Despite what a very vocal minority of internet users would try and have you believe, the glory years of the comic book adaptation did not begin and end with Zack Snyder‘s contributions to DC, even if there’s an alarming number of people out there struggling to reconcile with the fact the filmmaker is plenty content crafting original blockbusters for Netflix.
In a medium that’s existed since long before the superhero movie boom, and will continue to endure long after the bubble bursts, there’s no law on which titles can be discontinued, resurrected, rebooted, remade, or reinterpreted. That being said, the news coming out of Comic-Con that an animated feature-length take on Watchmen is releasing next year went down about as well as you’d expect.
Snyder’s elegiac epic remains as polarizing now as it ever was, but his ardent backers either refused to acknowledge the existence of the latest version, demanded it be immediately canceled on account of being destined to fall short of its live-action predecessor, or simply did what they always do and blame James Gunn for trying to erase their overlord from existence.
The obvious elephant in the room is the Watchmen TV series that already expanded the universe and found plenty of critical acclaim and awards season glory, but since when has evidence ever been an obstacle a homespun narrative can’t overcome? The “rivalry” between Gunn and Snyder exists only in the minds of a select few, and for all we know next year’s adaptation of the seminal graphic novel could turn out to be the best time any of us have ever had watching the Watchmen.