HBO just released a new featurette for Watchmen, and it finally gets to the heart of what this new take is all about.
We’d previously heard that executive producer Damon Lindelof was taking a new approach to the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons masterpiece, setting itself not as an adaptation, but a continuation of the world in the wake of Watchmen’s events.
In this new featurette, Lindelof is joined by director Nicole Kassell, star Regina King, and others to break down the basics of what a world looks like post the events of the original Watchmen.
Spurred by the arrival of a terrorist group called the Seventh Cavalry, who seem to have adopted Rorschach’s mask — after the vigilante perished during Watchmen’s climax — police have begun to wear masks too. Which, in turn, blurs the lines of culpability for the evil in the world.
It’s a very interesting place to start the show, with the idea of superheroes and supervillains kind of thrown aside because so many people have now adopted that iconography. Where does that leave the real heroes of such a broken world?
How that plays out, and how it links back to characters like Dr. Manhattan (briefly glimpsed in the above featurette) or Silk Spectre remains to be seen. But this featurette surely got us even more psyched up for what’s to come in this take on a comics legend.
Watchmen will air October 21 on Fox Showcase.