https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/23/watchmen-is-by-far-the-best-adaptation-of-the-comic-but-should-fans-watch-it

HBO’s take on the Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons comic succeeds where all others have failed, but it is yet another DC project made without Moore’s approval

It’s been profoundly depressing to watch Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen mutate into a cottage industry for DC Entertainment. The comic book’s suspicion of power and its veneration of persistent kindness now seem an odd fit for DC, which appears to be hellbent on breaking down Watchmen into a sort of paste that it can smear on everything from prequels and sequels the creators never wanted, to a themed toaster (sold out years ago, sorry). The company’s repeated failure to wring anything entertaining or clever from Watchmen might forgivably strike the book’s author and artist, and their partisans, as somewhat gratifying.

But as Damon Lindelof’s HBO spinoff shows, a solid Watchmen adaptation is possible. The first series, which ended last week, still hasn’t been renewed for a second, probably because of Lindelof’s own reluctance to be part of it. But this adaptation succeeds by hitting many of the themes of the graphic novel while reproducing almost nothing of its plot – unlike Zack Snyder’s straightforward 2009 film, which slavishly reproduced the plot and misunderstood all the themes. Lindelof’s series features a prestige drama – a-show-within-a-show, in much the same way that the book contained a-comic-within-a-comic – that pays backhanded tribute to Snyder’s movie, with sneery dialogue, ostentatiously cartoonish costumes, lots of slo-mo and gouts of nearly fluorescent blood. By comparison, Lindelof’s world is muted, its emotional arcs elliptical, its careful and complex set-dressing deceptively drab. It manages to achieve something Moore and Gibbons did in the comic: thoroughly imagine a convincing science-fiction world in which daily life is very similar to our own, just slightly off centre.