Tales of the Black Freighter

So I haven't seen The Watchmen yet, nor have I read the graphic novel.

This was a very cool, well done little piece of psychological horror.

In the vein of Hitchcock or The Twilight Zone with copious amounts of blood and gore, and with pirates. There is a very nice sense of tension throughout the story and there are more than a few shocking moments.

Even though animated, I still found myself unintentionally cringing at some points. The animation is done well, I'm glad its not done in an Anime style. It reminded me a little of Ralph Bakshi which was nice and the twist or climax at the end left me satisfied.

I will definitely be recommending this to everyone I know. Especially the ones who enjoyed The Watchmen. I was planning on seeing it soon and this has certainly added to my anticipation. But whether Watchmen turns out to be awesome or not, this is a great piece of animation and absolutely stands on its own. Even if you didn't like the movie this was extracted from you should check this out.

Anybody who's familiar with the Watchmen graphic novel will recognize the significance of the Tales of the Black Freighter. This was originally the comic-within-the-comic, having nothing much to do with the events of Watchmen, but offering a stark thematic parallel.

This animated feature translates that segment of the comic to accompany the Watchmen film (and if you watch the film's Ultimate Cut, this cartoon will be spliced into the main feature). On its own, the cartoon is short, bleak, and pretty gnarly. It runs pretty fast and it tells a heck of a story.

Following the Watchmen comic closely, this feature tells a very dark and violent story full of hideously ironic twists. The story is simple, but highly effective. It offers the bare minimum characterizations, but it digs deeply into the main character's psyche and madness to dig up strong themes of humanity's savagery; themes that are effectively echoed in the Watchmen film.

This feature uses pretty decent animation quality: movements are a little stiff and cheap, but it looks sharp, clean, and well-rendered. Voice-acting is not bad, and the writing is good. Designs for the characters and settings are good, and some scenes show good imagination. Music is alright.

Recommended for anybody interested in the Watchmen film.

4/5 (Entertainment: Good | Story: Good | Film: Good)

It was a while after I watched Watchmen that I got around to getting this companion film – essentially put together from the reading of the comic of the same name within the comic of Watchmen. Not being a massive defender of the comic, I am not petty about it nor do I wish to debate for hours about how the film works without it, how the changes in the film affect this film, how you must be an idiot if you think this, or how you must be an idiot if you don't think that – and so on. No, instead I came to the short film knowing its parallels with the main story/film and yet also keen to see how it works as a film full stop.

The answer is that it works very well because it produces a really gaudy depiction of the story with a much clearer link to the mental journey of Ozymandias and/or Rorschach – again I cannot be bothered to debate it on the message boards, for my money it works for both. The film is really well animated but not to the point that it is stylised to the point where it doesn't feel real. Instead, the gore and horror is made to feel very real and very horrible – not "owh gross" horrible in the way teen slasher films are, but it is really quite tangible how awful events are from start to finish. The story is quite simple but, because the horror is so well captured, it doesn't really matter if you watch this with Watchmen in mind or not – although of course it is meant for you to do so as well. The delivery is generally strong as well thanks mainly to the impressive delivery from Butler as the captain in narration. His haunted and nuanced voice is a great fit with the graphics – in particular the captain showing on his face what we are hearing.

It is ironic because, while I thought that the full film of Watchmen struggled because of how it stuck to the events in the book to the detriment of the heart of the book, the Black Freighter appears to have captured both. I'll let others argue it out but for me it was best to strip this out of the film and, while it works well in the comic spread out over the telling of the main story, it works equally as well here as a companion short film.

A sea captain (Gerard Butler, 300 and RockNRolla) is the single person to survive a slaughter upon his ship by savage pirates aboard a black freighter, this 25 and a half minute animated adaptation of the secondary story in the Watchmen comic mini-series tells the macabre, heart-wrenching tail of his journey back to the Davidstown before the pirates can arrive there to pillage his homeland. While using a somewhat minimalistic animated stylization, the story as well as the visualizations work triumphantly and one can't help but be drawn into both. Not so much a companion piece to "Watchman" (although the case for that has been made ad nuaseum) as much as a brilliantly conceived piece that can indeed stand on it's own.

My Grade: A

DVD Extras:Under the Hood (a 37 and a half minute faux news interview with Hollis Mason about his book) a 225 minute featurette on the making-of; the first chapter of the Watchman motion comic, a first look at "Green Lantern: First Flight"; a prerequisite ad from Blu-Ray; and trailers for "Terminator: Salvation", "Watchmen" & the video game adaptations of Terminator & Watchmen

Tales of the Black Freighter is set within The Watchmen universe but there are no superheroes to be found here.

With Gerard Butler as the voice talent we see a tale of a mariner who is the sole survivor of an attack on his ship by pirates and his efforts at survival and getting home to his family.

Standing at little over 20 minutes this little short actually manages to tell a story competently, but make no mistake it isn't a very nice one.

Grim, dark and harrowing this is a tale of desperation and a tale of madness and there was never going to be a happy ending here.

Depressing and hard hitting this is a watchable little piece but one that will stay with you afterwards and for all the wrong reasons.

Watch at your peril.

The Good:

Well animated

Very well written

The Bad:

Not the easiest viewing

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

This was an extra on the Watchmen (2009) dvd, I think it's better than the actual film