Tom Stechschulte is unquestionably the first thing you need to know about because without his amazing voice acting, this wouldn’t be worth the hype I’m about to give it.
I will not go into the details of the story or tell you the differences between this release or the film, you see I want you all to enjoy this.
Firstly, Motion Comics is something quite new and something I expect to take off very fast. It’s extremely cheap to produce and the profit from this new way of promoting comic books, is just phenomenal. In addition it adds room for more voice actors to branch out into a field that I think will be very quite profitable.
The way it’s done is quite simple yet amazingly effective. Imagine a comic book page, suddenly becoming animated. It’s not a cartoon, it’s taking the layers of the already drawn page, splits it up and makes it look 2 dimensional, allowing the characters to have limited but meaningful movements. This is enough to make it feel exciting and with a good flow throughout the show. In addition it has a wonderful score playing the background and the most talented voice actor I’ve heard in a long time, doing the narration. The way he can differentiate between these characters and even play women parts, is phenomenal. Tom Stechschulte, is simply the most perfect choice for this narration. His version of Dr. Manhattan is so spot on, Rorschach’s personality through the subtle nuances in his voice is simply wonderful. The rest of the countless, characters that go through the comic book is just done in the most believable way you can imagine.
The main story is broken down into 12 Chapters mimicking the comic book. Each chapter is roughly 30 minutes in duration. That gives you roughly around 6 hours of something that will probably be an introduction to an amazing new experience as well as the wonderful story of The Watchmen.
Alright, let’s dig into the details of this review. Firstly this is a review of the Blu-Ray edition of the Watchmen Motion Comics.
I’ve been asked why even bother investing in a Blu-Ray version of the Watchmen Motion Comics? Well, it is mainly because, if you buy Blu-Ray to begin with it is most certainly because you’re viewing it on an LCD/LED or Plasma screen. Basically anything with a higher resolution than a normal TV. This also means that for those who have a flat panel TV, either by choice or forced into buying one, are now victims of blurry low resolution images coming from the DVD player if it’s not up scaled. So why buy this Motion Comic on Blu-Ray? Because it’s like reading a comic book that’s got smudged pages, blurry text and edges if it’s on DVD, on Blu-Ray the high resolution solves this problem. For everyone else, the DVD release is visually the same on a regular TV as Blu-Ray on LCD.
The Blu-Ray comes with a sneak peak of the DC Universe release of the Animated Wonder Woman DVD (Very nice, worth a watch), Watchmen Production Diaries Part 4 with Dave Gibbons in High definition and then the BD-Live which are available for download via the internet through your Blu-Ray player. In addition, you get the Digital Copy which you can use to put on your iPod, Zune and other devices that can play video. It sells for about $25 and is worth every penny.
I deeply and wholeheartedly recommend this release on DVD or Blu-Ray or even as a download via iTunes. The viewing experience is something quite amazing. So much, so that I’ve ended up thinking that the motion comics did a better job in making me sit on the edge of my seat, wanting to see more of the story than the film did. If you want to know what this comic book means? What, this comic book said so many years ago, you’ll understand the significance of this amazing comic book, now also available as Motion Comics with an amazingly talented voice actor.
In conclusion I wish to mention, the next thing on my list “Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter and Under the Hood”. Watch this Motion Comics and you’ll be WANTING to see the above mentioned addition to the Watchmen universe.
Stars: Tom Stechschulte
Written by: Alan Moore
Illustration and Digital illustration Supervised by: Dave Gibbons
Directed by: Jake Strider Hughes
Runtime : 325min
