In my review of Watchmen: Chapter I, I said its adaptation and filmmaking choices sabotaged the film. Nothing has changed with the second half of the story and it even gets a little wobblier than before. Still a pretty good, earnest adaptation.

Watchmen: Chapter II concludes the story of the graphic novel. It picks up where part 1 left off with a little “previously on Watchmen” in its opening credits. It’s still the same tale of how these mostly underpowered heroes try to solve the mystery set up previously and ultimately try to stop World War 3 in their alternate 1980s.

The filmmakers have made a mistake spitting the story in two and waiting almost a half a year to pick up where they left off. Not a huge mistake if you are fan of the original graphic novel (or the Zack Snyder film). But the opening synopsis is not very good and there were moments that even I struggled a bit to remember how they covered things in part 1. For newbies, it’ll probably result in moments of “huh?” and “What now?”

The animation style remains the same kind of good, kind of bad hand-drawn overlaid CGI. It’s serviceable though… a little stiff at times but usually the voice acting does enough heavy lifting to cover for it.

From a story adaptation standpoint, it makes different, mostly better choices from the Zack Snyder film. They spend more time putting the pieces of the mystery together so that things make more sense. Dr. Manhattan’s reasons for caring about humanity again are explored with more philosophy than anything Snyder bothered to do. It continues the Tales of the Black Freighter in-universe comic… which always feels like an indulgence to me (but I think I got the analog this time).

I was all set to rate this film the same as the first… until the underwhelming finale. And, yes, the it follows the graphic novel and doesn’t have the big change Snyder made. But it’s way too talky and probably could have done with some of the Snyder over-indulgence in violence and slow-mo. As it stands, it follows the graphic novel’s explanations to precision. It worked in the comic, but it made for a bit of a flabby and underwhelming adaptation. Almost like it was just going through the motions, crawling to the conclusion.

I’m still of the opinion you shouldn’t pay twenty bucks to watch this… like I did. Wait for a combo sale or both to be a cheap rental… or to appear on (HBO) Max. I’m giving it a slightly lower rating for its flabby finale (take that! and THAT!). A good adaptation with some faults.

Rating: 81