Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Appropriation Anxiety: Watchmen (2019)

2020; Oxford University Press; Volume: 13; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/adaptation/apaa024

1755-0645

Thomas Johnson,

Fashion and Cultural Textiles

HBO's nine-episode limited series Watchmen (2019) is based on the twelve-issue DC comic book series of the same name, written by Alan Moore, with art by Dave Gibbons, released between September 1986 and October 1987. The comic book series deconstructed the superhero subgenre in a way that greatly influenced that subgenre's trajectory going forward. All subsequent superhero comics such as Garth Ennis's The Boys (2006–12) and Mark Millar's Kick-Ass (2008–14) that present costumed adventuring as a suspect enterprise, informed by the psychological trauma of those who partake in it, owe at least a partial debt to Watchmen. Zack Snyder adapted the twelve issues for the big screen in 2009, in a film that was a commercial and critical failure but was also prescient in its cynical depiction of a team of colourful vigilantes like those who would come to dominate the box office over the next decade, in the films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and DC Extended Universe. Perhaps sensing that the current cinematic supremacy of superheroes made the genre once again ripe for a potentially lucrative deconstruction, HBO approached Damon Lindelof (Lost, The Leftovers) to readapt Watchmen.