Watchmen: Chapter II 4K 2024 Ultra HD 2160p

A two-part movie based on the DC and Alan Moore comic books of the same name.

User Review
Warner Bros. Animation division Warner Bros. isn't letting “Watchmen” solidify the past. Three months ago came out the first part of the adaptation from Brandon Vietti, now released and the second - no matter how hard you try, and Alan Moore's colossus is not easy enough to squeeze into a compact one and a half hours of timing.

The world is on the brink of nuclear war between the US and the USSR. Even such superheroes as the atomic superhuman Dr. Manhattan and the psychotic Comedian, who have helped America more than once, are unable to save it. Suddenly, the Comedian is killed, and Rorschach, a mysterious masked vigilante who prefers to work on his own, takes over. He suspects that someone has announced a hunt for colleagues and neatly cleans them up. Now Rorschach must reunite with his former comrades - Nite Owl and Silk Ghost to investigate the case. Soon enough, the heroes come to realize that the ambitious billionaire Adrian Veidt, also known as Ozymandias, is behind everything -- he devises a ruthless way for humanity to unite in the face of a common enemy and thus prevent World War III.

The new version of “Guardians” is vulnerable to criticism: its appropriateness in general is quite questionable, fans of the graphic novel did not fail to call the adaptation a gross self-repeat, and the combination of drawn animation with computer innovations managed to hit a snag. But there are those who are more loyal to the child and simply nostalgic, even not so distant times, when Zack Snyder released his adaptation of “Guardians”.

To be fair, it's worth noting that the dual cartoon turned out to be much closer to the novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons than the famous movie version. The authors set the task to revitalize the panels of the comic book in 1986, using modern animation technology. But reaching for the shelf and rereading Moore's work still seems like a more reasonable decision than resting your eyes on the cartoon adaptation -- it rather serves as a quick retelling for the lazy. Another reminder that comics are akin to great literature, and to some, as vast and total as a volume of Moby Dick or War and Peace.

If the first chapter in the genre sense was more like noir (Rorschach investigates the murder of the Comedian), the sequel plunges into the entourage of apocalypticism. Nothing can stop the end of the world except a cynically planned spectacle - so Ozymandias, suffering from a god complex, enters the plot arena. An important difference from the Snider version is the emphasis on the Black Schooner Story, which repeatedly frames the main plot - the investigation of the heroes and the march of nuclear war. The line of Silk Specter and Nite Owl, a love couple and part-time superhero duo, is also revealed. As many may recall, Snyder set their erotic scene to Leonard Cohen's track Hallelujah, an episode that was repeatedly joked about and even claimed that Snyder treated the romance vulgarly (a reproach that can be applied to the movie as a whole). Fortunately, in the cartoon there is no such thing, as well as the characteristic patina of costumed grotesque - Vietti's project almost completely refrains from black humor.

The main focus of the sequel is Ozymandias' megalomaniacal plans to save humanity. Instead of the colorful Matthew Goode, with whom we often associate the image of the antagonist, we are satisfied with the voice actor Troy Baker (he repeatedly voiced the Joker in animated projects about Batman and Joel in The Last of Us). On a stylistic level, the sequel doesn't differ much from the first installment's findings. Drawing, contours, movements, no matter how flashy and interesting they look in the chosen medium, quickly enough get bored, and the effect of innovation dissipates.

An animated movie based on Watchmen still feels like an unnecessary glide through a story that's been told long ago and doesn't require new iterations. Perhaps not since the release of Moore's graphic epic, a perennial foe of any screen adaptation. The new retelling added nothing to “Watchmen,” but it did add Moore - at the very least, a new source of irritation and headache.

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (49.9 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Info Audio

#English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
#Spanish (Latino): Dolby Digital 5.1

Info Subtitles

English SDH, French, Spanish (Latin American).