Who Watches the Watchmen DVD: Tales of the Black Freighter

[Alexander]

I decided to make this a separate thread from the Watchmen movie thread because, well, it's a different thing!

For those who have read Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons classic comic, one of the biggest disappointments of the Snyder film was the inevitable loss of the supplementary material that made the book so rich. "Tales of the Black Freighter" is a comic within the comic being read by a minor character (a teenage boy hanging out at a newsstand that later becomes a key location). "The Black Freighter" begins in issue three and continues (with various fits and starts) throughout the remaining nine issues of the series. It tells the gruesome tale of a shipwrecked mariner and his attempts to reach his home in advance of the titular ship, eventually constructing a raft using the bloated corpses of his former shipmates as floats. His story and his descent into madness parallels Ozymandias' plot to save the world by murdering millions in cold blood, the end justifying the means.

Since the "Black Freighter" story would only distract from the main story in the film, and make the film at least twenty minutes longer, it was cut. But Snyder, whose desire to do right by Moore's original is admirable, has decided to make "The Black Freighter" available as an animated short released on DVD today, along with another short feature.

I felt, as I said in my review of the film, that Snyder was ultimately unsuccessful in bringing "Watchmen" to the screen because he was slavishly devoted to the book. He made few choices and really took no risks, which (in my opinion) made the film drag. Fortunately, the animated film's director does a better job than did Snyder. The original comic-within-a-comic was a story told entirely in captions, but the film chooses not to use every word from the character's narration. The film perfers to show rather than tell, only making use of voiceover narration to add color to the narrative and provide inner thoughts. The film also shows a sequence only hinted at in the book. During the story, the narrator talks about "conversing" with his dead shipmates. The film boldly illustrates this with an actual dialogue between the mariner and the decaying Boatswain Ridley. The scene nicely dramatizing the character's madness.

I honestly think they did a better job with this short (23 minute) film than they did with the feature.

The second feature is even more brilliant. The first three issues of "Watchmen" featured excerpts from original Nite-Owl Hollis Mason's autobiography "Under the Hood," which further fleshed out the world of "Watchmen" and provided necessary backstory (although it was possible to skip the text section and just read the book on its own, reading the text pieces made the book an ever richer experience). The film cuts Hollis down to one scene at the beginning of the film (even cutting the character's death at the hands of a street gang that appears throughout the book), although copies of "Under the Hood" are shown in his apartment during that scene (a copy is also shown on Adrian's desk later in the film). The live-action short (which runs about forty minutes) is presented as an episode of a 1985 news program which broadcasts excerpts from a 1975 interview with Hollis Mason. Much of the dialogue is taken straight from the book, but the actors were also clearly allowed to improv alot of the interviews which gives them a nice sense of realism. They also incorperate an interview with Sally Jupiter that ran at the end of one of the later issues (ten, I think) and parts of the essay "Dr. Manhattan: Super Powers and the Superpowers" that ran at the end of issue four. The film does a bit of "Zelig"-esgue photo and film manipulation to have (for example) some of the costumed heroes testifying before the real Senator McCarthey during the HUAC sessions. The film stock matching isn't perfect, but what do you expect with something that is essentially a bonus feature? An incredible amount of time, effort, and talent clearly went into making "Under the Hood" and I think they did a fantastic job. Once again, I enjoyed this a LOT more than Snyder's film.

The only quibble I have about this is the pricing: The full retail price is listed at $27.99. Best Buy had it for $19.99 (I actually bought the slightly more expensive edition that came in the nice metal box. You can get it at Best Buy for $17.99 if you settle for the regular plastic box) and I had a $5.00 coupon that brought it down to $15, which I thought was reasonable. The fact remains that you only get about an hour and a half of material, counting the bonus documentary on the making of the films, and undoubtedly both features will be included in the eventual DVD release of the film (they may even be incorperated into the film itself, as they were originally intended). So I think this is only worth buying if, like me, you are a fanatical devotee of the book and want to collect everything. But it is without question worth renting! So put it on your Netflix queue immediately!

