason the story Tales of the Black Freighter worked in the graphic novel is because in each page Alan Moore used it to give more meaning to the actual Watchmen story around it. Connecting the two tales creates a stronger resonance for the literary merit of the graphic novel—a small bit of literary merit that was missing in the movie sadly.
In a way, I wish Snyder could release a Deluxe Edition of the movie where Tales of the Black Freighter was interwoven in with the actual theater release. Won’t happen, but I can wish right!
Still, this trailer looks sweet! Enjoy!
Actually, They are releasing a version in which it is interwoven. The Blu-Ray will have an Extended-Delux Edition which will run aprox. 210 minutes with several deleted scenes and the tales of the black freighter intermixed to fully complete the story.
Wonderful! Thank you for that news! I guess I should ask for more things, eh? They’d probably come true.