Book Review: Watchmen: The Art of the Film

February 11, 2009 by Parka

Here's a look at Watchmen: The Art of the Film, one of the three tie-in books for the Watchmen movie. The other two being Watchmen: Portraits (Amazon link) and Watchmen: The Official Film Companion (Amazon link). The other two I probably won't be getting.

Peter Aperlo, the author, has included a lot more visual content other than art illustrations in the book, all packing in to make it a rather thick book at 256 pages. It's well constructed and bind. Pages are thick low gloss with good colour reproduction.

There are five chapters in the book, namely Concept Art, Sets, Props, Owlship, Costumes and Posters. All pretty self explanatory.

First off, the art. These come in the form of character designs, storyboards (cute but not detailed) and beat board illustrations. There isn't as much art as I expected, the art in this book is seriously overwhelmed by photographs. Well, Dave Gibbons has already done most of the concept art in the comic.

The photos are shots of sets, locations, props, miniatures, film stills etc. To list a few, there are detailed close up of newspapers, New York wall graffiti, Blake's costume wardrobe and other miscellaneous items and backgrounds that appear in the movie. There are several unused concepts shown also.

I really enjoyed looking at all the gadgets, prop and location shots. They really give depth to movie adaption of the comic. I bet they will have even more meaning after I watch the movie.

There's not a lot of text other than the chapter introductions and short captions. It doesn't really need that much text anyway.

This book is highly recommended for Watchmen fans, comic and movie. It's well worth the money. I like it very much.