8 Things Watchmen TV Show Must Do Differently To Zack Snyder's Film
4. Examine The Black Freighter
DC Comics
Tales of the Black Freighter is Watchmen's single greatest meta-narrative. A comic situated within a comic, the book revolves around a pirate as the eponymous (and suitably ghostly) ship nears into view. Moore himself has posited that the comic is as much an allegory for Veidt's ideological shift as it is a dialogue shared between the Watchmen themselves, and it needs to have a role in the upcoming show.
Instead of opting to include the comic intermittently throughout the film, Snyder chose to make The Tales of the Black Freighter an animated accompaniment to the main feature. Gerard Butler had a key role, and it's actually a very good animated feature. The fact that it's not included in the main film itself, however, is pretty frustrating, despite the logistical issues that would've undoubtedly prevented its inclusion in the first place.
Although this author isn't one to sing the praises of Arrow, well, at all, the show's earlier usage of flashback aided it a great deal. Replace flashback with Tales of the Freighter, and you have a fairly organic way of implementing the story in the show. It's certainly worth including, given how integral an aspect of the comic it is, and it'd be an interesting way to slow the series down in certain moments.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
