Brandon Vietti explains Watchmen: Chapter 1’s adaptation process

Guardians: Chapter 1 Follows Rorschach a former superhero turned vigilante as he secretly investigates the death of government-sanctioned superhero The Comedian. As he reveals more about the comedian’s death, it forces him and his former retired colleagues Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, Dr. Watchmen: Chapter 1 is set in an alternate history world with costumed heroes that emerged in the 1940s and 1960s that forever changed the trajectory of the world.

This is the first of a two-part animated adaptation of Allan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ landmark critically acclaimed comic. Guard. Directed by Brandon Vietti from a script written by J. Michael Straczynski, the pair uses an animation style that brings the comic book panels to life like never before on screen. Guardians: Chapter 1 Features a strong voice cast with Katee Sackhoff, Titus Welliver, Matthew Rhys, Troy Baker, and Rick D. Wasserman.

Screen Rant interviewed Guardians: Chapter 1 Director Brandon Vietti. He broke down the adaptation process and how they approached pieces of the Guard Comics in unique ways. Vietti praised Straczynski’s ideas and how they both wanted to honor the original comics while still bringing their own voices to the film.

Brandon Vietti on the adaptation process and new approaches to Watchmen comic elements

“The best stuff rises to the top, and we make it again and again with different artists.”

Screen Rant: Brandon, I’m a big one Guard Fan and this beat, it was absolutely fantastic. I feel like this is the most faithful adaptation we’ve seen from The Guard yet. I mean, I liked the movie and I love the series that Damon Lindelof did, but this is fantastic. What drew you to direct this adaptation for such an iconic and complex graphic novel as this Guard?

Brandon Vietti: We’re all very excited to create a comic book experience, but try to embrace all the strengths and the unique voice that animation can bring to it. So I think anyone who adapts something, I think that every artist involved will have slightly different names than any other artist who adapts their version of​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

So I think, hopefully that’s the entertainment and the appeal of what we’re doing is that we’ve found a different way through animation, through another amazing cast of characters, of actors who bring a performance and all their expertise to the table to analyze The words that are written on the page and bring the characters to life in a way that you might not have imagined when you read the book originally or again, the narrator of the motion comic or the amazing cast that Zach Snyder got in His 2009 movie.

Again, this is what we do as humans make art. The best stuff rises to the top, and we do it again and again with different artists coming forward to do their names. And I think in that is analysis of the original work and entertainment for what new voices can bring to the material that is hopefully surprising and interesting and bring more people to the original book. This is another goal of ours.

Totally agree with you. It’s crazy because when I read the original graphic novel, it’s crazy to see the characters brought to life on the screen and hear the voices in my head of how I imagine them. Another thing that was really cool about it was the way you incorporated the tales of the Black Freighter, because I was very curious to see how that was going to work in the animated form, and it was perfect. It’s exactly what I wanted. How do you approach balancing the fidelity of the original material with the creative freedom that animation allows?

Brandon Vietti: I mean, that’s the question we asked ourselves over and over again. This was the challenge to make it since you brought black freighter. I think that’s a great place to start. A great example, JM Straczynski, who did our adaptation of the script, had some really great ideas through the adaptation process, trying to establish Black Freighter in ways that are a little different than the book, but honor the spirit of the book.

You will find a lot of great poetic resonance between what is happening in the book and what is happening at any time in the world outside of the comic book or with the characters outside of the comic book. So that the depiction of the comic book, the visualizations I hope, I think works best in animation. As you go between the visual of the comic book panel to the visual of our animated character, versus a live action character.

I think that transition, the visual back and forth is something that is a great strength for the medium of animation that can work in live action. I won’t say that it isn’t, in the right hands of the right filmmaker, for sure. But I think this is something that is best suited in animation and there have been many choices like this all over.

Brandon Vietti and J. Michael Straczynski “wanted to honor the spirit” of the Watchmen comics

“Translating what worked great for 12 individual issues” on the screen is a difficult task.

Speaking of J. Michael Straczynski, he’s amazing. He’s a great guy and I think he made one of the best sci-fi shows of all time Babylon 5. Can you talk about the collaborative process working with him on the screenplay and the adaptation process that influenced your direction?

Brandon Vietti: I think when we first met, I think our goal was to change less than and we ended up changing. I think how you get into it, because again, we have such a deep love for the material, we really just wanted to be as faithful as humanly possible.

But the process of adaptation, the process of translation that worked great for 12 individual issues, it doesn’t necessarily work great for movie format pacing. So there was a lot of discussion up front about how, well, how much should we reorder or change for the sake of pacing?

Because we wanted to honor the intent of the book, we wanted to honor the spirit as much as we could, but the nature of filmmaking and movie pacing kind of just required certain re-edits and cutting of some material so that we could really focus What we need to focus on in the very limited amount of screen time we have.

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Source: Screen Rant Plus