The Watchmen Easter eggs are already out of the basket.
The original Watchmen comic book issues famously experimented with unconventional supplemental material in its endpages, departing from its panel-grided narrative to include illustrated text pieces from its rich mythology – excerpts from original Nite-Owl Hollis Mason’s autobiography Under the Hood, clippings from the first Silk Spectre’s scrapbook, Rorschach’s arrest report, marketing memos from Ozymandias’ corporation and more.
Originally intended as filler for early issues in the space eventually intended to print reader letters, the supplements created by writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons proved so popular the trend continued through the original. Pre-dating DVD bonus material, they added to the depth, complexity and real-world feel Watchmen became celebrated for, and now with the feature film version hitting screens, the spirit of those “extras” is being carried forward with a collection of innovative companion DVD/Blu-Rays from Warner Premiere Video.
Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter
Directly tied to the film is Tales of the Black Freighter, an animated adaptation of Watchmen‘s comic book-within-a-comic book, a pirate tale (the logic being that in a world with real superheroes, who’d read fantasy fiction about them?) read by a boy at a Manhattan newsstand while pestered by the owner (both are named Bernie) that subtly mirrors the main story, adding subtext and enriching its thematic elements.
Directed by Daniel DelPurgatorio and Mike Smith, Black Freighter is scripted by Watchmen co-screenwriter Alex Tse and director Zack Snyder himself, and stars the voices of Synder’s 300 star Gerard Butler and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button‘s Jared Harris.
“There was this idea that they were going to do this parallel content that they were going to release at time of release because it’s huge marketing,” Snyder told Hollywood.com. “I had slight ulterior motives because I knew there was no way the studio was ever going to fund a Black Freighter movie to be included just for the DVD. It just didn’t seem possible. But Warner Premiere of course came to the rescue of that, conceptually, for me.”
“I knew that that was a way for me to cheat them into giving me my Black Freighter movie that I could [later] edit in,” Snyder laughed. “Then we got some money from Warner Premiere so I could shoot the [live action] ins and outs…so I could actually get all the Bernies stuff [at the newsstand] shot so that I would end up with a way to get The Black Freighter into the movie and still have the Bernies’ story make sense at the end, too.”
Synder said that after the theatrical release of Watchmen and a 20-minutes-longer director’s cut DVD in the summer, an “ultimate” version of the film will be released in the fall that integrates the Black Freighter material into the expanded film. “I feel like it does kind of flow and go in and out in kind of a nice way,” he said. “We did these things where when the kid’s looking at the comic book, we do these things where we drive into a frame and it starts to animate so there’s cool stuff like that.”
Snyder was grateful for the opportunity to eventually assemble as fully realized a vision of the graphic novel as possible. “I think when you’re in the movie, we really don’t have a lot of time to fuck around,” he said. “You’ve got to stay on point and you’ve got to keep going because time is so critical, so it’s kind of fun to have the Black Freighter version, where it is pretty luxurious.”
KEEP READING: ‘Under the Hood’
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Under the Hood
Also on the Black Freighter DVD is an additional feature, Under the Hood, which features live-action documentary-style footage starring actors Steven McHattie (Hollis Mason), Carla Gugino (Silk Spectre I), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Comedian) and Matt Frewer (Moloch) that chronicles the 1940s heroes The Minutemen.
Synder said director Eric Matthies, who was also handling footage for the film’s electronic press kit, spearheaded the project, corralling the actors to shoot improvised, in-character segments for a mock 70s-era TV magazine show called The Culpepper Minute. “This is supposedly a follow-up story to their original story, a ‘where-are-they-now? kind of thing,” said Snyder. “The Comedian is like ‘Get that fucking camera out of my face!’”
“Carla did an amazing job,” added Snyder. “She’s in her early ’70s look…I just feel like after so much work that these actors put into researching their roles, they were actually able to pay off that research with these ad-lib experiences.”
“They also shot this historical footage,” added Snyder. “Like they take Hooded Justice, they get a Bolex [camera] and go down some alley with some vintage cops and they shoot some handheld scratchy footage of him arresting someone.”
KEEP READING: ‘Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic’
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Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic
Also being released on DVD/Blu-Ray is Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic, a two-disc collection of the 12 30-minute animated sequences previously available only on iTunes, which painstakingly depicts the complete Watchmen storyline chapter by chapter, bringing Alan Moore’s scripts and Dave Gibbons’ artwork to life with limited animation, sound effects, music and voiceover narration.
The ultimate effect is an even more faithful and immersive experience that complements Synder’s feature film adaptation. “That does have nearly every line and nearly every scene and that does come in at around about six and a half hours,” said artist Gibbons, who served as a consultant on the project. “That is the actual running time of a literal translation of Watchmen.”
Gibbons admits he wasn’t easily swayed by the idea when he was first approached with a prototype version. “Paul Levitz at DC showed it to me to see what I thought about it,” he said. “I thought ‘Well, I don’t think we really need this. So I said ‘If I really don’t like it, is it likely to get made anyway?” And he said ‘Probably.’ So I went away to think about it.”
But it wasn’t consulting his colleagues in the comic book, animation and video game fields that ultimately turned Gibbons around. “I showed it to my teenage stepdaughters and they went crazy. They said, “This is great! This is fantastic! Can we see some more of it?’” The artist realized the format just might be embraced by audiences who grew up on iPods and Mac screens. “I kind of changed my mind about it, really, just on their enthusiasm.”
Consulting on the Motion Comics execution, Gibbons became fully converted. “It’s a tremendous feat of cutting all the foregrounds out and extending the backgrounds and resizing it, but on an iPod it looks brilliant,” he said. “The panels are kind of exactly the same size as in the comic, so it’s like isolating a panel and watching it move. And it kind of works as an audio book, which is one voice, [narrator Tom Stechschulte]. It must have been a funny day in the audio booth the day that he made love to himself.”
Gibbons said DC plans to continue to experiment with the Motion Comic format with other tales in its decades-old inventory. “They’re going to do Mad Love, which is that fantastic Bruce Timm-drawn [Batman story] which is in kind of an animated style anyway, which I recon will transfer very well,” he said. “They’re also doing a Batman: Black & White story that I did.”
“I do think it’s a prototype of possibly a new form of entertainment – I could see there is something almost struggling to be born,” Gibbons said. “I’m just really interested to see what happens. I don’t think we’re going to get it right immediately, but I think there’s something there that’s worth playing with.”
Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic arrives on DVD and Blu-Ray on March 3, while Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter debuts on March 24.
KEEP READING: ‘Watchmen’ interviews, features and more …