I've been planning to see "Watchmen" a second time (my wife is interested and she didn't see it with me the first time) so I'm looking forward to seeing how having seen the DVD enhances my experience of the film. I do think that the film would have been improved if the "Black Freighter" film had been shown as a short before the feature film. That way the film audience could have had the experience of seeing it (and seeing how it related to the feature film) without having it interrupt the flow of the movie. But that didn't happen, so that's neither here nor there.

Oh, and the "Black Freighter" features Nina Simone's fantastic reading of Brecht/Weil's "Pirate Jenny" from "Three Penny Opera" (which gives the film its title) over the ending credits. Very worth sitting through to hear!

Edited March 25, 2009 by Alexander

[Quincy]

Thanks for the review of this as I've been curious. Glad to hear the Hollis Mason bit is interesting too. Nice touch using the Nina Simone song!

Aren't there a few samples of the of the animated comic that's on another DVD as well? How is that? Not sure why, but I'm moderately curious about that for some reason. Perhaps just to see the artwork in a larger format.

For whatever the faults of the movie one finds, I'm still feeling the glow of rereading the story again.

Edited March 25, 2009 by Quincy

[jazzbo]

I saw part of this at the theater, playing before Watchmen. Wasn't that impressed, sorry to say.

[Alexander]

I saw part of this at the theater, playing before Watchmen. Wasn't that impressed, sorry to say.

Really? Was it the "Tales of the Black Freighter"? Perhaps it wouldn't look so good on a big screen, but I thought it looked GREAT on my TV late at night with all the lights out!

[Alexander]

Thanks for the review of this as I've been curious. Glad to hear the Hollis Mason bit is interesting too. Nice touch using the Nina Simone song!

Aren't there a few samples of the of the animated comic that's on another DVD as well? How is that? Not sure why, but I'm moderately curious about that for some reason. Perhaps just to see the artwork in a larger format.

For whatever the faults of the movie one finds, I'm still feeling the glow of rereading the story again.

Yes, there is a chapter of the motion comic. I don't know. I wasn't terribly impressed with it. I saw a few clips online and was a bit more impressed with it then. Perhaps when one is watching it with the expectation of essentially a flash animation on a website, one's expectations aren't as high. Watching it on DVD highlights the limited nature of the animation and begs the question: What, in the end, is the point of something like this? Are we trying to fix it so that people don't have to read for themselves? It just kind of seems to defeat the whole point of a comic book, which is something you read at your own pace. Scott McCloud in "Understanding Comics" makes much of how comics are distinct from animation. I enjoy both, but this is something in between, neither fish nor fowl. There are also some technical things I would have done differently (I would have had the text in the captions fade in rather than wipe, which I think looks cheesy). Also, I don't like the fact that the whole thing is read by one actor. I would have preferred a whole voice cast, or at least enough different actors to really make the distinction between characters. It reminded me of how I tend to dislike audiobooks for the same reason (although, hypocritically, I would love to PERFORM audiobooks).

[jazzbo]

It didn't impress me, as you say it's neither fish nor fowl. I was never bowled over by the "Tales" anyway, the material doesn't do much for me, and neither did what I saw of this recreation.

[Quincy]

Yes, there is a chapter of the motion comic. I don't know. I wasn't terribly impressed with it. I saw a few clips online and was a bit more impressed with it then. Perhaps when one is watching it with the expectation of essentially a flash animation on a website, one's expectations aren't as high. Watching it on DVD highlights the limited nature of the animation and begs the question: What, in the end, is the point of something like this? Are we trying to fix it so that people don't have to read for themselves? It just kind of seems to defeat the whole point of a comic book, which is something you read at your own pace. Scott McCloud in "Understanding Comics" makes much of how comics are distinct from animation. I enjoy both, but this is something in between, neither fish nor fowl.

Yeah, I've read Scott's "Understanding Comics" too hence my wondering how the segments worked (if at all.) I came across a glowing review about the motion comic somewhere and was suspicious, and I thought it odd that one actor did all of the voices too. The book is such a delight to linger at certain panels and as you say, go along at your own pace. I suppose I will poke around the web to see the examples for the hell of it, but more than likely leave it at that.