It's Summer and We're Running Out of Ice (E01)

I’m bothered by the stylization and the costumes. The principle of the weapon holders should be explained and several other things also seem fairly illogical even in the parallel reality. Thematically, it looks interesting, with the racial problems at level 2.0. It just lacks a fundamental link to the history of the Watchmen; it's simply not enough to just mention a trans-dimensional monster a couple of times and give a fleeting glimpse of Manhattan. I’m curious to see how it develops. (2019.10.23)

Watchmen: Legacy. Lindelof follows the only logical path, so he only remembers the original Watchmen and Minutemen and builds his own world, which inevitably triggers the ideological floodgates of the present, while managing to be fully modern, even strictly retro. That it conceptually feels like a new The Leftovers series isn't surprising, but what is surprising is the surrounding hate, which is so... cute in its reasoning. PS: The music takes it up at least two levels. (2019.10.23)

I don’tnormally do this, but Watchmen is going to be the exception – since the series seems to be made up of interwoven stories (and also to balance out the hating a bit), I'll be reviewing it episode by episode. This first one is... great. An alternate 2019, a generation after the events of Snyder's film (the raining squids remind you of the book), a US where it is not Ronald Reagan but a completely different actor who is president, fearsome anarchists in Rorschach masks. The whole world looks very promising and well thought out, although we don't actually learn much about it, but only discover it through various hints. I liked the story a lot – of course, when it starts with a huge KKK lynching, it then logically devotes itself to the theme of racism, and if anyone is surprised or outraged by that, they probably have some personal problem and don't need to watch. The rest of us were able to enjoy a perfectly pitched story with great promise for the future. I'm really interested to see what happens next because I have a lot of questions and I’m quite happy with it. (2019.10.22)

It may not have the visual balls of Snyder's opus, nor the polished aesthetic and dark fictional world with its own rules, but it’s not that far. The seemingly impossible feat of picking up where Snyder left off with his film succeeded, and it's not bad at all. In places it's a nice mix of retro and modern just like a decade earlier, the effects serve the story and not the other way around, and it's quite obvious that the main building blocks of this colossus are being honoured as much as possible. It’ll be very interesting to watch the coming episodes. (2021.06.20)